The Building Blocks of Tenacity – Helping Kids Develop A Stick To It Attitude

Parents admittedly would love to raise children that have a “get to it” attitude. The notion that they should stick to things and not quit when things get hard is a good thing. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get a child to get to that place. You may wish it upon them, you can even make sure to provide ample energy, but it’s not cut and dry. There are some building blocks that need to be put in place for this to manifest, and it starts with simple steps. There is no “secret” formula here, it’s going to take time, but at least you can know what steps help the process.

Don’t Be Quick To Help

Here’s the worst thing you can do for your child, and it’s to jump in and save the day every time. When children know that their parents will bail them out of difficult issues, they will rely so much on it, they won’t try. It’s tough to ignore that parental element that wants to baby, and coddle children as they grow. Ignore it, or you’ll have to deal with teenagers and adults that expect a bail out at every turn. There’s a fine line here, so you’ll have to toe it a bit.

Don’t Let Them Quit

When your child joins something, don’t let them quit too easily. This becomes especially true for lessons, sports, and anything else that takes on practice. They may hate it at first, they may even want to quit outright, but it’s imperative that you let others instruct your children. Let them guide them into how to master something new, and they will appreciate you and their teachers for it. Again, you have to monitor when it’s time to allow one to quit, because there are situations that call for it. But outside of specific issues, don’t let them quit things too easily.

Instruct Them To Bounce Back
The fundamental cornerstone for tenacity is here. You need to instruct your children to bounce back after failure. They may face off against a number of issues. They may fall, skid their knee, or even fail a test. Don’t let them dwell on it, but rather accept it, and help them recover and triumph. Failure is a part of life, and if you can teach children that it’s normal to fail, you’ll be doing a good service. But this only works if you show them the triumph of bouncing back. There’s a give and take here, so don’t just accept failure and leave it alone. Accept failures, but move forward to triumph and overcoming the odds after the fact.

How To Be A Role Model of Self Determination

One of the best things that you can do as a parent is simple, become a role model. BY living your life in a positive manner, you can enrich the life of your children for the rest of their lives. Instead of focusing on the old adage of, “do as I say, not as I do”, you can show them how to live fruitful, powerful lives by the way that you choose to live yours. Kids will emulate their parents, especially the bad habits that may not be empowering for them. With that in mind, consider the following steps to help become a role model with focus on self determination today.

Get Things Done – Time Management

The first way to start on this quest is to get things done from the moment you get up to the moment you go to sleep. Show children how to manage their time. That includes not hitting the snooze button, but instead getting up at the alarm, and fighting through fatigue. Show them that you may not like waking up early and getting your day started, but you fight through it. Don’t become lax here, fight through it knowing that they are going to emulate you. Set up a to-do list and slowly cross things out as you go through and show children that they can do the same. At the end of the day, compare lists, and you’ll be able to show that you go through ups and downs, but you keep pressing forward.

Never Stop Learning – Take A Class

Show children that adulthood doesn’t mean that you don’t learn new things. Take a class, experience something new, and showcase a bit of struggle. Let them know that it’s ok to do hard things, and progress slowly. When stumped, consider taking up something that involves visual progression. For instance, take an art class, or learn how to play an instrument. Show that you are capable to struggle and success through the learning process and they will have an illustrated way of knowing that they are not alone in their own struggles with learning at school, and in other areas.

Eat Right and Exercise

The last way to become a role model of self determination is to keep healthy. This is a real life struggle for a grand majority of people. Make sure that you highlight the importance of this simple daily task. By working on the discipline that it takes to work out, eat right, and maintain weight, you are going to exemplify healthy living. It is important to highlight good habits, and this is one that may seem easy on paper, but many parents struggle with. Managing time, pursuing good health, and succeeding in this will definitely prove beneficial in both the short, and long term.

These are just starting points in regards to becoming a better role model. It’s easy to rest on laurels, go through motions, and try to just coast. Shake things up and find new ways to change yourself, your routine, because children are no doubt watching and shaping their lives alongside yours.

