Are you tired of nagging your kids to do things? Do you hope that your child will find something that they love and to pursue it with passion? Do you wish that your kid was more self-motivated?
As someone who discovered self-motivation only as an adult myself, I understand how much it made a difference in my life.
Before I learned about self-motivation, I merely “followed the crowd”. I did something because I had to or someone else felt that I should. I seldom did something because I wanted to.
After I discovered the power of self-motivation, I started to take charge of my own life. I had to train myself to be comfortable about saying “No” (it was hard and still is!) so that I could say “Yes” to the things that I truly wanted to do. However talented you are, you only have 24 hours everyday and you have to decide what those hours are spent on.
This is why I really want to teach my kid to be self-motivated.
Dr Shimi Kang, author of the book The Self-Motivated Kid- How To Raise Happy, Healthy Children Who Know What They Want and Go After It (Without Being Told) feels the same.
Dr Kang believes that in order to raise self-motivated kids, we need to discard the Tiger-mom style of parenting, made popular by Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.
Tiger-parenting characteristics normally include rules, strictness, huge direction and control over a child’s activities and schedule, competitiveness and tons of hard work.
Instead of Tiger-parenting, which Dr Kang says is problematic and damaging to kids long-term, we should be focused on dolphin-style parenting.
Dolphins are intelligent, altruistic, joyful and social creatures. Dolphin parents focus on guiding, encouraging and showing by example, rather than directing, forcing and telling.
Dolphin-parenting aims for a balance of high expectations, play, free exploration and the desire to contribute to others.
Dr Kang argues that unlike the previous century’s style of leadership, success in the twenty-first century requires different kinds of skills:
- Creativity- the ability to think out of the box.
- Critical thinking- the ability to find solutions to problems.
- Communication- the ability to speak up and speak confidently and clearly to others.
- Collaboration- sociable, adaptable and able to work well with others.
Dolphin parents’ style of parenting is more effective in helping kids to acquire these skills.
In order to parent dolphin-style, these are some of the things that you should focus on:
- Time for free play and exploration.
- Health- mindfulness, healthy eating and outside activity.
- Encouraging questions and experimentation.
- Social-bonding and networking skills.
- Community awareness and the desire to contribute.
- Role modelling and guiding your child, rather than directing.
- Rather than being authoritarian, transfer responsibility and ownership to kids when appropriate.
- Listen more, talk less.
- Asking open-ended questions.
- Asking permission before giving advice.
- Making learning fun.
- Positive reinforcement.
- Praise the process, not the outcome.
- Letting your child try it themselves first before you step in to provide instructions or feedback.
- Encouraging appropriate risks.
- Refrain from stepping in and let your child experience natural consequences.
- Breaking down a problem instead of solving it for them.
In order to help your kid to be more self-motivated, dolphin parents help their kids to develop:
- Self-confidence. Eg. “I know that you find this hard now but you will get better at this.”
- Understanding of why something is necessary and important. Eg. “We need to go to school because schools teach us skills that will help us to build our careers in the future.”
- Curiosity- desire for knowledge.
- Independence and autonomy- desire to take charge of their own life.
- Mastery- desire to keep getting better.
- Purpose- desire to do something that matters in the world.
As parents, in order to encourage our kids to be self-motivated, we should also practice these principles:
- Empathy- let our kids know that we understand what they are going through and that we are on their side.
- Acknowledgement of their goals- acknowledge our kid’s goals, rather than insisting that they pursue our goals.
- Support success- let our child know that we believe in their ability do a task and to succeed.
These are some of the general principles that I picked up from this book.
I would recommend this book for serious tiger parents who may have doubts about whether tiger parenting is effective for their kid. If you are not a tiger parent and are more of a balanced parent, this book will provide some insight but will probably not be as helpful as some other parenting books may be.
