By Betsy Mikel, Inc.
Spoiling your kids won't do any favors for their self confidence.
It's only natural that parents want the best for their kids. The best schools, coaches, and extracurricular activities. The clothes, gadgets, and toys. No parent wants their child to go without.
It's so easy to spoil your kids, especially if you have the money to do it. But could this hinder their future success?
Giving your kids the world is exactly the wrong way to go about it, according to Shark Tank investor and real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran. On a recent episode of her podcast Business Unusual, Corcoran shares her tough-love advice for parents.
Let kids struggle
Struggling it a good thing for kids. It teaches them self-confidence and persistence.
"I learned all my lessons by struggling and finding the solutions to the problems that I encountered," Corcoran says. It's through that struggle that she became so successful. Now, she's worth millions. When her kids were born, she was worried they'd never have the opportunity to struggle.
By the time both her kids started school, both had been diagnosed with dyslexia. They struggled to learn read and write, but developed better self confidence in their persistence. "That's exactly what I was hoping for," she says. "I was less worried about the reading than I was worried about them building self confidence."
If you're a kid who has the means to giving you everything you want, you may have the opportunity to struggle.
Let kids fail. Kids needs to learn to pick themselves up instead of their parents swooping in at every sign of distress to smooth things over. Your kids will grow up more confident and more successful.
Push them to get jobs young
Corcoran has plenty of millions in the bank. Her kids wouldn't have to work a day in their lives.
But she wants them to be able to provide for themselves when they're adults. She's a believer of kids having jobs early. Her daughter has been working at a dog spa since she was 10.
"I can't tell you how much self confidence she gets from her job -- much more than she ever will find in a classroom," Corcoran says.
She's not alone in kids-should-get-jobs camp. College admissions officers at top colleges say teenagers should work summer jobs -- the less glamorous, the better.
Working a non-cushy job will teach your kids more about the real world than resume-building internship ever will. Interacting with a variety of other people will help kids develop empathy and emotional intelligence. They'll learn the value of making their own money. And, surprisingly, it makes them stand out to college admissions because so few affluent children have jobs.