Now Available on Audible.com and iTunes!

Excited to announce that in addition to Amazon, Entrepreneur School For Kids (The Book) is now available on Audible.com and iTunes!

Teach Your Child Inner Strength by Letting Them Fail

Let Your Kids Fail To Teach Inner Strength

Every hero today, every single one has that moment where they have failed. In fact, success cannot be garnered without a few stumbling blocks. Read any inspirational book, look at any movie, or ask any person that is successful in life about whether or not they have ever failed. You’re going to be surprised by what they tell you. Kids today are pushed towards greatness, told they are to succeed, and in some circles are coddled when they stumble. When they aren’t the premier athlete on day one, or when their school work becomes too much, parents look at trying to save the day and make sure that they never taste that bitter defeat, even for a second. It’s bad. It’s imperative that you let your kids fail, as that will teach them so much more than winning all the time. 

Learning From Falls

The first major thing that you have to consider in regards to failing is that it teaches. Experience is the greatest teacher, especially when things don’t go so well. The old adage of putting hands on a stove is a prime example. One puts their hand on a hot stove once, and then never does that again. The reason? It burns. That learning process is severe, painful, and definitely not something that you want to experience, but it’s a great educator. That’s the same for life. Sometimes children need to feel the sting of defeat, so that they can taste how great glory can become. 

No One Is Great on Day One 

Take a look at the greatest people in any sport. Anyone that is at the top of their proverbial field, and then consider how long it took them to get there. Children should be taught this. When they look at icons like Lebron James, consider their failures. For every championship ring, there’s hundreds of hours of practice, hundreds of missed shots, and even injuries. There is no great individual in the world, past, present, or future that will be great on their first day of doing anything. Chances are, they are going to fall short often. The difference here, however, is that they get up time and time again. 

The next time your kids run into a wall, or even fail, remember to tell them that it’s not the end. It’s just time to get up, and try again. It’s in standing up, going forward, and overcoming falls, that one becomes great. The more you can reinforce that in the life of your child, the greater inner strength they will have.

Have Brainstorming Sessions With Your Children

Spark Creative Entrepreneurial Thought Processes In Children With Brain Storming

One of the easiest ways to get your child involved in entrepreneurship, or at least thinking like an entrepreneur is through brainstorming. Millions of business owners do this on a regular basis. They focus on finding new routes to work through money making elements, hiring the right people, building portfolios, and doing a lot of work that is needed on a daily basis. In practice, this can help with project planning, management, and more. Bringing it down to a simpler scale is not complex. It’s a matter of taking the things that a child does and then compartmentalizing them for efficiency.

The Chore Element

As mentioned in the previous post, chores are a great tool to tie to entrepreneurship for your child. You can also very easily spark creativity through chores. When looking at chores that need to get done, you could take out a piece of paper, or use a whiteboard to brain storm how to get things down faster and easier. Sometimes the best thing to do is engage with a child’s visual learning curve. Visual learning uses drawings, more than just text. It’s easy to write a lot of text lists, but children may not find them amusing or fun. That’s where you may want to consider drawing, even simple sketches as you creatively tackle chore ideas and more.

Letting Children’s Imagination Run Wild

Sometimes the notion of business and entrepreneurial lessons can seem drab. That’s why it’s important to focus on sparking creativity. You can easily do this by bringing down hard concepts to the level of a child. Let them engage with some of the ideas, and write down simple things that they would do. Sometimes a session of brainstorming is a matter of writing down as many ideas as possible, in a short span of time. Once they are written, take a step back and see what works, what doesn’t, and why some things are better than others overall. Simply put, let a child’s imagination run wild.

