Brandon L. Griffin13 Habits Millennial Parents Should Quit to Raise a Successful Child
“Parenting is a type of skill that most parents least develop as they think it would come to past — not realising that on this skill is where the future highly lies.”
Ina one fine night, while Elsa prepares her little daughter to sleep she heard a tiny whisper. “Mom, can you tell me another story about the little-you again?” After a brief pause Elsa responded, “Hmm, I think I already told you almost everything, didn’t I?”, while her memory started to reminisce as she speaks, and then her daughter appealed, “Tell me more… please…”
Elsa sat beside her daughter. Before saying a word she has smelled something similar to a manure. Elsa smiled, she thought she’s reliving her memory and started reimagining clearly those old surroundings. The cracked skin of the elephant, the taste of the cold ice cream, and the smell of newly painted slide that she climbed about dozens of times are all so vivid. And then, “It all started with my first ever field trip on a zoo”, she began.
Then the story leads to another and on to the next. Elsa recalled how clear the zoo experience was as if it just happened yesterday.
We are all made of stories of the past. As a result, we are now presently being part of the memories that will again form another stories from the point of view of our children — stories to pass on to their future kids. A very fascinating cycle of life.
Given the obvious pattern of repetition, even if the next generation will stand in the same old earth we have today, in the future, they will be in a very dissimilar place.
Irrelevant today can be precious soon after. Things that we think matter today can be not so important even half a decade past.
Future is impossible to predict, but every parent can focus on giving their children a strong foundation. How prepared are we? Do we need to discover something new, or we only need to stick on some essential few?
The first step is NOT to add more — but to quit more.
Below are the 13 habits every young parents today should QUIT to equip children to the ever challenging world ahead.
“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand. “ — Confucius
1. “Show don’t tell”
this is one of the best technique great filmmakers are using on creating a one of a kind movie. On raising a child, this technique also comes handy.
Big Life Journal creator Alexandra Eidens wrote that “kids learn by many means, but the two strongest are by taking action and having role models in their lives.”
All babies are born to be an individual. Parents are just instruments to put these babies out into the world — a model to their little ones.
Being a role model is all about showing, and not telling.
For a child, they cannot learn only by listening, they have to witness and be inside the experience. By modeling, parents act as a startup-map for their little ones. Children won’t find the right way if parents that only narrate the direction. For someone to find the direction, one must show the way.
Writer M. Scott Peck wrote “To a child his or her parents are everything; they represent the world. The child does not have the perspective to see that other parents are different and frequently better. He assumes that the way his parents do things is the way that things are done.”
Kids observe the way their parents talk, the way they live a life and handle difficult situations — kids love to imitate.
The child has no choice but to learn and absorb everything to be right.
Arianna Huffington said it best, “If you look at the best research on parenting […] what it comes down to is who you are, because we teach who we are. You read, your child will read. You watch too much TV, your child will. You do service in the world, your child will do service in the world.”
2. Quit entrusting your kids to the environment
“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.” — W. Clement Stone
Home is the start of everything. For every child, it’s the foundation of their identity. But a home without presence forces the child’s attention to be diverted on other things. Sometimes it’s diverted on to school, peers, apps, toys, and even television which continually spawns on every household today (with easy access in the living room). The parents can be physically present but mindfully absent.
The parents who compromise just exchange it with the other effort to support this kind of environment. They work overtime to buy these things only to fill up their absence.
It’s an endless cycle, which put the child as a victim.
Now, these kids have the least time and attention from the person most matters to them.
Few parents understand this — that even a short amount of time is an opportunity. It’s the time they don’t want to waste — a time to listen.
Kids don’t need things, they need presence.
3. Quit adding more
“You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.” — Charles Spurgeon.
We are in a generation with lots of options, whether on things, information, people, and activities. Still, most people can’t get enough.
They collect things endlessly. They say yes a lot. They tried, but never stick. They’re in a hamster wheel.
