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    12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid: Leading Your Kids to Succeed in Life
    12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid: Leading Your Kids to Succeed in Life
    12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid: Leading Your Kids to Succeed in Life
    Ebook290 pages5 hours

    12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid: Leading Your Kids to Succeed in Life

    By Tim Elmore

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    About this ebook

    You’re deeply committed to helping your kids succeed. But you’re concerned—why are so many graduates unprepared to enter the workforce and face life on their own? You’re doing your best to raise healthy children, but sometimes you wonder, am I really helping them?

    Tim Elmore shows you how to avoid twelve critical mistakes parents unintentionally make. He outlines practical and effective parenting skills so you won’t fall into common traps, such as…

    • making happiness a goal instead of a by-product
    • not letting kids struggle or fight for what they believe
    • not letting them fail or suffer consequences
    • lying about kids’ potential—and not exploring their true potential
    • giving them what they should earn

    Find out why thousands of organizations have sought out Tim Elmore to help them develop young leaders—and how you can improve your parenting skills and help your kids soar.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarvest House Publishers
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9780736958448
    Author

    Tim Elmore

    Dr. Tim Elmore is the founder and CEO of Growing Leaders (www.GrowingLeaders.com), an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization created to develop emerging leaders. Since founding Growing Leaders, Elmore has spoken to more than 500,000 students, faculty, and staff on hundreds of campuses across the country, including the University of Oklahoma, Stanford University, Duke University, Rutgers University, the University of South Carolina, and Louisiana State University. Elmore has also provided leadership training and resources for multiple athletic programs, including the University of Texas, the University of Miami, the University of Alabama, The Ohio State University, and the Kansas City Royals Baseball team. In addition, a number of government offices in Washington, D.C. have utilized Dr. Elmore's curriculum and training. From the classroom to the boardroom, Elmore is a dynamic communicator who uses principles, images, and stories to strengthen leaders. He has taught leadership to Delta Global Services, Chick-fil-A, Inc., The Home Depot, The John Maxwell Co., HomeBanc, and Gold Kist, Inc., among others. He has also taught courses on leadership and mentoring at nine universities and graduate schools across the U.S. Committed to developing young leaders on every continent of the world, Elmore also has shared his insights in more than thirty countries--including India, Russia, China, and Australia. Tim's expertise on emerging generations and generational diversity in the workplace has led to media coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes.com, Investor's Business Daily, Huffington Post, MSNBC.com, The Washington Post, WorkingMother.com, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, and Portfolio.com. Tim has appeared on CNN's Headline News and FOX & Friends discussing parenting trends and advice.

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      Book preview

      12 Huge Mistakes Parents Can Avoid - Tim Elmore

      potential.

      MISTAKE

      1

      We Won’t Let Them Fail

      When my son, Jonathan, was very young, we did what many dads and sons do. We played whiffle ball out in our yard. Jonathan has a number of talents, but we soon discovered baseball is not one. He may be the next Steve Jobs or Walt Disney, but he was no Josh Hamilton or Derek Jeter when it came to hitting a ball. So I found myself making it easier and easier. I got closer to him and threw the ball slower to ensure he’d finally succeed. After some time, he finally hit it. (I wondered if I might have to go inside and shave again it took so long.) I’m pretty sure it was an accident.

      We both celebrated the hit, and then he wanted to try some more. Since we had a good thing going, I didn’t want him to fail. So I made it impossible for him to fail. I made hitting the ball so easy, it might as well have been a T-ball.

      That season, we signed him up to play T-ball. It was a comedy. He stood in the outfield, staring at his mitt or at the sky, his imagination wandering through space—even when a ball was hit to him. It just wasn’t his thing. Yet I didn’t want him to fail at this game I loved so much, so I just kept making it easier and easier.

      It finally caught up with me—and with him. All the extra steps I took to make it impossible for him to fail were appropriate when he was four or five years old. They were not appropriate as he moved into the fourth grade. I discovered I’d given him some unrealistic expectations and false assumptions by not allowing him to experience life as it really was. He thought he was good at baseball—and drew laughter from classmates when they actually saw him play. It was then we had a heart-to-heart talk.

      I’ll be the first to admit this was not the end of the world. It is, however, a picture of how I learned to correct a mistake. Every parent and teacher wants to see their kids succeed in school, in sports, and in life, but making it impossible to fail isn’t the answer. Removing failure, in fact, is a terrific way to stunt maturity. A recent survey of young MBA students revealed that Generation iY (those born after 1990) is actually begging adults to let them explore and fail. A top response from the survey said they want to learn to fail—quickly. Waiting on this lesson makes it harder.

      We Fail When We Don’t Let Them Fail

      Far too often, adults intuitively feel we will ruin our children’s self-esteem if we let them fail. They need to feel special—to believe they are winners—and we assume this means we can’t let them fail. Actually, the opposite is true. Genuine, healthy self-esteem develops when caring adults identify children’s strengths but also allow them the satisfaction that comes only from trying and failing. Effort, failure, and eventual triumph builds great emerging adults. Unfortunately, for too long we’ve failed them.

      • As parents, we’ve given them lots of possessions but not much perspective.

      • As educators, we’ve given them plenty of schools but not plenty of skills.

      • As coaches, we’ve taught them how to win games but not how to win in life.

      • As youth workers, we provide lots of explanations but not enough experiences.

      • As employers, we’ve mentored them in profit and loss but haven’t shown them how to profit from loss.

      It’s time our leadership caught up with their needs. Kids are growing up in a very different world from the one we grew up in. Teachers, coaches, and parents have changed the way they approach leading students. Some of these changes are great, but some have had unintended consequences.

      Why Adults Won’t Let Kids Fail

      The shift seems to have started more than 30 years ago with the Tylenol scare in September 1982. Do you remember that? Bottles of Tylenol had been poisoned and were removed from drugstore shelves everywhere. The next month, as kids trick-or-treated at strangers’ homes, adults seemed to rise up, launch hotlines, and determine we would safeguard our kids from harm. In the years following this incident, it was as though America turned her attention to the children.

      Safety wasn’t the only issue. By the 1990s, we had determined to boost self-esteem and ensure kids grew up confident and comfortable in this very uncertain world. Diaper-changing tables in public restrooms now signal that these kids are a top priority. Baby on Board signs on minivans in the 1990s led to bumper stickers that read My Kid Is a Super Kid, or My Kid Made the Honor Roll. When they play soccer or Little League baseball, every kid gets a trophy, win or lose, just for being on the team. Kids’ bedrooms are lined with ribbons and awards, and they’ve never won a championship.

      Next, we determined to give our kids a head start in everything they did. We came to believe that all caring parents should use Baby Einstein and Baby Mozart with their young children. We wanted to give our kids a decided advantage, an edge on their peers, because ours are so special. I agree with promoting self-esteem, assuring safety, applauding participation, and providing head starts, but I believe we’ve given kids a false sense of reality. We’ve set them up for a painful wake-up call as they grow older. Social scientists agree that our emphasis on winning has produced highly confident kids. Sadly, they also agree that this ill-prepares them for the world that awaits

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