Teach your child to lose

I have been very busy lately traveling around the country doing parenting seminars and it is such a joy to be able to visit different places in the Philippines and touch base with friends from different regions while my kids take turns tagging along with me. I have had the privilege also of being able to speak to OFW families courtesy of Globe Telecom’s initiative to reach out to them by helping them be better equipped as "single" parents while their spouses are out of the country.

During our Cagayan de Oro run, a mother asked how she can prevent her children from being too self-centered because she noticed this trait from her children and other OFW children as well. I reminded her of some important things that apply to all families, not only OFW families.

Children nowadays tend to be self-centered because of the following:

• They lack their parents’ attention. Because parents are busy making a living, children tend to be delegated to somebody else’s care.

• Children have many options to satisfy their cravings for attention. Some attention-grabbers are: the television, Internet, cell phones, friends, malls, gimmicks, fast-food outlets, etc.

• Children mature faster because of their exposure to many things that are beyond their age and they’re able to speak their mind. They are more vocal with their wants at a certain age that most parents would rather give in to their cries and their being demanding rather than try to see what their cries are really all about. Usually, parents give in to prevent outbursts that they cannot handle or are too busy to deal with at the moment.

I urged the mother with a self-centered child to consider the following:

• Have a lifestyle check. Do your children see you splurging your hard-earned money on things that you do not necessarily need? Is money being budgeted properly so that all the needs of the home are taken care of?

• Find out why you give in. Guilty parents usually tend to give in to their children’s longing for material comforts (which is something that validates their importance by being popular in school or having the latest gadget that may be the envy of others) because they want to compensate for the lack of time they are giving their children. Unfortunately, it is really the presence of the parents the child needs and not the presents.

• Have a clear sense of what values you want to teach your child. Are you teaching your children to succeed in life for their own benefit or are you encouraging them to succeed so that they may be an inspiration for others to succeed?

• Make a stand. If you think it will not be for your child’s greatest good, simply say no. They won’t die. They may even thank you for it one day. Children with permissive parents usually grow up to be very insecure, not having a clear sense of boundaries because their parents never said no to them. "No" can be good.

Dr. Henry Cloud, author of the book Raising Great Kids said that one of the best things we can do for our kids is to teach them how to lose. For if they know how to lose, they will win. We will all lose at one point in our lives and ultimately, what separates the winners from the losers is not that they lose less. It is that winners just lose better.

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E-mail author at mommytalk@businessworks.com.ph.