Setting Your Sights

Before we rush into making "achievers" out of our children, it's important to first consider our goals. These skills will be powerful tools for pointing your child toward the bull's eye - the fulfilment of goals in his life. Yet if your "bull's eye' doesn't match his, you may be in a bit of a struggle.


Is your idea of success the same as your child? Maybe yes, maybe no. But before you try very hard to work to bring his idea of success in line with yours, ask yourself, "For whom am I really doing this, and why? Is it for yourself, or for him? Think about these questions for a moment.


The goal of most education systems is to develop a working system for creating productive members of society. It that your goal, or is yours more personal, based on a deeper belief system? Do your children know your goals for them or even their goals for themselves? Have you ever share with them or ask them to share with you?


It is likely you will need to discuss this as a family and commit to agreeing on a few basic goals together.

adapted from "Giving your child the excellence edge"

Book Recommendation

You are your child's teacher

Many parents feel inadequate when considering their responsibility to teach their children. Yet educators all speak of the fact that nothing they teach children in a classroom has nearly the effect of a parent's teaching in the home.

If you are a parent, you are a teacher too. Think of all the things you've already taught your child: how to brush their teeth, wear their shoes, put on their cloth, your values and beliefs, what to do or not to do in a given situation, etc. You communicated so many "firsts" to your child - whether you realise it or not. We teach our children both the positive and the negative things about life: such as whom to trust and whom to hate, how to share and how to get their own way, how to help others and how to hurt them (which is not advisable to do so).

Certainly, there are also many people and things to that contribute to our children's development. But as parents, we are the primary teachers of what this business of living is all about. Don't leave it all to the school teachers to teach.

Your decision to think about what you say and do each day makes it easy to see why your children say and do what they do each day. I can see it in my own children's behaviour.

adapted from "Giving your child the excellence edge"

Book Recommendation