Every adult who has children knows it is a challenging experience and extremely rewarding, especially when the children grow to be responsible, independent, caring, productive adults and parents in their own right.
After helping raise my own children, being a professional martial arts instructor since 1979, teaching thousands of children and helping other parents raise their children, here are 10 keys I feel are important to raising children successfully.
What children do not need is to be the parent to their parents.
Children do not need to be buddies, pals or best friends with their parents until they, the children, are adults.
For children to be successful in life, they need a strong parental foundation, one that puts them before their parent’s careers, activities, relationships and jobs.
Children should never be thought of as appendages to a parent’s life.
Until the children are of legal age, the children are the parent’s life.
Cause and Consequence Keeping with the structural aspects of children’s lives, they must be made to understand that every cause has a consequence, that every action has a reaction, and that a wise person always looks to the consequences of his actions before he commits them.
No one escapes the law of cause and effect, and when children are not raised with an understanding of this very basic and critical law of life they are headed into a brick wall at high speed.
Nothing good will ever come about in a person’s life if, as children, they are not taught that every cause has a consequence.
Undisciplined children run the risk of growing to be not just like unruly gardens but also like wild horses-out of control and extremely dangerous to themselves and others.
By the same token, as children are being raised it is important that parents continue to reinforce the following phrase in their young minds so that by the time they are adults it will become manifest: It’s your life; it’s your responsibility.
My children will forever be welcome in my home, as I’m sure your children will be in yours.
What happens when the parents are no longer around? What happens when they die? If children are void on their responsibility for their own life, what then? It is parental love that engenders self-responsibility in children.
The result is that children and society keep degrading and descending, not upgrading and ascending.
Adults should never allow children to address them as “dude” or “buddy” or “hey you.
” How will such a child fair in the real world when he applies for a job and addresses the boss as “dude?” What has happened to children referring to an adult woman as Mrs., Ms., Miss, Ma’am or an adult male as Mr. or Sir? I personally find it interesting that many young people today simply don’t know how to address an adult.
By virtue of the fact that adults have preceded children in age and experience, they need to be given respect by children, not vice-versa.
Who in their right mind would order God to do something or call him “dude?” The same process applies to students and teachers, players and coaches, children and parents.
I share them only as a means of doing my part to insure a class of children who become responsible, respectful, independent, whole and healthy adults.
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