Me and my brother who were fortunate to be raised by an exceptional mom.
I kept noticing an article on CNBC.com called, A psychologist shares the 7 biggest parenting mistakes that destroy kids’ confidence and self-esteem. I didn’t want to read it because I figured it would spell out all the mistakes I made as a parent. It’s written by Amy Morin is a psychotherapist and instructor at Northeastern University.
I was pleased to see I didn’t do all of them — I think there were one or two things I avoided. Yikes.
Here’s the opening paragraph and a list of seven things we’ve done wrong as parents that crush the confidence of our kids. The real article if you click the link above will offer the reason for each item on the list. It’s worth a read.
Every parent wants their kids to feel good about themselves — and with good reason.
But some of those strategies can backfire, creating a vicious cycle where kids struggle to feel good about who they are. As a result, parents may find themselves working overtime trying to boost their children’s self-esteem.
Here are the seven biggest parenting mistakes that crush kids’ confidence:
1. Letting them escape responsibility
2. Preventing them from making mistakes
3. Protecting them from their emotions
4. Condoning a victim mentality
5. Being overprotective
6. Expecting perfection
7. Punishing, rather than disciplining
Looking back on how my mom raised us, I have to say she didn’t do any of the above. So, why did I fall short? Was it a new age of parenting? Or was my mom an exceptional parent? She used to say her job as a parent was to let us fly from the nest and be free. That when she was needed anymore, she would know she had done her job.
Mom and me in the early 90s.
Which of the seven mistakes that crush our kids’ confidence are you guilty of doing?
Youth sports is a multi-billion dollar industry and as a sports mom myself, I know we were big contributors to it. In an article on CNBC.com, Lorie Konish writes that 27 percent of parents spend $500 or more a month on their children’s sports. That seems crazy high, right? But, especially if you have more than one child, it’s not hard at all to spend that much on sports. Trust me, I know.
As parents of two swimmers we easily did that, especially as the kids got older. We traveled to meets, stayed in hotels and ate out. Then we had the plan to buy an RV to eliminate the hotel stays. There’s some rocket science for you. Do you have any idea what it costs to own an RV? Yep. Pretty much a lot more than a few nights in a hotel per month.
Besides the travel, there were monthly dues for the club team which go up as your children get faster. Private lessons at $50 to $80 an hour to ensure your kids DO get faster. Then, the $485 “fast suit” to super make sure your kids are fast.
Here’s an excerpt from the article and some ideas to ensure you don’t go broke before your kids become super stars making beaucoup bucks–and you can afford your own retirement in case that plan doesn’t pan out–or you don’t win the lottery:
“Your child’s sports could be sabotaging your financial health”
Parents are spending more than ever on their children’s sports with the hopes that they will make it to the big leagues.
And dads are often the ones likely to shell out the most cash on their children’s activities, according to a new survey from TD Ameritrade.
Yet spending more with the hope that your child will make it big could have consequences for your finances, particularly your own retirement.
The survey, which was conducted online between February and March, included 1,001 adults ages 30 through 60. Of those respondents, those who were considered “sports parents” had one or more children in elite or club competitive sports and had more than $25,000 in investable assets.
The result: 27% of parents spend $500 or more per month on youth sports.
This was especially true for fathers, 20% of whom spend $500 to $999 each month per child on youth sports. Meanwhile, 7% of dads admitted they spend $1,000 or more.
That money is going towards everything from equipment to private coaching to tournaments out of town, according to Dara Luber, senior manager of retirement at TD Ameritrade.
Those dads may be reliving their youth or reviving their own professional sports aspirations, Luber said.
But the one thing those fathers — and all parents — need to be wary of is whether those costs will force them to make sacrifices in other important areas.
For the parents surveyed, that could mean cutting back on spending on entertainment or vacations. It could also mean taking on a second job or delaying retirement.
One in 5 dads surveyed said they worry about how their spending on their children’s sports will impact their retirement savings.
TD Ameritrade also found that sports parents are less likely to save for retirement through a 401(k) plan or individual retirement account than they were three years ago.
“There is nothing wrong with helping your son or daughter realize their sports dreams, but it definitely shouldn’t come at the expense of your own retirement or understate your family’s needs,” Luber said.
Swimming forces one to take a break from social media.
In an article titled, “I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me a lot happier — and that’s a big problem for social media companies,” Christina Farr from CNBC explains how a three-month break from social media changed her life.
CNBC health-tech reporter Christina Farr took a break from social media after realizing that she spent far more time on Instagram than she realized.
It’s been three months without checking Facebook and Instagram.
Here’s what happened.
Social media companies, most notably Facebook, have faced a reckoning in the past year, with reports surfacing about an infiltration of Russian propaganda to influence elections, misuse user data, and countless other examples of the platform being used for ill.