Now, when in this pool of overwhelm, to spot the essential is no longer easy. Because the meaningful now blends into the noise.
A great book Essentialism by George Mckeown stated that more and more people today over valued things even it feels to be unessential. He explained clearly;
“We overvalue nonessentials like a nicer car or house, or even intangibles like the number of our followers on Twitter or the way we look in our Facebook photos. As a result, we neglect activities that are truly essential, like spending time with our loved ones, or nurturing our spirit, or taking care of our health.”
Most people are seeking for more, without realising that essentials are only to be found by aiming less.
To have less, it starts with decluttering. Decluttering doesn’t only work on things. It includes decluttering thoughts, commitments, and unhelpful habits.
What matters in life cannot be acquired by navel-gazing on the internet or in shopping malls.
It all starts inside.
Start defining what is meaningful to you. If you quit adding more, you will eventually feel this sense of freedom. That in order to feel fulfilled you don’t need to add more things or be in places with people you don’t really like.
Because the truth is, if you have what keeps you alive and growing, you have enough.
Choose what money can’t buy.
4. Quit shallow attention
Most of my unmarried friends often cry how overwhelming life is… and I tell — “watch out when you got kids!”
Being a millennial parent doesn’t demand us to settle down, but to settle up then down to the bottom, tumbling and rolling — in short parenting demands us to be a a distracted multitasker. As stoic mother Meredith A. Kunz wrote “the act of parenting itself is not only dull at times, it is really an exercise in constant distraction. From the moment children are born, they are unpredictable beings with many needs.”
It’s happening simultaneously. While parents take care of their little ones they also need to maintain a great relationship with their partners, have a job, pursue passion on the side, and maybe start a side business from that, take care of own body, connect with people, travel… It’s an endless juggle.
No one ever saw it coming, and everyone is under the challenged on how we can handle it better.
If it’s predicted, we could have been more prepared, but that’s not how it works. True learning happens by being able to face and overcome the unpredictable. Stepping into the unknown.
We are born with this challenge, and this is something that we can own.
A lot of parents of this season are experiencing a great deal of distractions. Some parents treat that having a child as an ‘add-up’. Sadly, the child becomes blended with the noise. Deep attention towards another gets very scarce.
Adele Faber, author of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, wrote,
“Children don’t need to have their feelings agreed with; they need to have them acknowledged.”
Every child needs deep attention from their parents. For parents, it’s just a matter of choice.
It’s either you shut other things in silence, or you multitask, while compromising your child.
All parenting season will soon come to pass —so consider having a mindful talk, mindful walk, mindful hugs.
Kids is not attention grabber forever. Let them be kids. I promise, no teen would distract his mom again just to ask if she can open a candy wrapper.
5. Quit these baby-sitters
Today, in order to #feel-accomplished on giving birth, every mother only need two things — a gynaecologist and a smart phone.
Kids of this generation generally born with twins, a gadget.
Other than burp cloth, nappies, and breast pumps, smartphone is a must on the checklist.
It’s a great thing, we can capture the first cry, and if you want to stop it — just play a YouTube music.
As long as it won’t get to worse, to the level that — pointing screen is what the child masters first before he can even talk.
There are lots, lots, and lots of studies about the side effects of too much exposure on screen, especially for young ones. Tech addiction expert Dr. Nicholas Kardaras wrote that, “I’ve worked with hundreds of heroin addicts and crystal meth addicts, and what I can say is that it’s easier to treat a heroin addict than a true screen addict”
Not even in a dream of any parent would like to be in this kind of situation. But to be taken controlled by our gadgets instead of having the power to control it makes it easier to avoid an upcoming dilemma.
The book Parenting in the Age of Attention Snatchers written by Lucy Jo Palladino PhD. had a very detailed explanation about the major neurological effect of being glued to screens constantly — especially to young ones. She explained that by constantly allowing the child to be over-stimulated (like having an unlimited play) will develop a wrong set of neurological muscles — or what she calls the involuntary attention.
