Parenting Wisdom

Recently I had the chance to catch up with one of my friend who is a father of two children. One of his children recently scored her Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) with straight As. Besides having great results in school, his children are well behaved and talented in other areas such as drum and badminton. I am just curious on how to bring up such great children as such I asked him for advice.

His advices are one of the greatest advices I got on parenting. He advised me not to compare between my children and other children even among siblings. Because your parents love you because of who you are and not because of how well you performed. He said it would be very sad if  for parents to love their children because of how well they can performed.

He carried on telling me that his child did not score well at the beginning of the PSLE year. Then his child and him set goal and vision for the PSLE grades. They aimed a grade higher which is mostly Bs. Then they work towards the goal and vision. He said he will celebrate not because of their grades but on the amount of effort they put in to study. He continued saying that of course he can not be happy when they fail but if they already put in their effort and do their best then he said that is enough. He will celebrate with them. He said the child worth is more important then grades and he will show them unlimited love to them as such they will not be afraid to tell him their problems.

His advice did ring a bell in me that I remembered one of my friend told me that her child is a perfectionist and afraid of failure. This friend of mine told me that she will need to change her child mind set not to be afraid of failure otherwise her child will not be able to handle failure well in the future. I do agreed and supported her.

All in all, I felt that children are placed under pressure to perform well in school, however there need to be a realisation that grades are not to be used to measure a person self worth. Parent should not compare their children with others as children are individual uniquely made by God. Which one of the evidence can be easily found at our finger, our fingerprints. As such we need to celebrate our children effort to study and encourage them to work towards achieving their goals and visions that they placed for themselves.