Prepare Your Child For Success
We all want our children to grow up to have joyful, successful lives. We educate our children at home to give them the best we can give and pray that they will walk in God’s blessings. Is there more we can do to set them up for a successful life?
Yes!
DG: The Secret To Success is a message I share with teens and adults on a regular basis. It’s so simple and yet so many people miss it.
What is DG?
DG is Delayed Gratification. Yikes! It doesn’t sound that interesting or fun! But, it can turn everything around. In my podcast I talk about how delayed gratification sets us up for success in our finances, relationships, career, education, and walk with the Lord.
We do the hard work first and save the fun for last.
It sounds to simple, but in a day and age where we want instant gratification and to buy now and pay later, it is hard to resist our flesh and postpone what we want.
How Does DG Work?
If we work hard, save up money, tithe, and live on a budget, we will have money to do some of the things we long for, but not right away. We will have to forego some things to wait to do others, but we will experience the joy of financial freedom (no debt!). Don can’t wait and gets whatever he wants right away. His house is filled with computers, tablets, speakers, screens, and video games, but his credit card is maxed. His wife wishes he would practice DG.
If we wait to be married for romantic pleasures and wait on God to bring a mate who shares our love for Jesus, we will set our marriage up for success.
If we work and finish schoolwork first instead of playing hours of video games (or other distractions) and then getting it done, we will be able to reward ourselves with fun after the job is done!
Unfortunately, many teens and adults that I talk to have already build patterns and habits that are hard to break into their lives. They have to retrain themselves and I share ways to strengthen the DG muscle in my podcast: https://ultimateradioshow.com/dg-the-secret-to-success/
However, what a blessing if we can acquire the habit of DG in our young years, so that we walk in delaying gratification as a habit.
How Can I Help My Children Walk in DG?
Of course, we can model it for our children because more is caught than taught.
We can also set up our daily schedule to practice delayed gratification.
Rachel decided that she would start teaching her children to delay gratification. She moved their schedule around purposefully. “Here’s the agenda for the day (chores and schoolwork). If we finish everything with excellence (not mediocrity!), then we will treat ourselves to …. (playing a game, making cookies, doing a messy art project together, watching a short video).”
If the work isn’t finished, there is no reward. This ties hard work and waiting (delaying gratification) to a reward. Her children didn’t like the idea of first that if they didn’t finish their schoolwork, they couldn’t watch a video (their favorite thing!), but Rachel held fast and after a week, the grumbling stopped.
Sally and her kids wanted to go to the Creation Museum, so they figured out how much money it would cost. They got a big jar out and started filling it with money they earned doing extra jobs, having a garage sale, and money gifts from grandparents. When they had enough money, they planned the trip. This strategy built DG into the whole family. They were working hard and waiting for a reward. Now, Sally could have just put it on the credit card, but her kids would have missed out on an important lesson.
Of course, we don’t need to reward all hard work and we don’t need to earn every fun thing, but purposefully structuring our children’s lives in the early years to work first and play later will build that DG muscle and make it easier in the years ahead.
Setting our children up for success isn’t that hard. We just need to be purpose and proactive in teaching them to delay gratification.
God Bless You!
Meredith Curtis
Finish Well Radio at the Ultimate Homeschool Radio Network
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