#DeleteFacebook, once unthinkable, is now a very real trend. And it poses a growing threat to Facebook’s bottom line, and its future.
Against this backdrop, in August I made a big decision. I removed Facebook and Instagram apps off my phone, and logged out on the web. I didn’t get around to fully disabling or deleting them, as I wanted to see first how I’d respond to a month-long break. Baby steps, I told myself.
I haven’t been back, and I don’t really miss them at all.
Time not well spent
My break came around the time when Facebook and Instagram introduced “time well spent” features in the summer, which allow users to check how many hours they’ve spent on social media. I checked the activity dashboard after reporting on these changes for CNBC, and learned that I spent more than five hours on Instagram in a single week.
Five hours!
Five hours might not seem like that much, but it surprised me. I would have guessed an hour or two.
I told myself that my usage was limited to moments where I was standing in line for coffee or sitting in an Uber in traffic, with nothing better to do.
But if I’m honest with myself, I was sucked in a lot more than that, especially once I started following personal stylists, entrepreneurs and other glamorous influencers on Instagram who served as a kind of benchmark about success in my own life. Some nights, I’d pull up my phone and scroll through their feeds for inspiration about new meals to cook or new outfits to buy.
I started thinking: With five more hours every week, I could read a book, volunteer, spend quality time with a friend, even learn a new language. Maybe I’d be fluent in French again in six months if I took a break from these apps.
We take social media for granted these days. What was life like before Facebook and DMs and PMs took over as one of our major ways of communicating? I find myself using social media less and less. Maybe because I don’t have my kids around to post constant pictures of them. Or, maybe because looking at everyone’s happy faces and wondering why I wasn’t invited, doesn’t make me feel that great!
During the past few days I’ve spent with my daughter, we were looking through Facebook together. She made a comment that I’ve often repeated myself — “thank goodness there wasn’t Facebook when I was growing up!” Amen to that! I would have been a totally out of control Facebook mom, posting every step and who knows about potty training!
In the article by Farr, she brings up several points that are cause for concern. Studies are being done that may show that Facebook causes anxiety and depression. Right now, she said, the results aren’t in, but she feels less anxious without it.
Also, Farr talked with one of the program manager and he explained that it is an addictive platform and was designed to be that way:
That got me thinking more deeply about a conversation I had about four years ago with a former Google project manager, Tristan Harris, who I first met when working on a story about habit-forming apps. He described social media back then as “hijacking our minds.”
Harris was among the first to make the connection between neuroscience and social media, and question whether it’s even possible for many people to use social media constructively.
One example he used is the “bottomless bowl,” referring to studies that show that humans will often consume more out of self-refilling bowls than regular ones. The news feed format pioneered by Facebook, he says, is just like that, in the way it seduces us to keep scrolling through an endless stream of content for far longer than we planned to.
I found this to be an interesting article which made me think more about social media and how I use it. I’ve written about social media before and wonder what will happen to our kids raised on selfies. But, it’s also important to think about what happens to us, who use social media to connect and communicate with people online. Is it having an affect on our brains, moods and relationships?
The beach makes a perfect escape from social media, too.
What are your thoughts about quitting social media? If you’ve taken a break, how did it change your daily life?
Little did I know when I wrote this in July that I’d spend all of September getting up at the crack of dawn. I am driving my husband to and from work because he recently had shoulder surgery. So, I’m leaving the house before the sun rises. Has the early wake-up time made me more productive this month? In a word–No. It makes me tired and I’m less productive. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get used to it.
Here are the great ideas though on why waking up early is good for success:
After sleeping in this morning, I thought about people who get up at the crack of dawn—or before—and how successful they are. I’m talking about success like Mozart, Ben Franklin, Tim Cook and Oprah Winfrey.
It was my friend, Linda, who asked for my thoughts about if swimming helped instill this early riser lifestyle in children. I hadn’t thought about it before, and I hadn’t made the connection to success with what time you roll out of bed. I began reading articles about this phenomenon and it makes sense. I believe kids, ages 13 through the end of their swim careers, who are ready to jump into the pool at 5:30 a.m. a few mornings a week isn’t so bad after all. No, I didn’t like driving in the dark or leaving the house at 5 a.m. But it was a sacrifice we did together—me, my husband, and another swim mom. We took turns with driving to early A.M. practices for years.
Our kids had to be ready to go. They not only needed their suits on and swim gear ready, but their shampoo, conditioner, school clothes, assignments, books and lunches ready too. That meant preparing the night before. What a great lesson learned—because of swimming. If you want to have a great, productive day—start the day before. Don’t scramble around printing or finishing an assignment, looking for clean clothes and books 15 minutes before school starts.
Here are some excerpts from articles I read about early risers and success:
10 highly successful people who wake up before 6 a.m.
by Abigail Hess, CNBC
Waking up can be one of the most difficult and dreaded parts of going to work. But for some of the most successful people in art, business and sports, rising early is key to their success.
