How far should you push your children to succeed?

 If you can name me one parent that you know personally who does not in some way wish for the best for their children, I would be very surprised. Their desires for their children's well-being may not always be displayed in the best ways, but typically all parents want their children to do well. Whether their motives are selfish or truly for their children's sake is a matter that they themselves need to analyze, rather than anything that you or I can decide for them.

Children do not always come up with the best solutions to how to schedule their days on their own. They do not always make the best choices for enabling a successful future be a part of their lives. Without any guidance or training regarding how to succeed in life and without any push at all in that direction, your children may simply float in life to wherever the wind takes them and the majority of the time this will not be an instance where they simply luck out and have a fabulous life.

Whatever blessings one receives and is aware they have received are often worked for. There are some that we may have no idea how or why we receive, but so many others that require work and dedication.

Children have to learn the purpose of work and the meaning of dedication. They should be trained that succeeding is important to an easier, happier life. They should be made aware of how much more they will struggle if they do not as children take advantage of their youthful years to grow and develop and become well-rounded, educated members of society.

There are definitely extremes that some parents may go to. If the children are being deprived of the necessary amount of sleep for their growing bodies because they are being pushed to work at being the best at something, then it is likely that you have jumped off that cliff of way too far, with regard to pushing your children toward success.

Beware of creating within them such a level of importance regarding success that they will be completely distraught by every little failure in life as well because this, in and of itself, will not only create for them an imbalanced view of the world and an inability to maintain happiness in life, but also will generally have the opposite of the intended effect in encouraging the children to give up since they can never be perfect enough anyway, thereby leading to a very difficult youth process for both kids and parents alike.

Push your children just enough so that they understand that the work required to achieve success is important, but make sure that as a integral part of all of that, their merely being your child is reason enough for you to love and care for them and to be proud of them.