Every Parent Wants Their Child To Succeed...

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How Hard Should You Push Them

Children should not be pushed to succeed at all. They should be motivated to succeed. Pushing a child to succeed implies that the child is being forced to succeed, which will inevitably make success a less sought after goal for that child. Success starts at home, then in school, and later in society. How you motivate him/her at home and how you encourage success during the school years, will shape how successful he/she is later in society.

If your child isn't ready to learn something, forcing him/her to learn it, isn't going to ensure that he does. If your child wants to learn something, telling him to wait for others his age to learn it will discourage him/her. Motivating a child to succeed starts in early childhood and it starts at home.

It starts with instilling a love of learning. If you drill a child, or force them to learn, your child will come to dislike learning. Children learn best when learning isn't forced. Singing the alphabet song should not be done for memorization two weeks before your child starts preschool. In fact, singing the alphabet song can be enjoyably incorporated into other learning experiences, and your child will be more likely to learn it. For example, Use the alphabet song as a potty training tool. When a child has to use the potty, they can sing it while they sit on the potty. When the song is over, they can get up. This helps them relax while trying to go, wait long enough on the potty to actually go, and inadvertently, learn their alphabet!

Everything you do during the first 6 years of your child's life is learned by the child. So if success in your home means being miserable in order to attain it, your child will eventually come to the conclusion that success isn't worth it.

Around first grade, it becomes necessary to motivate success in other ways. Your child should be encouraged to ask questions in school. If he wants to know more about something he learned in school, he should be given the tools and guidance at home to use the public library and the Internet.

Children should be encouraged to question the information they receive, research to get the answers they are looking for, and inform those who have informed them incorrectly. Your child should be exposed to several different forums for research, in order to maximize the success of finding the answers he/she is looking for.

Encouraging creativity, imagination, and curiosity are a few key steps to motivating success.

In middle school motivating success is in teaching your child good study habits. Certainly you have been doing this in the lower grades, but middle school is more complicated. Your child will be needing organizational skills as well. Using monetary rewards at this age for good grades isn't so much a bad thing. When we do a good job at work, we get a bonus. The amount of money we make working defines how successful we are in life. Naturally there are other things that determine success, but money is most often our motivation to do well.

Your child will soon be heading off to high school, and you want to allow them to see the benefits of hard work and good habits. You have undoubtedly spent time talking about drugs and sex and peer pressure by now, but these years are great ice breakers.

Social success motivation is going to become a factor. Listen more than you preach, and take the opportunities to talk about sensitive issues when they arrive.
When you child hits high school, you'll most likely be exiled at least for while. If you have laid a solid learning foundation for him/her with the above suggestions, then you have given your child motivation for success.

Yet, as teenagers, they may not use that motivation in the ways you would hope. It is important to pick your battles at this age. While academics are certainly important, there are other factors in being successful. As teenagers, these factors are more prominent issues. Part of being successful is in learning from our mistakes. Many parents try to prevent those mistakes by hovering over, and essentially smothering their child, but they need to make those mistakes. The key to motivating a child to be successful now lies in how you handle the decisions your child makes.

Offering empathy and suggestions when bad decisions are made, is a good way to guide your child without taking responsibility for his/her behavior. Rewarding good behavior and hard work are also crucial. In a few years, your child will be out in the world. Right now is a really good time to allow your child to reap the benefits of all the hard work they do. After all, you want them to continue on their road to success, and rewarding success will motivate more of the same.

Above, you have been given some basic suggestions for motivating a child to succeed in all areas of life.

Respect, empathy, compassion, loyalty and self control are also necessary tools to be truly successful. However, the road to success is not traveled by force. So in conclusion, you cannot push a child to succeed but as you have read, you can motivate any child in the direction of success.

by Belinda Long