<\/a><\/p>\n

We all know it’s important to teach our kids basic skills and the ones that we choose to start with vary from family to family. \u00a0Such teaching can include the things that reflect \u00a0our family values such as kindness and generosity. \u00a0Other teaching focuses on the mechanics of life: telling time, basic household chores, personal hygiene and the like. Most parents do a pretty good job balancing the two.<\/p>\n

But how much time do we spend on teaching those remarkable success skills most of us don’t learn about until later in life? \u00a0What about goal-setting, visualization, Law of Attraction, contagious gratitude? Aren’t these the things that really set people apart from the pack?<\/p>\n

Success stories begin with a dream and are accomplished by setting goals, hard work and sacrifice. \u00a0On the other hand, I don’t subscribe to the school of \u00a0“you can do anything you want.” \u00a0 We’re not all born with identical talents and abilities and it’s not fair to pretend that we are.<\/p>\n

So how do we support our kids’ imaginations without stepping on their dreams?<\/p>\n

First, recognize that being invited into our kids’ rich imaginations is a privilege. \u00a0When we notice and value their skills (without being too pushy) we’re opening a door that encourages them to do the same. \u00a0And teaching them the name “visualization” brings a level of adult importance not always associated with “day dreams” or “fantasy.”<\/p>\n

Asking some (just a few) questions about what they see, hear and feel at various points in their story about hitting the game winning home run, winning the science fair or coming back to earth after space travel will help them practice the vivid mental and emotional skills vital to making visualizations work well. The answers can also give you valuable insights into what motivates this particular child: \u00a0is it accomplishment? \u00a0Teamwork? \u00a0Exploration? \u00a0Public accolades? \u00a0A combination?<\/p>\n

And, speaking of a question or two, have you incorporated that type of reward into your parenting toolkit?<\/p>\n

##<\/p>\n

Speaking of visualization…. Did you know that Raising Good Grown-ups<\/a> is now available on Kindle?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know it’s important to teach kids basic life skills but do you consider imagination an important mental muscle? Visualization is an important success skill and building block for goal-setting that may come more easily in childhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[196,304,518,579],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-2217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","tag-goal-setting","tag-life-skills","tag-success-skills","tag-visualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}