High Achievement is a bit of a loaded term. Depending on where you start, high achievement means something different. Someone growing up in poverty might consider any college degree high achievement. Someone growing up with a lot of resources might only consider Ivy League schools high achievement. Also, it might not be academic high achievement you are interested in. Athletics and having well rounded skills are outside of typical academic achievement but can also be influenced with these same strategies.
Here are five “big picture” tips that can help you raise a high performer in all these areas. More detail is available at AllProParent.com if you are interested in free access to individual high-performance techniques broken down by the age of your children.
- Start Early – If you start working towards a high achievement outcome from the beginning it will be easier because your child will be accustomed to active learning and training, as well as having a big head start over kids who are not starting early. 30 minutes a day for four years turns into 730 hours of learning. Since preschool and kindergarten are usually short days and only about half of the days in a year, this puts a 4-year-old around 1st grade level right at the get go.
- Never allow bad habits to form – For example, the weekend is not two days to take off and watch TV. They are two days where you can be more creative and hone new skills that are less academic and more athletic or soft skill oriented.
- Encourage and reward strong work ethic – Do not focus on “winning” or having perfect days. Focus on the value of outworking other people over time. If you repeat these values, they stick with most kids.
- Craft stories – Make sure your child understands and buys into a story you are crafting with them. This could be going to a certain level of school, graduating early, becoming a professional athlete, being good at science, etc. Ideally your child agrees with this and it makes them feel special and motivates them. If they do not like your story, then work with them to create a story (vision) of what they will look like when they are older and very successful.
- Reduce bad stress and increase good stress – Minimize problems in family, fighting, complaining and stress related to losing a game, not getting a good grade, etc. Instead, create good stress when they try to succeed but they know it is OK to fail as long as they continue to improve and learn.
This all seems fairly obvious, but it is very hard to do unless you take a long-term, steady approach. Staying the course is easier with support from other parents and information from people who have raised high achievement kids. That is why www.AllProParent.com was founded. To help you plan a better outcome as well as stick to the plan over time.