Cultivating Leadership skills in our kids – FINAL

October 31 2017. As today is the last day of October, this will be the last post on the series.

I really want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has read & commented on my posting across all platforms since I started. You have truly encouraged & energised me to keep going on.

Our anchor scripture has been Prov 22: 6  which says “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it”.

We’ve spent time looking at the first half of that scripture with the Key words Train up & in the way he should go  as we talked about Modelling & Management. 

There is a WAY our kids should be trained up & it’s our responsibility as parents to find out.

God gave them to us as His heritage, so you need to check with Him on how best to raise them up. Just like you need a manufacturer’s manual to properly assemble & operate an equipment, you need God ( the manufacturer) to give you the manual on your kids.

The second part of our text is really amazing as it points to the fact that after we train up our kids in the way they should go, later in life they embrace & remember those things & dont abandon them.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned that we use independence management as a means of judging how far our kids have embraced the things they’ve been taught over time.

It helps them recall the things they’ve been taught when it’s required.

Another task that parents are responsible for in the life of their kids is  making memories. 

There are a lot of definitions for memory but I like to define it this way: It’s the creation/retention of information/experiences over time for the purpose of influencing future action.

There are good & bad memories & our emotions influence how we process them.

There are 2 schools of thought on this,one  believes that we tend to remember bad memories more than good ones & the other believes that as a natural brain protection mechanism we remember good memories more than the bad so as to keep a positive outlook on life.

Growing up as a child, I had experiences that were both good & bad with my parents especially my late Father & personally, I remember both but tend to have more details of the good ones than the bad.

Every time I think of him, my memories are filled with the good ones, the wonderful traits I inherited from him ( my writing & speaking abilities), the road trips we took together that ignited my love for travelling & seeing the world as well as many more lovey memories.

Our job as parents is to ensure that we create a lot of good memories for our children, so that they remember us by those memories when they grow up.

While buying things for them is great, making great memories with them are much more important!!

Things like playing with them, taking them out to a park or a game arcade, spending time with them talking, going on a road trip or travelling, working with them on projects (e.g. art & craft, science, technology or computing, etc) & planning surprising events goes a long way to fill up their minds with great memories that they will cherish for the rest of their lives.

As a family we love taking pictures & making videos, we ensure that we keep records of  key “Kodak moments”  & with the aid of technology we can keep & file them so as to recall them later in the future.

Last December when my son was 10, we took sometime to look at all of his pictures & videos from his birth & we just had fun chatting about how he has changed & grew over the years. It was fascinating to hear him talk about the things he remembered the most, they were majorly things we did together as a family, places we’ve been to, houses we’ve lived in, etc.

I am really committed as a father to ensuring that I make great memories with my family especially my kids so they have them as treasures to cherish forever.

Great Leaders draw inspirations from their childhood whenever they are faced with challenges & difficulties & anytime I listen to the audio-book of Barak Obama’s “Dreams from my Father” I realise the importance of creating great memories with our kids.

Recalling some of his childhood experiences made him the leader he is today.

Please ensure you are doing your best to cultivate leadership skills in your kids by Modelling, Managing & Making great memories!!!

What sort of memory are you creating with your kids?

Will these memories help them become great future leaders?

This is my snippet, I AM SHALOMESQ!!!