8 Tips on How to Parent Like A Boss PART 1
Parents want to raise their children the best way possible, making sure they do not get into trouble, do well academically, and be successful in the future.
Although there is no perfect way to raise children, studies show that there are several factors that lead up to successful parenthood. While successful parenting requires many different complex aspects, a main theme can be noticed. Some of the main things that parents should be doing is spending time with your child, letting your child make their own decisions, and keeping the family as happy as possible.
Here are some tips to help you PARENT LIKE A BOSS:
Give Your kids chores.
According to a study conducted by the Harvard Grant Study, kids who are raised on chores are more likely to become employees who work well in collaborative environments and will have better synergy with their coworkers. This is because kids will learn that they have to do work to live successful lives.
Lythcott-Haims believes kids who do chores are more empathetic because they know firsthand what struggling looks like, and are able to take on tasks independently.
"If kids aren't doing the dishes, it means someone else is doing that for them," Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of "How to Raise an Adult" said during a TED Talks Live event.
"And so they're absolved of not only the work, but of learning that work has to be done and that each one of us must contribute for the betterment of the whole," she said.
"By making them do chores — taking out the garbage, doing their own laundry — they realize I have to do the work of life in order to be part of life," she told Insider.
Teach Your kids social skills.
Social skills are important in both kids and adults alike. This is proven in a research study by Pennsylvania State University and Duke University where researchers tracked more than 700 children from across the U.S. between the ages of kindergarten and 25. Through their observations, researchers found a significant correlation between their social skills as kindergartners and their success as adults two decades later.
This 20-year long study showed that children who were socially competent and are able to freely communicate with their peers are far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.
It can also be seen that children who do not develop good social skills had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.
Have high expectations.
It is common knowledge among teachers that having high expectations lead to more success in children and parents should too.
Through a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, Neal Halfon and his colleagues at UCLA found that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on their child’s future success.
"Parents who saw college in their child's future seemed to manage their child toward that goal irrespective of their income and other assets," he said in a statement.
These results were tested through standardized tests: 57% of the kids who did the worst were expected to attend college by their parents, while 96% of the kids who did the best were expected to go to college.
The Pygmalion Effect, states exactly that "that what one person expects of another can come to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy."
So in this case, kids live up to their parents' expectations.
Have healthy relationships with each other.
Healthy relationships are crucial in any social setting, whether it be in a family, a classroom, at work.
According to a study by the University of Illinois, researchers found that children tend to be less successful when parents have a dysfunctional relationship compared to children with parents that have positive and healthy relationships.
Professor and head of the Department of Human and Community Development in the College of ACES at the University of Illinois and author of the study, Robert Hughes Jr. points out that some studies have also found children in non-conflictual single-parent families are actually more successful than children in conflictual two-parent families.
So it is crucial for parents to, not only focus on their relationships with their children, but also between themselves.
Achieve higher educational levels.
Similar to the last tip, this tip also focuses on the parents themselves, rather than the children.
According to a study lead by University of Michigan, mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.
Psychologist Sandra Tang found these results by studying a group of over 14,000 children who entered kindergarten in 1998 to 2007 and found that children born to teen moms (18 years old or younger) were less likely to finish high school or go to college than their counterparts.
This also correlated with a 2009 study of 856 people in semi-rural New York done by psychologist Eric Dubow at Bowling Green State University. This study found that "parents' educational level when the child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and occupational success for the child 40 years later."
Although research shows parents’ educational levels have some effect on their children’s education, do not be discouraged if did not graduate from high school or did not earn a college degree because that is not all to it.
Teach Your kids math early on.
Teaching your kids math at an early age has many different benefits. One main benefit that teaching math early on gives is that it gives your child an advantage for future academic success.
A study done in 2007 involving 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can set your child up for future academic achievement, not only in math, but in reading as well.
Greg Duncan, the coauthor and Northwestern University "The paramount importance of early math skills — of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts — is one of the puzzles coming out of the study," coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncan said in a press release. "Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement."
Develop a sensitive relationship with your kids.
Developing a sensitive relationship with your child is crucial for parents in building a strong foundation for their children’s lives.
A study carried out in 2014 gathered 243 people born into poverty and found that children who received "sensitive caregiving" in their first three years of their lives, not only had better academic performance, but had healthier relationships and higher achievements as adults.
Lee Raby, a psychologist at University of Minnesota stated “that investments in early parent-child relationships may result in long-term returns that accumulate across individuals' lives," in an interview. In other words, having a healthy, sensitive relationship with your child will lead to them having better success and higher achievement in the future.
