Mom's Tips: How to Raise Children to Succeed

Esther Wojcicki is an educator, journalist, and bestselling author of How to Raise Successful People. She is the co-founder of Tract.app and head of parent department Sesh. Esther told the publication CNBChow, thanks to an "unpopular" parenting rule, she raised two successful CEOs and a doctor. Further - from the first person.

Photo: IStock

Here's a wake-up call for American parents: We do too much for our children. This is "helicopter parenting" where we are constantly removing obstacles so that our children do not have to face difficulties.

There were many unpopular parenting rules that I followed as a young single mother. But rule number one for me was: don't do for your children what they can do for themselves.

It worked for my daughters. All three grew up to be very successful: Susan is the CEO of YouTube, Janet is a doctor, and Ann is the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe. They have risen to the top of the competitive male professions.

Parents should stop spoiling their kids

The more you trust your children to do things on their own, the more opportunities they will have. The key is to start with guided practice: this is the "I do, we do, you do" method.

You can try this with all sorts of simple everyday activities:

• wake up: ask them to set their own alarm;
• dressing: let them choose their outfit;
• breakfast/lunch/dinner: give them simple tasks like kneading pancake batter, cleaning the lunch box, or setting the table;
• backpack preparation: ask them to look over the list of what they need to take with them that day;
• making plans: have them come up with activities for the weekend or after school.
• checking homework: it's okay if they don't give 100% correct answers - let them learn from their mistakes;
• household chores are especially important: washing dishes was a big deal in our house. All my daughters stood on a stool by the sink and washed the dishes after dinner.

And when we went grocery shopping, I asked them to bring two pounds (1 kg) of apples. They had to choose the good ones, which I taught them, and measure the correct weight.

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If we went over our grocery budget, they helped me decide what not to buy.

Don't worry about perfection

I expected my daughters to make their beds every morning. But the bed made by the child sometimes looked like he was still sleeping in it. However, I didn't fight them. As long as my daughters did it, I was happy.

Mastery means doing something as many times as it takes to get it right. I learned this from my job as a writing teacher. In the 1980s and 1990s, one of the supposed characteristics of good was that your course was so hard that many students couldn't pass it.

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But the kids who got an A on their first job found that it was impossible to fix it, and they lost the motivation to improve.

So I gave them the opportunity to redo their work as many times as they wanted. Their evaluation was based on the final product. And when the testing time came, all my students passed the exams by 90%.

Kids are smarter than you think

I'm not saying that you should force your children to do things they don't understand or are not capable of, and I'm not saying that you should let them play outside if it's not safe, or go to the store if the area is dangerous. .

The idea is to teach them how to deal with whatever life throws at them. One of the most important lessons I have taught my daughters is that the only thing you can control is how you react to certain things.

When you trust children to make their own decisions, they begin to feel more engaged, confident, and empowered. And once that happens, there is no limit to what they can achieve.

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