How to celebrate your child’s achievements for life-long success

My teen came home from school yesterday and said, “Mum, a teacher's going to call you.” My mind went racing to “Did he flunk an assignment?  Is everything okay?” (this is the problem-solving part of me kicking in), but what came out of my mouth was a neutral, “oh, okay.” 

He then went onto say, “Yeah, my film made it as a finalist in a national comp” (this is his second film that’s made a national final!)

Inside myself, my thoughts were, “THAT’S FREAKIN’ AWESOME!! I’M SO EXCITED FOR YOU!!” but what I said in a fairly neutral tone was, “Oh wow, how do you feel about it?”

He replied, “Yeah, pretty good..”

I replied, “That’s awesome, buddy, I’m excited for you (I had to share some of that excitement bursting inside but played cool LOL ) ”

So why not celebrate straight out of the gate? 

When we seek validation from external sources, our self-value is subject to that validation. SO if we don’t get it when we want it, our self-value fluctuates and is subject to things outside our control. 

For me, I looked for validation in pay raises, compliments from others, and others recognising my work or telling me I’ve done a good job. And in the absence of these points of validation, my self-value went down. My value was at the mercy of the next point of validation from something or someone outside of me. This has been a hard pattern of behaviour to break and one that really held me back in business for a long time (because for a long time there, I was a team of 1! It is also not a pattern of behaviour I want to pass onto my children. 

It may not be possible to do this every time and when you can, be intentional. It will help them learn to validate themselves and rely on themselves to pursue life goals and know when they've done a good job rather than only relying on feedback from others. 

Hit reply and let me know if this resonated for you.

Much love, 

Dina