When I think about excellence in leadership one of the persons that come to my mind who was able to achieve excellence in his field and from his team members was John Wooden. What he was known for was stressing excellence to his players, working hard and doing so to reach their highest potential. This is an important lesson for leaders in the work world and in parenting.
Our children, if we have more than one, will all be different. One may be the easiest child to be around. They listen, accept correction, work on making changes that we would like to see in them. Then we have our second or third child and they are oh so different, and we are at a loss. What did we do different, why are things so much harder with this child?
The question we must ask ourselves is what is this child’s potential? As parents I do not believe that we can control who our child is as a person or personality. We can teach them morals, ethics and values though that will allow them to have their own personality and still operate in the society that we live in. We can learn and choose how we train our children and if we will create our vision and expectations for them, and live those characteristics as an example, we will have a success as a family.
The majority of fear and stress that we experience in raising a family may be about things that we can do nothing about. We are not going to change who the child is or what their interests are. What we can do is focus on the values of our family and ask all in the family to live by those values, morals and ethics, treating each other and our family / team with respect. As leaders / parents we will focus on how we are helping our children recognize and live up to the roles that they have on this team.