63% of adults say, “I encourage those that I care about to pursue goals that I think are best for them.” Whose life are your children living? One person I interviewed became wildly successful – and just recently emerged from rehab. His career was “chosen” by his parents, and destroyed his life. We are in an era plagued by the demise of imagination in children, squelching it to the detriment of emotional growth.
Kids today have quickly become the most over micromanaged population of our society. A tongue-in-cheek look into this potentially debilitating trend is the best-seller “The Nanny Diaries” where parents are enrolling not only unborn babies, but not yet conceived babies into “the best” pre-schools in Manhattan, French classes and art history courses. Thus ensuring their future place at Harvard and placement at Morgan Stanley.
The serious side of this parenting micromanagement is that children are being led through life, living someone else’s goals. Why is it that a 3 year old needs his/her own erasable easel with a weekly schedule that includes Yoga for tots and toddler therapy? At what point will they rebel? Are we not only stealing their innocence but also their creativity and potentially stifling their natural born gifts by forcibly directing them to activities that we as parents want them to engage in?
The remedy is a more malleable approach to parenting. It is documented that structure provides a great foundation for the development of children, but there must be unstructured time as well. Allowing kids to be kids. Encouraging them to use their own imagination, make their own choices and decisions (even if they are at times wrong) and handling the repercussions of those decisions.
By adopting a more goal-free approach to parenting, the child is provided with a more self sufficient arsenal of tools to help in future, real-life, practical experiences. This is nicely articulated by a response to my article in O, The Oprah Magazine by a high school student. He says:
“In today’s society, kids do grow up too fast. In the article, ‘Are Your Goals Holding You Back?’ the source of this problem is clearly stated. Many kids are influenced and sometimes even forced to have the same goals for themselves as their parents do. This greatly interferes with their childhood and outlook on life. Being forced into setting goals for yourself, unrealistic or not, you are telling yourself to only focus on one thing and forget about everything that is happening around you. With this, being a kid and wanting to do what all of the other kids are doing is extremely difficult because you are so fixed on your goal that leisure doesn’t fit into your agenda. Kids are running around panicking about a test they forgot to study for or they’re in tears because they didn’t make the basketball team and the thought of telling their parents make them sick to their stomach. If you were to ask most of those kids why they get so worked up over little mistakes they will respond with, ‘Because my parents will kill me!”
Pretty insightful response from someone who is not even 18 years old. How can you be more goal-free in your parenting style? Here are seven tips for helping you raise a more creative and passionate child.
1. Give your child guidance, not a leash. Instead of specific goals to achieve (e.g., being first chair in the school orchestra), have them choose a “game” to play (e.g., passionate music). Remind them of their game on a regular basis. Have them choose something fun and inspiring. This reduces stress, makes life fun, and may ultimately lead to great success.
2. Give choices; not dictum. Instead of telling your child “no,” teach them the power of choice. Give them options. If you want them to stop a bad behavior, let them know the consequences if they continue that behavior. Then have them choose – good behavior, or bad behavior and consequences.
3. Encourage your child to find their own “voice.” There is a great Visa commercial where the father of a roughly 7 year old boy is shown in various sporting goods stores buying virtually every piece of equipment under the son, and every shot of the boy participating in the sport is disastrous! The kid can’t kick, throw, or catch. In the closing scene, the child wins a chess tournament and the father throws his arms up victoriously. Failure leads to success. If your child doesn’t have a natural penchant for sports, even though you lettered in three sports all four years of high school, keep trying. With every failed attempt, you and your child find yourselves closer to success. Get your children to define success as what they like to do and are good at.
4. Use the “Yes, and…” improv comedy technique with your children. When your kid says something, you want to encourage them to play with their thoughts. Rather than suggesting their ideas are silly, use “yes, and.” No matter what they say, build on their idea and turn it into an even bigger idea. They’ll have fun. You’ll have fun. And they will take the conversation in ways that truly excite them.
5. Focus on the learning, not just the grades & degrees. Yes, getting good grades is important in society. But often it is at the experience of true learning. Teach your children to truly learn rather than focus on the grades. In the long run, they will learn to think for themselves. The truly successful people have more than academic skills. They have social, leadership, and creativity skills. Three things rarely taught in schools.
6. Want what you have - There are times when a parent has a certain expectation of how a child should perform, be it academically, physically, musically, or artistically, all based on the parent’s own understanding of their performance. Appreciate, regardless of the circumstances - at some point it becomes mandatory, if you want to have a healthy relationship with your child, that you simply appreciate them for who they are, limitations or not.
7. Allow children to be children. Parents are typically so worried that their children will miss out on something important, that they miss the thing they only get one chance at – childhood. Make sure there is time for creative activities. Time for play. Time to be a kid.
One study done by NASA years ago showed that 98% of 5 year old kids are highly creative, while only 2% of adults are. Society has stifled the creative growth of children. And in today’s world of rampant outsourcing, creativity may be your child’s main source of competitive differentiator.
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