Parenting skills must 'update to new realities'

While a few children may be born with some gifts from God, in most other cases good leadership traits do not appear overnight but are nurtured over time, and it is the job of parents to identify these traits and groom their children, says Karen Hochhauser, APM Group’s business development manager.

Parenting in today’s world is different than in the past, says Megha Srisethi, parent coach of APM Group. Quite some time ago, children were born without MTV, YouTube, the Internet or mobile phones and parents had to teach their children everything, though they only taught but did not listen and they tended to focus only on the children’s behaviour.

"In the 21st century, we have so much more research that applies in an organisation to promote effectiveness and to draw out the potential of the staff. But the funny thing is, they are not researching the parents," she said.

She was speaking at a seminar on "Parenting to Build Leaders for the 21st Century", held to celebrate APM Group’s 20th anniversary.

"Three key things to prepare your children are to learn, unlearn and relearn," said Srisethi, citing famous author and futurist Alvin Toffler.

APM Group’s parent coaching curriculum incorporates four pillars – fostering an "authentic connection" between parents and their children, creative thinking and expression, meaningful and honest communication, and creating opportunities to contribute meaningfully.

A survey has revealed that parents, on average, have only five minutes per day of "meaningful communication" with their children, compared with about four hours a day of their exposure to the media. Authentic connection, meanwhile, involves an experience of shared feeling, a valuing of each other and recognition of connection, she said.

Traditional parenting is about telling children to "be good", since the aim is to manage behaviour through lecturing, threats, punishments or rewards, and this has resulted in the world having so many leaders who failed to regulate themselves properly, she said.

New-generation parenting, on the other hand, is about "respect and connection" with the aim to develop necessary "life skills" for children. Instead of trying to "control the behaviour" of children, the new parenting recognises that misbehaviour provides a chance for learning.

To develop their children, parents should aim to find potential strengths in the challenging behaviour of their children through transforming negative leadership quantities into positive ones. For example, if a child is stubborn, he may also possess some good qualities of leadership like confidence, insistence and persistency. Or a "manipulated" child may possess influential, persuasive and strategic qualities.

"As parents, if we can see our children’s challenging behaviours as positive qualities, it will change the way we discipline or interact with them," Srisethi said.

Another strategy is for parents to focus on certain leadership qualities that they want their children to develop. For example, if their child is confident, parents should recognise it and often reaffirm to the kid that "I see confidence in you".

"We don’t lie or say [they are] something they aren’t. The beauty of it is that people usually [live] up to expectations that other people have of them."