5 Things Parents Can Do To Ensure Successful Children, According To Science
Before you have a child, there are millions of questions that rush through your mind. Are you ready for this, do you have everything you need, do you have plans in place regarding their health, finances, schooling, and other necessities?
One of the most important factors to consider is what you can do early in their life that will set them up for future success. You build the foundation of your child's life, how can you make it stronger?
Of course, how can we be expected to raise a child when we haven't healed our own inner child? Soothing the pains of our childhood, addressing issues we've subconsciously clung to for decades, it's no easy feat, but it is possible.
Start your journey today with the Inner Child Journal, a workbook designed to help you save and heal the wounded child's spirit that rests within your soul. Befriend them and learn compassion, kindness, and curiosity you haven't felt since you were young. Click here to get started today.
Wanting What's Best
Every parent wants to see their child succeed. With all the work that goes into parenting and raising a child, seeing them happy, healthy, and successful (in whatever way that means for them) is the ultimate payoff. Of course, parents have a major role in shaping how their child matures and develops, so is there anything they can do to help promote success early on?
Science says yes. There are actually a number of things a parent can do, demonstrate, and help with that will promote better skills in their young ones, skills that will only grow stronger alongside them.
1. They Teach Persistence
Children are always watching, they look to their parents to know how to live, how to navigate the world around them, modeling their behavior. That's why it's so important that parents set good examples by performing tasks the way they would want their children to do them when they grow up.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at how over 500 children aged around four or five years old persisted and how much effort they'd put into a task after watching an adult do it. Results showed that the children who watched an adult persist, work hard, and express the importance of working hard all stuck with the task longer, even when things became difficult.
2. They're Involved In Their Child's Learning
A team in England conducted a study where they interviewed academic experts and looked at other recent studies on the relationship between a parent's engagement with their child's learning and the academic success of that child.
All of these sources, when collected and analyzed as a whole, showed that parents being actively involved in their child's learning helps that child immensely to succeed in school later on. When the child is young, this can look like reading to them, listening to them read, and helping them learn core lessons like the alphabet. When the child is older, this can look like parental involvement in field trips, monitoring how their kids are doing with schoolwork (in a friendly manner, offering to help if needed), and showing a genuine interest in their school activities.
3. They Help Strengthen Their Attention Span
Many people are easily distracted, we all have varying attention spans that can be impacted by a number of factors, but strengthening that attention span is something parents can help their children with early in life.
Stanford psychology expert Nir Eyal says that becoming "indistractable" is one of the most important skills that young people now will need in the years to come. He believes that limiting screen time is an easy and effective way that parents can help prevent the shortening of their child's attention span, but you need to inform them of why you're doing it. Another important factor is letting the child set their own limits. You want them to feel like they're in control of the decision. By respecting their input, they'll feel less like this is a punishment and thus won't be as upset about the choice.
Do ghosts of childhood pains continue to haunt you? Rid yourself of them today, click here to learn how.
4. They Prioritize The Mother's Happiness
This sounds pretty different from the other tips thus far that have focused on the relationship between parent and child, but it's true that happier moms help children achieve academic success at a higher rate.
Researchers from the Marriage Foundation and the University of Lincoln examined the data from the Millennium Cohort study, a long-term survey of 13,000 couples with a child born in 2000 or 2001. They assessed the couples' relationship satisfaction when their child was nine months old, then revisited them 14 years later. The study found that the happiness of mothers greatly influenced various outcomes compared to fathers. For instance, a mother's happiness was twice as impactful as the father's in predicting whether the couple would remain together and in determining mental health issues in boys. Similarly, only the mother's happiness was correlated with mental health problems in teenage girls.
5. They Enroll Their Child In Music Lessons
Lastly, the simplest and most straightforward entry is enrolling their child in music lessons. Research from the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama looked at over 2,300 parents of children aged seven to 17 who were currently enrolled in music lessons. Parents reported a number of ways that these lessons helped their kids' development.
Around 85% felt that the lessons improved their child's patience, 68% felt the lessons improved their child's time management and organizational skills, 83% felt the lessons helped their child be more self-aware, and 71% felt that the lessons helped their child with their task prioritization and lowered screen time.
Growing Older, Stronger
There's no way to guarantee 100% success for your child without question, but promoting healthy habits and helping them develop important skills is a pretty close second. Even beyond the potential future yields, traits like the ones listed here are valuable for navigating everyday life, meaning your children will feel more secure and confident simply for having them.
Parenting is a constant balancing act of knowing what may help and what may hinder your child. In knowing where to start with promoting positive habits, new parents can build a foundation for their child that they feel confident in, then let love lead them the rest of the way.
