Advice

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
Harry S Truman

We love to give advice to other people. It can be so difficult to see them doing something that we know that we would not be able to succeed at if we were doing what we see them doing. We are so sure that we know a better way because it has worked for us. We forget that other people have a whole different set of strengths and weaknesses and experiences, and they need to find out what works for them.

Of all people, we most want to give advice to our children. We love them more than anyone and we so much want them to be successful and happy. We want to teach them how to live well and prosper. And with our children more than anyone else, it is difficult for us to remember that they are not just an extention of ourselves, that they too have a whole different set of strengths and weaknesses. And as they get older, they develop their own set of goals and values which can be quite different from ours.

The best way to give advice to your children, or anyone else for that matter, is to find out what they want, and then advise them to do it. The only way for them to be motivated to do something will be if they can see how it fits into their own goals and values. We need to first of all appreciate that other people, including our children, are supposed to have goals and values and viewpoints different from ours, and then to find out what those are. Then we can encourage and advise our children to do what they need to do to find the path that's right for them. That is the only way we can actually be helpful to others.