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.
- 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.