Bring Them Into Your Business

When in doubt, focus on allowing your child to see what your brain storming sessions are like. Chances are you have a lot of elements balanced out, and need help pushing them through. How do you do it? Explain the bigger picture concepts that you deal with, and show children how they too can pursue the same thing. The learning options within the notion of entrepreneurship are endless. It’s just a matter of painting them in language that children understand, and want to explore. With that, you can spark creativity, and an industrious mind all the same.

Begin Teaching Your Child Entrepreneurship with Chores

Engaging the notions and ideas of entrepreneurship at a young age is a great thing. When you can get a child to become interested in business opportunities, and the possibilities that are out there, they learn skills that last a lifetime. Starting in business doesn’t have to be relegated to age, or status. Children can learn concepts fast, and use them to run real life businesses. There’s plenty of stories of young entrepreneurs that have gone out to make serious moves financially, all before they turn 18. Some even starting as young as 8 or 9 years old. Not everyone is going to want to start a full business venture, but there are things that can be done to get started. For instance, chores can help teach fundamentals in many ways. 

Linking Allowances As Part of An Education in Entrepreneurship 

The first major point of interest for teaching children about business is found in chores. Chores can be leveraged to show cause and effect. You can do one of two things. You can give a child an allowance for the chores that they do per week. This shows them that if they work hard, they will get paid a fair wage. It’s a simple process, and it stays with them for a lifetime

The second solution is found with investing. If one does their chores, they can earn a little money through an allowance. The progression there is to invest that money into a business opportunity. Whether it’s supplies for making lemonade, or it’s to buy raw materials for crafting, the allowance earned from chores can be used as startup capital for business options. 

Creating Opportunities

There’s plenty of projects a child can work through, including some that allow them to earn through chores and learn about entrepreneurial endeavors. Working with them to find projects that they can build on their own, or focus on after the fact is the key element. Whether you want them to work through a lot of chores weekly, or a few things here and there, you can show a child the complex nature of what small business owners go through when starting up an endeavor. 

To start on this path, set up simple chores first. A few chores for a small allowance on a weekly basis is enough to get started with learning about entrepreneurial roles, and more. Then progress slowly to larger sums, more work, and teach supply and demand. There’s many learning opportunities found with chores, and it all starts with simple weekly tasks. 

The Best Approach When Teaching Your Child Life Skills

There’s a lot of parents out there that are struggling with teaching their children simple life lessons. Even those that have school aged children have to deal with a variety of issues that can be somewhat difficult to manage overall. Finding the best approach when teaching a child life skills can seem painstaking at times, but there are ways that you can make it a bit easier. To ensure that things are going forward with ease, consider a few simple tips for making lessons stick a bit easier. 

Show Them How You Do Things

The first thing that parents forget to do is in regards to example. Many parents take the “do as I say, not as I do” approach to parenting. If you’re guilty of that, you’re not alone. The problem here is that you can’t enforce certain rules because a child doesn’t know any better. They will see you and assume that they don’t really have to do what you say sometimes, because you don’t do the things asked of them. To avoid that, you’ll want them to see what you do, and when you do it, so that when you tell them to do something, they oblige without question. 

Repetition Is Crucial

If you are frustrated that your child is not picking things up with ease, don’t panic. Repetition is the key to getting your child to learn specific life skills. You have to repeat things over and over again, and once it becomes second nature, you’ll know when to stop. Giving a child instruction can become routine, and eventually they will do things on their own, and when you see that, reward them with praise. Always recognize when they do something on their own, and give them praise for it. Don’t let it slip your mind. 

Patience Is Key 

Above all other tips that you can take with you today, make sure that you exercise an extra amount of patience. This is by far the best approach that you should consider when you’re teaching children life skills of various types. Patience will keep you moving forward when children seem to be lapsing or just not developing the skills you’d like fast enough. Just be patient, and you’ll end up with a positive experience. When all else fails, make sure that you compromise and see things from where they are. Perhaps a new set of eyes will help you establish the right plan of action. Learning the best approach when teaching your child life skills matters greatly in how you approach each situation, no doubt.