Pretty much all parents would agree that they’d like their children to be happy. Many would say they would like them to be successful, too. But how do we define success? I think we need to be careful about over-emphasising the achievements of our children. Let me explain what I mean by that.
If we focus too much on their achievements, be they academic ones or in the field of music, drama, sport or anything else, they can start to believe that that is what defines them. We so often pigeon-hole them- ‘She’s my brainy one’, ‘he’s my little budding footballer’, ‘she got all the looks in our family’, ‘he’s the funny one’. If we’re not careful they start to adopt these titles for themselves and thus place limitations on their expectations of what they are capable of. Carry on reading…
Emma Tanner 