If you are a parent and are concerned about your child's education, welcome to the club! The vast majority of parents have great insecurities when it comes to educating their children. How can we know that the education they are receiving is the best? There are some common mistakes that many parents make that can cause their children to be ill-prepared to face life's challenges successfully. In this article I describe 7 of the most common mistakes that parents make and that appease the entrepreneurial spirit in their children.
Every parent wants their children to be successful in life. Many of them make great sacrifices to provide them with a suitable education that provides them with the knowledge and tools necessary to succeed in life.
However, how can we know that the education they are receiving is the best? Do we have to wait until they are adults to be sure that we have done a good job in them?
These are questions every parent asks at some point. Being a good parent is one of the biggest challenges in adult life. Despite this, we are educated to face many trials in life, but no one prepares us for parenthood.
Many parents delegate the function of educating their children to educational institutions and no longer strive to fulfill what only they can achieve in their children's lives: educating them for a life of success.
The biggest flaw in this style of education, which I call “herd education”, is that it damages the entrepreneurial spirit of their children and turns them into adults who easily adopt a passive attitude towards life. They are well prepared to receive instructions and to follow orders, but they have not adequately developed their creativity and find it difficult to undertake something on their own.
Here are 7 of the most common mistakes parents make that placate the entrepreneurial spirit in their children
1. Not recognizing your children's strengths
One of the biggest mistakes parents unconsciously make with their children is forcing them to conform to the prototype of a star student in educational institutions. They believe that their children, by getting good grades in school, are assured of success for the future.
Although good school performance is positive, we must always keep in mind that the school only develops two of the seven intelligences of the human being: linguistic intelligence and mathematics. Any child who has a greater development in the remaining 5 intelligences (musical, corporal, interpersonal, intrapersonal and ecological) will be condemned to be a regular student whose individual strengths will not be developed, unless the parents recognize them and encourage.
2. Not respecting the individuality of their children
Each child is different and unique. In addition to having different talents and abilities, each person has a different calling. According to the Bible, there is a predetermined destiny and purpose for each person.
Every parent should help their children find that purpose, even if it is different from what they imagined for their children. If your child has non-traditional interests that seem unpromising to him for his future, I suggest studying biographies of famous people who have been successful in life. The vast majority of them undertook in novel areas that many times seemed crazy to their peers.
If your child breaks out of the schemas and shows interests in non-traditional areas, think carefully before criticizing him. You could have a future Bill Gates in your family!
3. Do everything for them
Many parents make the mistake of not giving their children enough responsibility. They do everything for them and don't take the time to disciple their children in the chores of daily life. The result is that children feel unable to face the daily challenges of life, since they were trained to depend on other people.
You would be amazed at what your child is capable of, even if he is a child, if only he delegates some responsibilities to you. In addition to teaching them important life skills, it will increase their self-esteem, as they will see that you place trust in them.
4. Prevent them from making mistakes
With very good intentions, parents try to protect their children from making wrong decisions. They prefer to intervene before seeing them suffer the consequences of a bad decision.
This is where every parent should use their common sense. Within a pre-established security framework, it is important that you allow your children to make a mistake and suffer the consequences for it. A child who was never allowed to make mistakes and did not learn to bear the consequences of his decisions, will never dare to undertake something new. The fear of making a mistake is going to be too great.
We have to teach our children that mistakes are part of life, that we have to learn from them and then make a new attempt.
5. Do not encourage love of learning
Both pedagogues and parents believe that the learning process necessarily has to be forced and that the child can only be made to learn by putting some pressure on him.
However, this is only the case in which the adult dictates the subject that the child must learn. If we give them more freedom and allow them to choose the topic of study according to their interests, a child is much more likely to enjoy what they learn.
In this way, a key characteristic of an entrepreneur is being promoted: that of knowing how to research and learn on your own.
6. Do not support them with suitable mentors
Each child reaches a point where they must develop their distinctive skills with a suitable mentor. Parents should be careful when choosing such a mentor, as they should:
• Be a person who inspires the child to develop his strengths
• Be an example for him
• Have an impeccable moral character.
7. Do not support them with the specific means they need
Outside of the mentor, your child will also need specific tools to develop their individual skills. It is better to evaluate well the things we buy from them and differentiate the useless, which will only feed their self-indulgence, from those valuable tools that will foster their specific strengths.
In this way it will help them develop their entrepreneurial spirit.
