My Parenting Approach

Parenting is the most important job in the world. The success or failure of our nation will be determined by our parenting skills. As parents our job is to raise children that survive and thrive. As human beings our survival is contributed by the amount of parental investment we receive. We could do the minimum or we can take our role as parents as seriously as possible, a parenting apotheosis.

I should say however that people can be failures despite their parents. The gang banging , meth dealing, in and out of jail, dead beat dad could have had great parents or could have learned the lifestyle from their parents.

My parenting philosophy is mostly influenced by Jane Nelson's book Positive Discipline and Professor Peter Vishton TTC lecture series Scientific Secrets for Raising Kids that Thrive.
Everyone wants their kids to be healthy and happy adults. One major universal characteristic of the happiest and healthiest people is their psychological resilience. They are extremely competent in handling and managing the unavoidable stresses of life and bounce back from tragedies sometimes stronger than before. They categorized by "post traumatic growth" not by "post traumatic stress". This level of resilience is extremely difficult to achieve, but nonetheless is worthwhile pursuing. Good parents cultivate their children's adversity quotient. An adversity quotient (AQ) is a score that measures the ability of a person to deal with adversities in his or her life. It is also known as the science of resilience. The term was coined by Paul Stoltz in 1997 in his book Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles Into Opportunities. To quantify adversity quotient, Stoltz developed an assessment method called the Adversity Response Profile (ARP). The AQ and the ability to delay gratification is one of the probable indicators of a person's success in life and is also primarily useful to predict attitude, mental stress, perseverance, longevity, learning, and response to changes in environment.

Spoiling your children sabotages their resilience and produces adults that have difficulty coping with the stresses that are part of life. They feel like special victims in situations that are actually typical of most people. The meme of first world problems comes to mind which is when relatively trivial or minor problem or frustration (implying a contrast with serious problems such as those that may be experienced in the developing world). They over react to minor trespasses and feel disproportionately anxious in the face of uncertainty and have problems delaying gratification. They develop an attitude of entitlement which is characterized by a lack of gratitude and personal responsibility which leads to a lack of happiness and an overarching propensity to blame others for their troubles. They are the "snowflakes" who are more prone to taking offence and less resilient than previous generations, or as being too emotionally vulnerable to cope with views that challenge their own. Instead taking initiative and finding more effective strategies to achieve their preferences they lobby the Government which they mistakenly and naively regard as having a pseudo parental role. This is a role the Government is more than happy to take on, and use to take control of more and more of the economy.

Their is also the kids who can not be categorized as spoiled which have received parental under investment or mal-investment who are just ill-equipped to compete in the market place and turn to crime or begging.

Here are some parenting tactics to improve AQ in no particular order:

• Let your kids practice over coming negative emotions on their own. 
• Role-model a positive mental attitude and good manners.
• Work on healthy and productive hobbies with them, show them how to have fun with out using a lot of money.
• Role-model the importance of being an investor versus a spender, investing time/money in the things your grateful for versus spending time/money on what you enjoy (hedonic treadmill).
• Don't solve your kids boredom for them, boredom is an opportunity to practice ingenuity.
• Don't feed kids junk food daily and make sure healthy food is available to them all the time and don't punish or accommodate finicky eating its ok to skip a meal.
• Exercise with them.
• Have rules with expected punishments.
• Be kind and firm and don't bluff, dominate and/or nag your kids. 
• When punishing shut up and act, actions are better than words.
• Practice time management and delayed gratification by doing chores before play, no work no play.
• Have them make a weekly to-do list.
• Give them daily doses of vitamin "no".
• Study math, especially business math.
• Let them have wildhoods by exposing them to nature and camping.
• Let them practice adulting by letting them do some cooking, cleaning and laundry and don't pay them to do it. 
• Do provide them opportunities earn their own money just not by doing tasks that as adults they'd have to if they lived in their own apartment like brushing teeth, dishes, and laundry. Tasks like clearing snow or mowing lawn or washing car could be opportunities to earn cash.
• Show your love by conversing with them and playing with them, not by buying them toys or junk food.
• Encourage them to think critically and scientifically.
• Give your kids a narrative, teach them about your ancestry, and to be grateful and proud of their ancestors.
• Teach your children to be grateful for the economic freedom and freedom of inquiry and expression they enjoy and not to take it for granted.