6 Success Habits To Teach Your Child (Part 2)

Mark Wealth

According to bestselling Rich Habits author and blogger, Tom Corley, about 40 percent of our everyday thought patterns, choices and activities are habits we learnt from our social environment. That is, our parents, siblings, teachers and friends. As someone once said, your networth to the world is what is left after your bad habits have been subtracted from your good ones.

I want to believe that as parents, we would want our offspring to be of even greater value to the world than we were. So here are a few basic habits you could instil in your child that would set them on a guaranteed path to success. See part one here.

4. Read Child, Read…

As at March 2017, Warren Buffet was, and still is the third richest man in the world. Here what he says. “I insist on a lot time being spent almost every day to just sit and think..So I do more reading and thinking and make less impulse decisions than most people…”. Remember those 233 millionaires we mentioned at the beginning? Well, 88 percent of them love to read for learning while 11 percent read for entertainment.

It only goes to show that successful people have a habit of reading. Start reserving time to read with/to your kids. If they’re too young to read, get some kiddies books with large print and large colourful pictures. If they’re older, find out what they’re interested in and buy them books on those topics or share interesting passages, paragraphs or even billboards with catchy copy lines. Discuss with them on what they read. Make it less formal so that they’ll subconsciously find reading fun and rewarding.

5. Love Thy Neighbour

And teach your kids to do the same. Teach them basic social skills like saying, “Hi. How are you/was your day?”, “Thank you” and when they want to ask for something, start with “Please can you help me do such and such”? The best way to achieve this sort of respect for others is first to have times where the family get together to talk, eat or watch movies. Then set examples by addressing your spouse, neighbours and friends with politeness and respect. Pay attention and maintain eye contact when talking to each other. Listen without interruption before saying your part.

Teach them to understand that Children do what they see you do so… But hey, you guys already know these things, right? On to the next one.

6. Good Ol’ Money

It should be a crime to let your child grow up without teaching them about money. We all understand the importance of money so it’s crucial that we pass on the lessons learnt from our financial mistakes and achievements. Some experts suggest starting as early as 5 years old. Keep it basic. We need money to buy the stiff we need. Money doesn’t grow on tree, it is earned. Encourage them to work for money.

Teach them the 80/20 concept as soon as they start earning from vacation jobs and maybe their own business. You do know the 80/20 idea, don’t you? The spend 80, save 20 percent of what you earn? Makes it easy when you break it down in figures like this. I wish I knew about this earlier.