There isn’t any magical formula that guarantees your child’s success, but science says there are some things that parents of the successful children have in common.
A psychological research has pointed to a few parenting methods that can help predict success.
Parents you may want to take note of these:
1. Parents make their kids do chores. “If kids aren’t doing the dishes, it means someone else is doing that for them. And so they’re absolved of not only the work, but of learning that work has to be done and that each one of us must contribute for the betterment of the whole,” Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of “How to Raise an Adult” said during a TED Talks Live event.
Lythcott-Haims believes kids raised on chores go on to become employees who collaborate well with their coworkers, are more empathetic because they know firsthand what struggling looks like, and are able to take on tasks independently.
2. Parents teach their kids social skills: A 20-year study of the researchers from Pennsylvania State University and Duke University showed that socially competent children who could cooperate with their peers without prompting, be helpful to others, understand their feelings and resolve problems on their own, were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.
Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge drinking, and applying for public housing.
3. Parents have high expectations: Using data from a national survey of 6,600 children born in 2001, University of California at Los Angeles professor Neal Halfon and his colleagues discovered that the expectations parents hold for their kids have a huge effect on attainment.
4. Parents have healthy relationships with each other: Children in high-conflict families, whether intact or divorced, tend to fare worse than children of parents that get along, according to a University of Illinois study review.
5. Parents have attained higher educational levels: A 2014 study lead by University of Michigan psychologist Sandra Tang found that mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.
6. Parents teach their kids math early on: A 2007 meta-analysis of 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage.
7. They develop a relationship with their kids: A 2014 study of 243 people born into poverty found that children who received “sensitive caregiving” in their first three years not only did better in academic tests in childhood, but had healthier relationships and greater academic attainment in their 30s.
8. Parents are less stressed: According to recent research cited by Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post, the number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does little to predict the child’s behavior, well-being, or achievement. What’s more, the “intensive mothering” or “helicopter parenting” approach can backfire.
9. Parents value effort over avoiding failure: Over decades, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has discovered that children (and adults) think about success in one of two ways. Over at the always-fantastic Brain Pickings, Maria Popova says they go a little something like this:
A “fixed mindset” assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we can’t change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled. A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.
10. The mums work: According to research out of Harvard Business School, there are significant benefits for children growing up with mothers who work outside the home.
11. Parents have a higher socioeconomic status: According to Stanford University researcher Sean Reardon, the achievement gap between high- and low-income families “is roughly 30 percent to 40percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born 25 years earlier.”