Apple CEO Tim Cook starts his mornings at 3:45 a.m., Ellevest CEO and co-founder Sallie Krawcheck wakes at 4 a.m. and Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama and Indra Nooyi have been known to rise at the crack of dawn.
Benjamin Spall, author of “My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired” and founding editor of my morning routine.com has spoken with hundreds of successful figures about their morning regimens. “It’s not a coincidence that all of these people these people have routines,” he tells CNBC.
While Spall says the biggest predictor of success is simply having a steady routine, it cannot be ignored that many of the most successful figures in his book wake up early — as in, before-6-a.m.-early.
1. Bill McNabb, Chairman of the Vanguard Group, wakes up around 5 and gets to his desk by 6:15 a.m.
Bill McNabb, chairman and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, has a strict early-morning routine that he has not changed in decades.
“My routine has varied about 30 minutes over 30 years,” he says. “When I became Vanguard’s CEO in 2008 (a position I held until early 2018), I started coming in a little earlier so I could have some additional preparation time in the morning. Other than that, not much has changed since I joined the company in 1986.”
His routine includes waking up between 5 and 5:15 a.m., grabbing a cup of coffee on the way to work and settling in at his desk between 5:45 and 6:15. Getting into the office early, he says, gives him crucial time for creative productivity.
“The quiet time between 6 and 7:30 a.m. is when some of my best work gets done,” says McNabb. “It’s my time to read, think and prepare for the day ahead. I try really hard to preserve that time.”
Click here to read about the next nine people interviewed for the list of 10 in the article.
Another article I read dealt strictly with creative minds and writers. “Rise and shine: the daily routines of history’s most creative minds” by Oliver Burkeman, was published by The Guardian.
Benjamin Franklin spent his mornings naked. Patricia Highsmith ate only bacon and eggs. Marcel Proust breakfasted on opium and croissants. The path to greatness is paved with a thousand tiny rituals (and a fair bit of substance abuse) – but six key rules emerge in “Daily Rituals” by Mason Currey.
But very early risers form a clear majority, including everyone from Mozart to Georgia O’Keeffe to Frank Lloyd Wright. (The 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards, Currey tells us, went so far as to argue that Jesus had endorsed early rising “by his rising from the grave very early”.) For some, waking at 5am or 6am is a necessity, the only way to combine their writing or painting with the demands of a job, raising children, or both. For others, it’s a way to avoid interruption: at that hour, as Hemingway wrote, “There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”
There’s another, surprising argument in favour of rising early, which might persuade sceptics: that early-morning drowsiness might actually be helpful. At one point in his career, the novelist Nicholson Baker took to getting up at 4.30am, and he liked what it did to his brain: “The mind is newly cleansed, but it’s also befuddled… I found that I wrote differently then.”
From LifeHack.com I found “This is Why Productive People Always Wake Up So Early” written by Ciara Conlon. She made a number of interesting points from finding quiet time, time to exercise and finding your muse:
Successful people are very often early risers. From Franklin to Obama, from Branson to Darwin, all were known to rise with the morning sun. Whatever their motivations, they all reaped the benefits of putting their feet on the floor before the cock opened its beak.
The Winner’s Mindset
There is a sense of control acquired from beating the inner voice. If your mind wins the battle between victim and success, things start on a high note and usually only get better. Recognizing the voice is your best defense against him. When the alarm goes off and the voice tells you that you went to bed far too late to get up this early, or that five more minutes won’t hurt, DON’T LISTEN! Those who stay in bed won’t be competition for the big guys, but they will have to watch out for you. When you are in charge of the inner voice, there will be no stopping you.
More Time
If you were to get up just one hour earlier each morning you would gain 15 days in a year. Scary when you put it like that. How many days of our lives do we waste sleeping? I don’t know about you, but I have too much I want to achieve to waste my life in this way. If you are time deficient, sleep less. We only need six to seven hours a night. Any more is wasting life.
Get Active
The morning is a great time to exercise. It sets you up for the day with energy, focus, and enthusiasm. Some mornings when I come back from my new habit of running, I feel invincible. Stress has to work a lot harder to get hold of me, and all my relationships are happier and calmer. Exercising in the morning will make you more productive and contribute to making you more successful.
After reading all these articles yesterday and understanding how effective it is to get up early—why did I sleep in? Well, the main reason is that my husband is an early riser. His alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. and he uses the quiet time to read about markets around the world and prepare for his day. I know I enjoy my quiet time in the morning so I let him have his space. I usually get up when I hear the garage shut. My goal, beginning in September, is to be an early riser and get to the pool for 5:30 a.m. practice, three days a week. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Morning walk at the beach
What benefits do you experience by being an early riser? Or, do you get up later in the day and how does that help you? What’s your morning routine?
