In the December 2019 issue of , Wharton celebrity psychologist Adam Grant illuminate the side effect of our focus on success. According to the duo, when parents are surveyed, over 90% of them say that having a child grow up to be caring is a top priority. Yet, as a shows, when you ask the children of those parents, 81% say their parents value achievement and happiness over caring.
We want our kids to be successful and caring, but focus too much on the first and create a dearth of the second. Research supports the impact. A University of Michigan study published in the showed that college students showed a dramatic drop in exhibiting kindness and empathy over a 30-year period .
So you can have your cake and eat it, too. You can enable your child's success by over-investing in teaching kindness. Do so by teaching it as a core value. Here's the best of the Grant's advice for doing this along with my own counsel as a parent who, along with my wife, holds kindness as the No. 1 most important value.Remember, your children noticing what you notice is more powerful than them hearing what you say. So keep count. I do.
It's sometimes the simplest things that ingrain kindness as a value and have a multiplying effect. For example, we mentioned once to our daughter she should give her restaurant"doggie bag" of food to a homeless person we passed on the street on the way to the car. One time — and now our daughter has taken it up as a habit, on her own.Hero Images/Getty
Inc I say a lot of things.