Inspire Your Kids To Dream Big - Adora Svitak

My response to parents who really want to encourage kids to dream big and pursue their passions would be to really model that. I think that a lot of times we learn the behavior of really restricting what we think we can do because we see our parents doing that. You know, my mom or my dad might say something like, well, I've always wanted to start this company or read this book, but I don't have the time or I don't have the energy. And as soon as we see that, then we have this model in our heads that that's what grown ups do. And since everyone wants to be like mom and dad, of course they'll kind of adopt that attitude. So really practice what you preach would be the number one thing. But the second thing is thinking about how you might respond to your kid when they walk up to you with a really big dream. In my case, my parents were tested when I said, hey, I want to publish a book. And for a par out there, it might be something like, I want to find a new species of dinosaur when I become a paleontologist and go dig up bones, or I want to save the world by doing blank. It could really be anything. But it's up to a parent's response to really shape how the child then looks at their dreams in the future.