The Missing Curriculum-Empowering Kids Through Intentional Self-Growth
The foundations of education is pretty much the same throughout the world. People need to be able to read, write, do math, know their history, and understand how things work. No matter where you are in the world, people achieve these foundations throughout their childhood and as an adult. Whether you’re in one of the most advanced cities or the most remote village, there are two things required for success, relationships and personal growth.
Unfortunately even though these are some of the most important skills a person will develop, they are often not intentionally planned at home or at school. Many of the relationships skills we learn are from our parents, siblings, or friends. These can include good traits or bad ones. Because people are not perfect, many kids grow up with some kind of emotional baggage from their parents. When they take this into their adulthood, many times they never resolve the underlying feelings. Because of this, the cycle continues and we now have calloused adults doing their best to raise balanced and developed kids.
Even though it is easy to hope for the best, we know that nothing of true value happens without intentional effort. Having our kids on a self-growth journey through reading books on mindset, communication, relationships, goal setting, finances, building or breaking habits, and managing their emotions, is necessary for them to grow into balanced and mentally prepared adults.
Once a kid can read confidently, they are ready to start their self-growth journey. For the younger kids there are authors like Caleb Maddix, who has some great personal growth books written as a young teen himself. The more you delve into the self-growth world of learning, you will hear of a lot of the same authors and book titles mentioned in many places. The classics will never become obsolete. This is because the principles of success never change. This is what we call foundational knowledge.
Letting our kids see our bookshelf grow over the years with books covering all of these important topics is one of the best examples we can set. Choose the first book for your child and set up a routine to have them read it. This could be a chapter a week to start and more as time goes on. To make it more fun you can pair them up with a sibling, cousin, or friend in a book club format, checking in each week with each other to talk about the book. We have 3 questions our kids use to discuss their books. “What did you like?”, “What did you learn?”, and “What can you apply in your life?” Once they are finished with the book, have them write a page talking about their favorite parts and what they can start to apply in their life moving forward. This reflection process is just as important as the reading of the book. Taking the time to actually look inward and have that conversation takes theory and applies it to us as individuals.
Imagine your kids starting their adult lives with the wisdom of 50 books on relationships, success principles and self-growth in their minds. Even more important, is the habit they have built themselves and continue to see in their parents. We know that what we do is more important than what we say. So pick up your next book and show your kids you are on your own self-growth journey too.