In the book she discussed the two types of attention:
- Involuntary attention — known to be passive, reactive, happens on flow, triggered from colorful distractions, and effortless. This attention eventually develops when a child constantly interacts with a shallow task or always engage with an easy or entertaining routine.
- Voluntary attention — requires focus, active, and deep thinking. This kind of attention develops deliberately, or by practicing some sort of effort on any given task.
The author also highlights how voluntary attention becomes very essential for child development. Sadly, today it’s starting to become an endangered ability because of the increasing numbers of attention snatchers around us.
Walter Mischel, of the the marshmallow test recommends to use “strategic allocation of attention” — which means that parents should establish rules and rituals to help young children outsmart their immediate desires.
Minimising starts somewhere.
We can be a model of discipline, how we use the gadgets and when we need to use it. Screen time should not be open-ended.
Creativity for kids (and in general) wasn’t born in the middle of entertainment, it happens more often while settled and even on the times of boredom.
It happens on play pretend not on pointing screens.
Remember, we are in the generation where we have plenty of options.
Use technology with some other positive ways, not as a babysitter .
“If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.” — Carl Jung
6. Quit drifting
“I believe that everyone chooses how to approach life. If you’re proactive, you focus on preparing. If you’re reactive, you end up focusing on repairing”― John C. Maxwell
One of the most important word people of the 21st century should understand is a term called drifting.
Drifting is not about ruining your car tires. It has something to do with your time, habits, and influences around you.
Physicist Michio Kaku once told that on every experiment — whether on science, social research, or as simple as behavioural effect, a 10-year span will be very ideal if you want to witness some dramatic results.
In relation to a habit of a person, that means, what you do today won’t cause you a week or a month, dramatic results are way ahead from now. As to how physicist effectively measures it, you’ll reap the effect of your habits after a wave of a decade.
Positive habits result to positive results. Having intention is the key, and it all starts where our day supposed to start.
Economist Richard Whately said, “Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.”
What are the top three things you do after you wake up? Does intention weighs more than habits?
How protected is your time? Do you find extra time to do the things that you love, or you spend most of your time distracted.
Millennial parents almost mature with technology around, but gadgets should serve more than a tool than a distraction. Distractions are sometimes healthy, but as long as it’s an intentional distraction.
In the book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari wrote, “Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life.”
If everything happens in a flow without intention, it’s drifting.
7. Quit comparing
“We can either make our choices deliberately or allow other people’s agendas to control our lives.” ― Greg McKeown
There are two ways how most people take action. They use either external motivation or internal motivation.
External motivation mostly comes on how a person gets affected by the outside influence. This is when the action takes place from social comparison — a theory raised by social psychologist Leon Festinger. This theory deals with the tendency to evaluate self according to the surroundings. In this motivation, external factors are often used as the basis to make decisions. Without these social factors, a person finds it hard to contemplate on the correctness of his/her actions, since they believe that the result can only be validated based on the external feedback that they received.
On the other hand, there are people who take action using internal motivation. This motivation comes within. The decision is carefully contemplated and generated without any external influence. Here, the person follows what he/she thinks to be meaningful without the need to get validated.
It is better to decide using internal motivation or the person’s values, whereas the correctness of actions is not base on how the general public perceived it to be right or wrong.
8. Quit always being connected
Having ME-time doesn’t mean taking a bath. ME-time is giving an schedule for yourself, alone, to just sit down and do nothing.
Why is it important?
When it comes to intense physical training, study showed that the amount of rest between sets can influence the efficiency, safety, and effectiveness of a strength training.
The body gets stronger not on the time that it does the actual exercise. The body build muscles and gain strength while it recovers during rest. That’s the importance of time for recovery.
Your ME-time is your revovery, to build your mental muscle and your internal strength.
This is where meditation comes in. Meditation is your mini solo vacation. It’s a few minutes out from work, off from family, and disconnected from your gadgets. It’s totally connecting only with yourself.
Your ME-time fuels creativity.
