What Are You Doing to Unlock Their Potential?
Do we really want what is best for our children? Or do we simply pay lip service? Without a doubt, it is the most commonly said phrase in parental vernacular. Listen to it echo around the world in living rooms, playgrounds, and coffee shops. “I just want what is best for my child.” We all say our child has so much potential and the truth is they do, but what are we doing about it?
Let’s Get Serious About Potential
Potential is utterly useless if it remains latent. How often do we read what potential our child has in their school reports?
Great – so your child has potential. So what are you going to do about that? We, as a society, sit back and let government departments dictate the education our children receive. Parents who are brave enough to take matters into their own hands and homeschool their children are certainly not given the respect or kudos they deserve.
Potential is like a good cheese. Looked after well, given the right conditions it is incredible, leave that cheese out on the bench for a few weeks in hot weather while you are away on vacation – and it is going to turn into something very unpleasant.
If there is a wide gap between potential and the realisation of that potential, people become frustrated and angry. Confidence and self-esteem suffer. In children, this either turns a child inward to self-destructive behaviours. Or it turns outwards, and it displays as disruptive. These are the kids labelled as ‘trouble makers’, the ‘bad’ kids. Quite simply they are the ones hurting the most. These are the children that are telling us what we are doing is failing.
The wonderful thing about potential is that it serves the need of the individual as well as the needs of society. From an individual perspective utilising and working with our unique combination of skills and life, experience makes us feel good, important and valued. Living with purpose and passion, we then contribute that to the lives around us and society as a whole benefits.
What Can You Do About It?
So it seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? So why are we not investing in this? As parents, teachers, governments and as individuals? Why is fulfilling potential, engagement, a sense of purpose, not measured, not valued enough to earn a spot on school reports? Shouldn’t they be at the top? Without these, everything else is pointless.
So back to us as parents, we feel hamstrung. How can we take on the system? We don’t want to push our children. There is the feeling that we should let children discover their own interests and strengths, and that is an absolutely desirable objective.
However left wandering to their own devices, and yes, unfortunately, you can take devices in the literal sense here, children are wandering around an arid, infertile wasteland.
It makes perfect sense, therefore, to provide a vehicle. A place where they are inspired, where imagination is fuelled, and possibilities abound. An opportunity that offers rich fertile stimulating ground. We need to equip them with the tools they require to discover their potential. Discover their strengths, build their confidence in a safe space where they can take intellectual risks and play around with ideas. The U Genius 3iQ™ iKIDS Program is the perfect space.
Future Skills – Today
This has always been vital. However, it has to be said, for this and coming generations of children, it is now crucial. Our world is advancing rapidly, jobs are disappearing, and new opportunities abound. But only for those who can identify and thus them but capitalise on them. Our children, more than ever before, must be adaptable, resilient. The future is exciting, but it will bring new and currently unforeseen challenges. We need to grow a generation of Imaginative Thinkers and Contributors. And an age where potential is actually realised.
Entelechy
This is nothing new, Aristotle wrote about ENTELECHY. It describes the making real of what is only potential. More accurately, the vehicle that turns potential into its realised form.
So if you actually want what is best for your children you need to focus on that too. Entelechy must be at the centre of your child’s life. Find a vehicle, a method, a world that offers your child imaginative freedom, a space to have fun with ideas and take intellectual risks and leaps, without judgement, an arena where children learn and embrace the fundamental skills required to unlock their potential completely. Give them the springboard to dive into life.
