Simple Ways to Instill Achievement Drive in Children

During a child’s development, a parent has the ability to foster high achievement drive, which ultimately leads to future success and happiness.

What is achievement drive?

We know not everyone has high achievement drive. As parents, our goal is to prepare our children for success in life and considering the correlation between success and achievement drive, we need to enhance these skills in our children. According to Wikipedia,

The need for achievement (N-Ach) refers to an individual's desire for significant accomplishment, mastering of skills, control, or high standards. It’s a personality trait connected to setting and meeting high standards of achievement.

Here are a few of the foundations of high achievement drive:

Parents who encourage independence in childhood
Praise and rewards for success
Association of achievement with positive feelings
Association of achievement with one's own competence and effort, not luck
A desire to be effective or challenged

Fostering High Achievement Drive in our Children

In a recent blog, we examined How Your Achievement Drive Influences Your Success. Since then we have had several inquiries from parents asking how they can raise children with high achievement drive.

Most parents want the best for their children and provide them with what they did and didn’t have in their childhood. The challenge is if we do too much for our children they will never develop the necessary skills required to be self-regulating. If we provide constant praise and rewards for showing up but not actually succeeding, (something common these days), we’re providing a false understanding of what success is.

Suggestions to enhance achievement drive in child

These are a few of my recommendations on how to enhance achievement drive at an early age in children. Ultimately, parents who practice these suggestions and model emotional intelligence skills and strategies will further provide children with the ability to live a fulfilled and successful life.

Prepare them to begin demonstrating independence between the ages of six and eight
Encourage them to make choices as early if not before toddlerhood
Inspire them to take care of themselves and their personal space around the house
Provide the opportunity to familiarize themselves with their personal surrounding like their neighborhood

Parents, avoid these mistakes!

There’s a fine line between expecting too much, too early or too little, too late from children. We don’t want to stifle the development of a child’s personality. Nor do we want to over protect or over-discipline children, as this may result in them becoming very dependent on their parents and find it challenging to separate and make their own decisions.