“At your age, you should be able to do… (fill in the blank).”

“By now, you should know how to do… (fill in the blank).

“You should have attained this or that level of success.”

Have you ever been told any of the above or said any of those to someone, including your children?

I don’t know about you, but I have been caught in both traps.

Now, is it right for someone to be held accountable for a performance that they have not been trained to achieve? If the answer is yes, then this discussion might well end here. If the answer is no, and I believe it is, then please stick with me for a while.

Yes, we all want to be successful and should strive for it. However, of late, I have been thinking about what it means to be successful. Does success and successful have a single definition that fits all situations?

As I am thinking through all of these, I am reflecting on how they have affected me and how I might have used them to affect my children. You know, I will always refer to my primary sphere of influence. I pondered if I should be primarily concerned with their results or achievements or with training them to perform efficiently and effectively. The epiphany that I got was to focus on character formation. Success will always be a natural product of the dedication to the strength of character. To achieve this goal, I must be sensitive to the opportunities to help them develop:
• Spirituality
• Resolve
• Resilience
• Honesty
• Perseverance
• Grit
• Value for and pursuit of excellence
• Self-awareness
• Self-esteem
• Self-worth
• Preservation of self-dignity
• Attitude of gratitude
• Acts of love and sacrifice
• Vision and mission
• Commitment
• Celebrations of all wins (big or small)
• Nobility
• Good time management
• Effective communication skills
• Taking ownership of responsibilities
• And more.

I believe that if we, parents, place character formation in our children as the top priority, then excellent performance will become a natural product. Our main job responsibility as parents is training, while our job duties can be categorized into the areas of the qualities above and done mainly by modeling. Here’s what the good book says about parental responsibility:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6.

Here’s what the good book also says about the outcome for our children:

Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.

Psalm 144:12.

Again, I’m not asking us to be perfect or to expect perfect children. Also, I’m not asking us to overwhelm ourselves and our children with honing these qualities all of a sudden; they are for us to be mindful. Our children are individuals like us. They can differentiate between good and bad situations and are entitled to make independent decisions. So even if we have done everything correctly, the choice is theirs to emulate or not. However, they are more likely to follow our examples. Therefore, let us lead them with examples that are worthy of emulation. Let us, parent, by giving top priority to character formation instead of performance.

• 7/17/22