How do you raise successful people?
How do you raise successful people?
Teacher, author and parent Esther Wojcicki can claim to have done just that.
She's the mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, and Fulbright Scholar and Professor of Pediatrics Janet Wojcicki.
She’s written a book on the topic, How to Raise Successful People, and shared her strategies on 大象传媒 Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
“My top five tips for raising successful people: It’s the acronym TRICK. It stands for trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness.
“It starts with infancy and goes all the way through to adults and even into the corporations and even to senior citizens.”
Trust
“Trust is the number one important thing. If you trust your child then they trust themselves."
Respect
“If you respect [your child], they respect themselves.
"Teachers have very little respect for students and what that does is make students feel somewhat disabled, in a way.
"They don’t feel as confident as we would like them to feel.
“They feel they always need to have somebody there helping them or telling them if they are right or wrong.
“In fact they can figure a lot of things out themselves these days.”
Independence/ Collaboration
“Let’s face it, when you want to find information, what do you do? You don’t go to the library, you go to your phone and so do they.
"We need to give students an opportunity to be independent, to collaborate with each other.
“That’s where all learning takes place - in collaboration.
“My philosophy is that the more you do for your child, the less empowered they are.
“They need to be able to do things by themselves. You can even ask them to make something like jello - it’s so simple - and yet it’s a really good, empowering thing.
“Then you can say, ‘Mary made the jello for dinner tonight’, and Mary will be very happy about that and feel like she can do more desserts or more things for dinner.
“So my recommendation is the more they can do around the house and the more they can do to help everybody, the more empowered they will be."
Kindness
“Let’s treat them with kindness. Kindness, it works so well.
“When someone is kind to you, then you’re so happy. When teachers are kind to students, they are happy, when parents are kind, they’re happy.
“Everybody is successful when there’s more kindness."
“So my five tips are TRICK - trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness in all areas of your life.
“All this helicopter parenting is resulting in kids who feel like they can’t do anything without your help.
“You want to make yourself a person who is there if they need you, but you don’t do it for them.
“You support them if they ask for help, but you want to encourage them to do it on their own because, let’s face it, that’s what you want for your adult children.
“Don’t start patterns of, ‘I have to be there to help you’, because maybe that will continue into adult children and you might not want that to happen."
The Woman's Hour parenting podcast is released every Wednesday.
You can listen to the podcast here or you can download it on the 大象传媒 Sounds app.
