Anonymous wrote:It’s not luck but it’s also hard to describe exactly what it is.

Lots of people praise effort, encourage achievement and have family dinners but still don’t have high achieving kids.

Yet, other people will have 3 or 4 kids who all end up high achievers. It’s definitely not luck, the exact mix of actions that led to that result are hard to isolate and harder to describe.

In part because different kids respond to different things. What would motivate some would crush others. I genuinely don’t think there’s an answer to this. I think it’s easy to identify specific traits that lead to success but not how to get them.

My therapist says most of my overachieving comes from having a narcissist father who treated me like an object and not a person and having a mother who we not so affectionately refer to as “the wire mother “ as in the experiment with the monkeys w that ended up psychotic. I ended up extremely driven and high performing and my sister married a guy who is in prison so the child rearing methods appears to be about fifty percent effective.

I don’t pay for grades - they need to be motivated on their own.

I read to them every night before bed - birth through 6th grade.

They need to do their best and they need to complete their HW / assignments etc.

My oldest is in 9th grade. I recently gave him a college book (the 2024 version) that my parents gave to me when I was in 9th gr and I basically said - I am not going to nag you. The reason why you want to get good grades is to go to a good college and you need to motivated on your own for that - I already went to college and I’m not going to micromanage you. It’s for you now - not for me.

Let them struggle a bit. They need to learn on their own. If you snowflake them, they may get into whatever you want them to, but they won’t learn and they won’t achieve.

Your child's personality and IQ are largely inherited, with a reassortment of parental genes.

You cannot instill drive, which is the quality most essential to success. But your child can inherit initiative and risk-taking (which come with their own disadvantages, as you can imagine).

You cannot change your child's intrinsic level of intelligence, but you can maximize your child's potential by encouraging and modeling curiosity from a young age. Lots of reading, not just front-of-shop drivel pushed on customers, but the classics, which are generally written with more complex sentences and richer vocabulary; not just museum walk-throughs, but actually poring at exhibits, reading the labels and asking questions of docents; not just spewing back answers on homework, but actually figuring out math problems and other fiddly teasers. In short, YOUR brain has to be up to the task, OP! Education begins at home, even if you hire tutors - YOU need to figure out if the tutors are any good.

Expose your child to lots of successful professionals of every sector of activity, and talk to him about how the world works. There is no room for fluffy magical thinking about careers.

It’s not luck but it’s also hard to describe exactly what it is.

Lots of people praise effort, encourage achievement and have family dinners but still don’t have high achieving kids.

Yet, other people will have 3 or 4 kids who all end up high achievers. It’s definitely not luck, the exact mix of actions that led to that result are hard to isolate and harder to describe.

No trust fund lazy bums

It’s mostly genetic so try to procure the best DNA you can.

Be around other high achievers. Live in an affluent neighborhood.

Their peer group is important. Who are their role models? Who do they strive to be like?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an average person and would like my child to have a chance at being a high achiever in life. How can I help or guide him?

Talk to them all the time, starting the day they are born.

Narrate your life. Explain concepts, vocabulary, causal relationships.

Your kids will literally be years ahead of their peers.

This has nothing to do with a kid becoming high achieving

Anonymous wrote:It's not luck. It's tons of nurturing. Play lots of educational games with them. Do random math questions or spelling questions. We play jeopardy or "know your times tables" while driving in the car. Put them in extracurricular activities that they show promise in.

Nope! You totally cannot nurture someone into being a high achiever. No way. It's personality and nature not external conditioning. I have 2 kids. One is a straight A student who will not settle for less. One feels that a C is average and respectable and does not see any issue with that grade. My A student excels in everything she does. I once asked her what drives her and she said - it's simply desire. She wants to succeed and wants to not be mediocre, to be excellent. There is NO other explanation. I asked her what I could do to help her brother with this kind of drive and she is wise enough to say - there's nothing to do. "Either you have the desire or not." And in thinking about it, she really is correct.

I had that drive in my earlier years. I no longer have it as a mom but when I was in my 20s/30s, I had it. I was a rich spoiled brat who never had to work a day in my life. I waited tables in college and cold called to get my internships all through college summers. NOBODY ever taught me to do this nor did I need to do this. I wanted the experience and I wanted to succeed on my own terms and through my own efforts.

With all this being said, I will say, high achievers are not necessarily happy people. In fact, most are not. My C kid is happier than my A kid on the whole. I am happier now less driven than I was when I was running my own business and making a zillion dollars.

Be careful what you wish for. I've always said so many times to my kids, it never matters where you start in life nor how high you end up the food chain. The most important thing is that you're happy. Money makes most of us happier but there's a balance that needs to be learned. Without that balance, no amount of high achievement will take the place of a happy life. Nature doesn't change. Your personality, actions, habits, activities, everything external can be impacted but nature is fixed. The motivation to achieve has to be internal not external. That instinct and nature to want to do well in anything you do isn't developed, it may take time to reveal itself whether through maturity or whatever but it's something that either you have or do not have and it never goes away completely. It's there when you are age 5 and it's there when you are aged 50 - it's an attitude. It's not "success" but rather drive.

Anonymous wrote:I am an average person and would like my child to have a chance at being a high achiever in life. How can I help or guide him?

Talk to them all the time, starting the day they are born.

Narrate your life. Explain concepts, vocabulary, causal relationships.

Your kids will literally be years ahead of their peers.

Anonymous wrote:How do you raise kids that are motivated to excel at whatever they’re interested in? I don’t want lazy losers.

Are you a lazy loser?

Why are you average, OP? Do you consider yourself a disciplined, driven person? Those are important traits in successful people. I’m not sure we can instill those as much as we’d like to think. I think you either have it or you don’t. I see this in my own kids. I was a high achiever and way more disciplined and driven than my own kids. But my parents didn’t really do anything to make me that way. I just was.

It’s not nurturing, it’s temperament. And also timing - some people don’t find their spark and becoming high achieving until well into adulthood.
- mom of three, and they are all very different, from each other and their parents