Nicholas Bate

The A to Z of Great Parenting

Q is Quantum Change

Encourage your children to realise that sometimes a small, infinitesimal shift can result in a staggering breakthroughs:

Revision can cause great grades.
Being friendly can win friends and influence people.
Practising with the band can get the CD produced.
Being cheerful can get you more and higher tips as a waitress.
Giving up smoking can get you in the team.
Being a little less cynical can open your eyes to opportunities.
Asking her out can get the date.
Being helpful can cause less grief with your parents.
Keeping asking can get you a Saturday job.

A to Z of Great Parenting: bonus

If there is one question I can guarantee on my workshops it's: why isn't this stuff taught in schools? Here someone looks at that in more detail. And if you are parent, why not start addressing it?

A to Z of Great Parenting

P is Passion

Encourage your children to do things with enthusiasm and passion. To persue a career about which they have some passion. Why? Passion brings fun, enjoyment and sheer vitality. Passion is a marketable skill.

A to Z of Great Parenting

O is Organised.

Help your child become organised: know where stuff is, anticipate, be able to plan. Why? Because employers crave those skills and will test for them. Children don't need to be as planned and as organised as once they did. The flexibility of the mobile phone and texting has allowed fluidity into agreements coupled with it is often not seen as 'cool' to be too rigorous on any subject. This means children get little early training with these skills.

A great place to start is exam revision. It needs a goal, it needs a plan, it needs anticipation and if it is started early enough, it works. Which will of course reinforce the skill.

Get organised.

The A to Z of Great Parenting

N is Niche

Help your child to discover their niche, their speciality area. And don't allow your comments nor those of a teacher to put them off. What do they love, what are they good at? As a young child they are likely to go through a succcession of fantasies and dreams. But buried within those is something which could make a career: allow and encourage them to explore it. Because what we are passionate about we tend to be good at and what we are good at we tend to be paid well for. And that tends to make a sustainable career.

The A to Z of Great Parenting

M is Motivation

One of the greatest skills you can pass to your children is the ability to create internal motivation. The expressions 'I'm not motivated', 'I'm not bothered' defer the responsibility for action elsewhere. How about if your child learnt how to look for the intrinsic worth in something? As with the explorer who is asked why he/she climbs mountains and replies: because it is there. How about: why should I bother to do a decent homework/turn up at the school play/..? Because it is there and it says a lot about you.

As always, you modelling such behaviours will be the greatest influencer.

The A to Z of Great Parenting

L is Learn

Instil a love of learning. Yes they will get bored and fed-up with some lessons at school and yes, discipline isn't what it was 'in our day'. Enthuse about learning. Take the kids to great museums, take them on trips to castles. Talk to them as you learn. Get them reading non-fiction. Manage screen time when they are small. (Read anything by Neil Postman on this subject).

Discuss, debate, learn. Teach them how to use the library. Get them to be Lifelong Learners. Why? (1) It's FUN (2) it will protect their employability.

The A to Z of Great Parenting

K is Key

The Key to Great Parenting is unconitional love. If your children know that you do love them and will love them whatever, the relationship can be maintained whatever difficulties you might have (and undoubtedly will have: that's Life).

The A to Z of Great Parenting

J is Journey, not Destination.

Encourage an enjoyment of the journey: they don't have to grow up too quickly. Childhood is a necessary developmental period. Don't rush it. We know play is vital to full brain development. Ensure there is balance; the exams are important but only within a bigger context.

Enjoy the journey, not just the destination.

The A to Z of Great Parenting

I is internally-referenced.

Encourage your children to be able to make their own decsions e.g. 'I don't want another drink' and stick to them. Be iternally referenced rather than externally referenced.

Do this by (1) good modelling (2) discussion (3) reading about their own heroes who will have only achieved what they have by 'sticking to their principles'.