Don’t count on your kids being successful, unless you are training them both to earn it and then learn how to handle it once they have it.  Failure is a given, success is optional.

But, before you despair there are a few things you can do to sharpen your kids for success. I’m a father of four, been married almost 20 years and lead an organization of almost 150, but I don’t take for granted that my children will just “turn out alright.” I don’t want my kids as  “alright” adults. I want my kids to be outstanding adults. We have too much mediocrity.

These 5 things I’m sowing into my kids lives to help foster outstanding adults. See, I don’t measure success by culture’s standards. I’m their father. I’m measure their success by my standards. That’s why God gave them to me and not someone else. These standards are steeped in the successful historic tradition of bygone generations and the unbending principals found in the timeless truths of the Bible.

1- Work Hard. I actually make my kids do work they don’t enjoy. Don’t mishear me, I never use work as punishment. A child must learn to view work as necessary, not as a nuisance. Sadly, today many children and now young adults see work as a nuisance. There will never be true success without hard work.

Work has to come before rest, before pleasure and before comfort.  Work ethic is learned when children are young and developing. If kids don’t learn to work when they are young (outside the military or Jesus), they most likely will never learn it. Before we have fun, we work. Before we quit, we finish. Assign your kids “necessary work” that fits their frame.

A word about teaching little boys to work. Boys on average have more energy in their bodies. They need to be put to work, especially outside. It’s wired in little boys to conquer, to explore and to push the limits. Nature is hard to conquer. Nature will sap your physical strength faster  than anything manmade or mechanical. So, if you have a little bundle of energy get them outside in the sun, in the heat with a shovel or picking up sticks.

My father used to take us boys and make us fill up holes in the yard, work outside and pick up sticks. I felt like these were the most pointless and sweat-induced jobs, but as an adult I remember these painful, tiring tasks because this hard work at an early age taught me the thing that all kids and adult need for success: discipline.

Work teaches your child a healthy measure of adversity, which they will encounter in buckets full later in life. A principal in hard work is endurance. Endurance is strength over time. Anyone can be strong for a second, but what your child will need is strength for a season.

One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 24:10 “If you faint in the day of adversity your strength is small (weak).”

2- Consider others. We are rapidly becoming the most self-centered society the world has ever seen. You have to get your kids to think about others. To consider something is to put it under review. You have to teach your children to think about others and be ready to help, serve or support as is necessary.

Success is rarely achieved alone. And it’s definitley never held alone. We as humans are designed to live in community. A community is the sum of your relationships. When you spend all day as a child on a smart phone, a tablet or a gaming console system, you are training your child to bend toward isolation and separation from others. Make your kids put their digital devices down and away.

Make your kids serve others. When you teach your kids to serve others it teaches them to think about others, not just themselves. This can happen a multitude of ways: at dinner make someone’s chore be to clear their siblings or parents dishes,  clean one another’s room periodically, or any number of things to train your child to think about others.

A Bible verse I used to hear my mother remind my siblings and me was John 13:35 “By this will all men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another.”

3- Trust God. This means not only acknowledging that there is a God, but that He is involved in your life. The biggest way you teach your kids to trust God is to involve God in your discussions about your decisions in front of your children.

Trusting God means you recognize you need God’s help in your life and you request it. Be careful about driving your kids to independence. Your children are designed to be independent of your financial support and shelter in their adulthood, not childhood. But, until you die, your children should always be dependent upon your influence and counsel in their lives, just as they should be upon God for his influence and counsel in their lives. Your children may not always be under your roof, your rules and your resources, but they are never outside your reproof. 

Trusting God means learning to listen to God. Make your children listen to you. If they don’t listen, then there must be consequences. Because, later in life when they don’t listen to God or their employer or the police there most certainly will be consequences and consequences much more significant than what they receive as a child.

The best way to learn to trust God is to take him at his word. His word is what he has already said.  And what God says doesn’t change. This is why he is absolutely trustworthy. What God has said he has recorded for us in the Bible. Reading your Bible trains your kids to trust God, because they know what God has said and where to look for what he has said.

Teach your kids Proverbs 3:4-5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, in your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” 

4- Stay humble. Humility is an exercise in letting others go first. Teach your kids to give their best but not to demand the best. The world demands the best, but gives the worst. A humble person knows that the best is always yet to come.

When life doesn’t go your way, stay humble. Humility doesn’t burn bridges or express every opinion. You don’t need a position to lead, you simple need humility. There will be times that your child fails or gets rejected. A proud person walks away and is worse because of it. A humble person gets back up and faces the failure, the rejection.

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” James 4:6

5- Forgiveness. Everyone can take offense and give offense. Everyone can defend themselves and be defensive. But, not everyone will forgive others and even themselves.

Make your child forgive one another.  When they are little make them apologize and make them say, “I forgive you.” And then make sure they can operate in a place of forgiveness.

Even more important is that as your kids get older, at the appropriate time (not 10 years later) apologize and your kids for forgiveness when you mess up. Kids know their parents aren’t perfect. They also know when their parents are holding a grudge of unforgivenss against them. A child’s heart grows best and healthy in an environment of love and forgiveness.

We need forgiveness, because we are a bunch of flawed people living among flawed people. Forgiveness is not a release from failure, but a release from the penalty and punishment of failure. Often, we say we forgive, but we want to keep punishing the other person. There is a difference between consequences and punishments. Consequences are changes as a result of a failure that may or may not have a definite term limit. Punishment is retribution or restitution for failure, but it has a definite term limit.

Another verse I can distinctly hear my mother singing to me, “Be ye kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ Jesus forgave you” Ephesians 4:32.  (I had to add the “ye” because that’s how she’d sing it).

Parents we have work to do. These principles are just as much for we, parents, as they are for our kids. These truths if laid down in the lives of your children will steer your children toward success and away from a life of depravity and failure. There can be no true, lasting success without the blessing and favor of Almighty God. These thoughts and these verses are designed to draw your trust and your child’s heart to a place of surrender and submission to the Maker and Creator of your child’s life.

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.“

Fredrick Douglass

(c) Alex Vann, 2018