Author Benjamin Hardy wrote, “Only 16% of creative ideas happen while you’re working — most of them will come when your mind is in a relaxed state”.
Most creative people maintain to be productive because they treat pauses as part of their creative process. It can be a weekend reflection, writing, or even being alone in a room and doing some meditation.
If you constantly move but finishes less meaningful you might be just reacting on a habit of tearing yourself down without giving yourself some time to recover. As Doctor James Dobson of Family Talk wrote, “Parents must learn to monitor their bodies too, and conserve their energy for the long haul. That is, after all, in the very interest of their children”.
9. Quit fixed mindset
“For every parent, having a child is an opportunity to grow, the season to be the best person they can be.”
According to Dr. Shefali Tsabary a family psychologist and author of The Awakened Family, you either operate as a conscious or unconscious parent.
Unconscious parent is viewing everything outward, not within. This parent is always cautious about what to correct in their child’s attitude, but not having some time to look on what to correct with themselves.
This type of parent tend to push to improve their child’s behavior, not by changing their own behavior. Their kids can eventually be melded, but the parent’s attitudes and habits often remain. In this case, there is no growth — the parents stay fixed with their attitude and behaviour.
On the other hand, some operate as a conscious parent. This type of attitude has a dual effect. Here, growth happens to both child and the parents. Conscious parents contemplates what to correct with themselves whenever she sees incongruence with their child.
In any relationship, growth is important. Growth, whatever form tends to be a positive growth. Carol Dweck author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success explained. “When people… change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework.”
When your child finally needs to leave the house, they have this certain framework in their mind. The growth framework — a mindset that will serve them a great foundation to whom they will become.
10. Quit future proofing
The future doesn’t depend on our kids, it depends on their role models. Parents today have the highest form of responsibility. Ironically, to become one, you don’t even need a college degree.
Turns out that most parenting styles are only based on instinct — via survival. It’s based on the parents’ prejudice of the past. That kids should aim to get high grades but cover their paper to work solo, stay quiet, avoid failure, play safe, and avoid being ridiculed.
Via any survival you master fear.
Dr. Shefali stated that “The problem is that in our great desire to see our children do well, we interact with them through the lens of fear that they might fail — a fear that our children absorb.”
Author Seth Godin discussed what’s on the other side of fear.
“The other side of fear is passion. Fear is easy to awake, easy to maintain, but ultimately toxic.
The tool is passion. A kid in love with dinosaurs or baseball or earth science is going to learn it on her own. She’s going to push hard for ever more information, and better still, master the thinking behind it.
Passion can overcome fear — the fear of losing, of failing, of being ridiculed.”
If the next generation will stick to survival mode, everyone will live under the face of fear and focus on finding their way up to compete with others. If we stick with passion, the future leads to continuous learning and collaboration. That thing is transformational.
11. Quit putting everything in your head
The brain is one of the most powerful human engine. It drives the body. It has the ability to create, from simple tools to big empire.
But its power is just a wasted resource if underestimated. Like a computer or a car that needs maintenance, the brain is something that should not be overlooked. Ironically, this resource serves to have the least amount of time to rest, disconnect, to pause and to sleep.
In addition, most people overused it, they keep everything inside their head, even unnecessary things. Which results to lack of focus and overwhelm. The effect is dramatic.
According to study — a distracted individual are the ones who cannot easily identify the right information from not.
It’s like having every kind of food on a table. A distracted individual has no capacity to differentiate healthy from an unhealthy one. She will eat what she finds delightful. Think of how you use the internet, from clicking images, to blogs, Ads, and on every information.
When a person is under this circumstance, it will be so hard for her to identify ‘which is which’. She might think that she’s consuming the right thing, but only the compounded results overtime could tell.
This is the reason why some parents end up being anxious, or worst, being depressed when they think they wasted a lot of time travelling the wrong path.
The right information is important. It plays a big role for you as a human, for your growth, either professionally or personally.
