Some years ago, my father and I had a conversation about wealth and riches, it was very brief. In that conversation, he highlighted the value of work and a good name, he spoke about how he built his career and remained spotless up till he retired. He also talked about the current generation that wants the “EasyLife 2.0″…and my thought was, why wouldn’t we?
Our fathers, make money, buy cars and hand the keys to their children in order to make their kids more comfortable, they start companies and make their sons managers, send them to the best schools and load their accounts with funds enough to pay a family’s year worth of salaries. These are not in themselves bad, but when you look at the big picture…how does a child learn to grow when the growth is induced and the strength formed through development is removed from the growth cycle of our children?
Research shows that 97% of children of remarkable parents never achieve anything remarkable in their lives, but the kids that roughed it through the streets and “started from the bottom” record more success stories, this is a not an accident.
Mother birds watch their chicks struggle to hatch through their egg shells and even though they could help out, they don’t.
Once as a boy, I saw a chick hatching, I thought it was a beautiful thing, but the little bird was struggling to get out of the shells, so… I decided to help, I broke off the shells on top, hoping to help free the chick, I left happy that in no time, the chick would soon be chirping after its hen mother. I got there 20mins later and saw the little bird was dead.
I asked my mother why, she gently explained that the process of the bird breaking out of the shell helped it develop its muscles, it’s limbs and even stronger thoracic capacity to breathe, but the moment I “helped”, there was no way it could develop those and so death was eminent.
Process… the reason a lot of us are weak in decision making is because our parents made most or all decisions for us and when it came to making a choice we naturally deferred to someone else, money management was poor because we got all the money requested for were never required to be creative enough to save, manage or multiply what we have, we get car keys and never learn the art of working hard for anything, even send our kids to schools where we hear it is “easy” to pass WAEC… so we grow up, all fixed up and never learnt the process of working at or achieving anything, we grow up dead weak and a whole generation resorts to quick methods of achieving anything, politics, music, etc and not for the value it delivers to others, but for personal aggrandizement.
This is not a call to be wicked and starve our children hoping they’ll learn that the world is a tough, but for a deep consideration of the bigger picture.
We should help our children think through processes, it starts from when they are trying to piece toys together, we should really let them do it. When they’re doing their classwork/school assignments, never rush to tell them answers because they’re “wasting” our time, allow them the privilege of failing when they’re young, it builds strength of mind and the will the do better next time.
I understand it doesn’t look cool when our children do not “look” the image that make us feel proud, but when we break their shells for them, they will emerge quickly, but our glory will be short-lived.
Everything takes time, every great achiever went through a process of development often painful and without glamour.
When you are looking to change your life, there is a gestation period…if you want your kids to be great achievers, guide them with wisdom and not just to make you look good, but for them to be useful to themselves and others…only then can you really be proud.
Teach them the process…the future of your kids are determined by the art of process you teach them now.