Raising children who want to do good in the world

At dinner with girlfriends on Sunday night, we got to chat about what enables children to want to do good in the world that doesn’t come at the cost of their own inner peace and happiness. 

When our children are babies and toddlers, we have at the back of our minds the parent we want to be and the positive influence we want to have on them, and this competes with the daily reality of navigating tantrums and challenging behaviour and learning to parent the child we have in front of us, to flourish. 

Add to this us being emotional and petulant ourselves at times (please tell me it’s not just me?!), and the focus on who our children grow up to be is even further from our minds until we give ourselves space and time to think and be intentional. 

What helps me to think about how to raise children who want to do good whilst being healthy and happy themselves is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and specifically self-actualisation needs. The theory is that we all have needs as a human, and the lower-level needs need to be met before the higher-level needs are unmet. 

Image credit: simplypsychology.org

From the moment our child is born and research shows, even whilst they are still in the womb - we are parenting them. We house and shelter them in and outside the womb, we feed them (Physiological needs), help them to feel safe and secure physically and emotionally (Safety needs), we love them, accept them, and help them feel they belong (Social needs). We help them build their confidence and worth so they value themselves (Esteem needs) and then we teach them about personal growth and finding their true calling ( Self-actualisation needs). 

Now if you’ve attended any of my programs, you hear me say this often…if any of these needs were not met for you as a child and you haven’t intentionally learnt them, then it's likely to be a gap in your skill set. We cannot know what we simply don’t know or never been shown.

For many of us, we had our physiological and physical safety needs met and maybe some social needs, but very little beyond that. So, if, like me, you’re here chasing your dreams and wondering why you keep hitting roadblocks, it is likely one of these middle and lower needs being unmet. 

If we want to raise children to do good in the world, we first have to learn the skills that weren’t modelled for us to meet the lower, middle, and higher level needs to give our children the best opportunity to do good, aka their calling. 

We each have a calling or a purpose, and our job as parents isn’t to define what that is for our child; our job is to set them up as best we can to free them to find it themselves. 

What needs were unmet for you?  And where are the skill gaps that you want to develop? 

Let’s do this together. 

Much love, 

Dina