As Yuval Noah Harari wrote, “People need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and, above all, to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”
You have to pause. You cannot put everything in your head. It all starts with writing. Check The Life-Changing Magic Of Keeping A Journal, I consider this a life saver.
Have a mental decluttering or thought minimalism. Thought minimalism is NOT dismissing what’s already in the mind, but being intentional with what the mind will absorb, now and in the future. Because a person who cannot guard his own thought is a slave of his own mind forever.
What do you need to omit in order to be complete?
12. Quit shallow thinking
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” ― William S. Burroughs
If solving a problem can be found only by relaxing and waiting, then every person will have their answers about most of their difficult questions easily.
Blaise Pascal also has this notion about not having time to reflect comes with a huge trade-off, he quoted — “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Both of these experts simply stated that most of the answers a person is seeking can be found only if she choose to settle her mind quietly.
That’s the paradox. Most people are seeking for answers from the noise around their environment while dealing with aimless distractions, but not considering that one of the best way to find it is to settle down their attention.
Here’s where deep thinking comes in. Deep thinking won’t make a person crazy. Deep thinking encourages little time to pause. Any person should not be lazy to think with depth. When facing a challenge, she must never leave unfinished thoughts hanging. To never quit even when it requires mental toughness. Answers are revealed to the thoughtful.
All problems require thoughtful effort, solution never floats on the surface.
Deep thinking is also an important resource of the body that atrophies, so we must use it with diligence.
In connection with parenting, you can teach it to your kids by showing them how you value your thinking time.
Give your whole day of scattered thoughts a 20 minutes deep thinking break. Never reject the opportunity of silence, you’ll get something worthy from it than checking what others ate for lunch on Facebook.
13. Quit being a slave of time
“We can’t stop time to catch up to where we want to be. The only way to get ahead if you feel like you’re falling behind is to make better use of your time”Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.
The idea of time either fuel or slave a person, yet according to Einstein, it’s just an illusion.
We can leave it to the scientists. For now, let’s view it on its simplest level. Base on our current consciousness and understanding, time won’t last. We don’t have much of it.
On doing things you love — time acts as a fuel. On doing things you hate — it feels like you are a slave of time forever.
Still, most people play under the latter. They circle around the deadlines, they think they should be on time, go work on time, and sleep on time. It’s a cycle, they’re on a rush.
But no matter how accurate they’ll be on time, none of this will add up. It only continues to shorten.
Any great idea, creation, inventions, or formula, never happened on a rush. If someone is expecting to reach her ultimate dream by constantly meeting deadlines for others and fighting with time, it’s much better to stare at this question first “So why do you do what you do?”.
As author Ryan Holiday says, “This is a fundamental irony of most people’s lives. They don’t quite know what they want to do with their lives. Yet they are very active.”
If your day demands you to move just to serve the other person, you should also consider serving yourself. Demand yourself to settle, pause, and reflect.
And having a child is not an excuse — it’s actually the best season to use your time very well.
How do you handle your time? Being productive doesn’t always mean being busy. It’s so easy to be busy all your life but never finish something meaningful. Tasks-that-need-asap is not personally meaningful, and also errands, inbox, and multiple tabs.
You need something more than that, not only to survive but to thrive.
Start actively creating instead of just reacting.
No one likes to wake up soon with thousands of job-well-done but with little time left.
Having little kids inside the house happens in a very short season, not too far from now every parent will be on their own again.
Personal goal can weighs a lot with family goals, besides, you are your family.
But a lot gave up. They think they have the best excuse not to grow. They settle. They stop improving, they stop learning, they stop revisiting themselves, they stop looking inward.
This is the season of your peak season, it won’t last.
How much time do you have? What do you really want to represent, to your child, to the world?
“Make your life a story worth telling. You only get one chance at this life, and the most important thing you’ll leave behind is the legacy of the life you lived.” — Anonymous
Credit: https://medium.com/be-unique/13-habits-millennial-parents-must-quit-to-raise-a-successful-child-ea18eb7ed209