Welcome to YOUR Fuller Life: Mom Goals

In this Segment of Welcome to Your Fuller Life: Mom Goals we will be joined by Katherine Firestone from Firestone Institute to talk about what we want most for our kids as parents. For them to be successful. And yet so often these days parents focus on the wrong things and miss out on teaching their kids a major component of being successful: having empathy. To be successful parents, we need to shift our focus to empathy.

To succeed, kids need to do a lot of stuff, such as: be the soccer star, play the oboe, perform in all the musicals, and volunteer, not to mention, get straight A’s or forget about going to a good college. Even preschoolers leave school to then go to Spanish, music, and art classes. And if kids do all of those things, then they’ll succeed, right? Well, there is (at least) one major flaw in that line of thinking: it has completely neglected empathy development. All of those things kids need to do are about themselves: I need to build my resume. I need to be the best. It’s part of our “selfie” culture. What kids really need to be happy and successful (in other words, to thrive) is empathy. The research shows that people who can empathize are more likely to:

• Be healthy
• Be gritty
• Be kind
• Find true happiness
• Have strong social support
• Score higher on math and reading tests
• Think critically
• Have moral courage
• Be financially sound