Most parents say they want their children to succeed. But what do we mean by success? In our culture, success is often reduced to accomplishments. Doing well in school, getting into college, getting a good job with a high standard of living. But while that kind of success may make us proud as parents, it doesn’t necessarily make our child happy. Happiness has little to do with success in the traditional sense; it depends on our close connection with others (one of our three big ideas) and on what psychologist Abraham Maslow called self-actualization, which we can interpret as realizing our full potential by investing in, cultivating, and sharing our unique talents with the world. Not everyone can be a star, but all of us can—if we’re lucky—engage in the cycle of self-discovery and expression that psychologist Edward Hallowell calls “mastery.” If we think of mastery as wings that we help our children grow, then we’ve reached the pinnacle of a long-term parenting approach that relies on training, not control. Raising a master child depends on our ability to regulate our own anxiety and enhance our connection (our big ideas).

Master carpenter. Master teacher. The word itself is powerful. We raise children with the hope that they will have the drive and courage to take on challenges and master them, because that is where true success comes from. The times change, but our desire to master the challenge we face remains constant, whether it is running a mile fast, marrying for love, enjoying a career that supports our family, or giving back to others through volunteer work. The ability to achieve our personal goals is what allows us to be satisfied throughout our lives. Therefore, mastery is essential to happiness, to achieving, and to being happy while achieving.

Most importantly, entering the mastery loop is the most reliable way to enter the state of contentment called flow, in which time disappears. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the creator of the idea of ​​flow, defines this state as being so deeply immersed in an activity that we are transported to a state of pure focus and joy. Athletes call it perfection, but it’s not just for world-class athletes. The passionate pursuit of a goal can bring joy to any of us as long as we’re willing to dedicate ourselves to learning and creating with integrity. Flow and mastery transcend conventional notions of achievement and happiness to give our lives deeper meaning.

Mastery is also the source of self-esteem. Because people sometimes compensate for feeling bad about themselves by adopting an arrogant and inaccurate view of their talents, asking them if they feel good about themselves doesn’t accurately measure their self-esteem. This has led to some confusion about whether self-esteem is a positive trait. But let’s set aside the difficulties of measuring self-esteem and define it simply as the knowledge that we are more than enough just as we are, on our own terms, regardless of external circumstances. This belief in ourselves—this self-esteem—is essential to emotional health.

Self-esteem begins with unconditional love, which convinces us at a deep level that we have intrinsic value as human beings regardless of what we achieve. But as children grow, their self-esteem becomes based on real achievement. All humans are tested by their environments, with tasks to master throughout their lives, the growth required of us, the practice and training, the obstacles and tests that shape our identity, revealing the gifts we share with the world. So, as we grow up, self-esteem comes from feeling that we have what it takes to turn our dreams and talents into reality—in other words, mastery. Mastery is not a one-time feeling. It is a way of dealing with experiences that, with repetition, becomes a learned trait, a way of living life. A master is someone who loves to explore, learn, grow, persevere, practice, master something, enjoy the whole creative process, whether they “succeed” or “fail” in the eyes of others, and then move on to the next goal. Sometimes, we assume that these children are simply more gifted, or have a self-motivation or a drive to achieve. But these are effects, not causes. Every child is born with inherent talent. Any child who enjoys the process of mastery has the inner drive to hone his natural abilities and achieve—as long as the achievement he seeks matters. Achievement is secondary, a side benefit of mastery.

What is mastery training?

Your responsibility as a parent is to gradually remove yourself from the task. You start with a helpless child who can’t even control his hands. Over the years, he learns to crawl, walk, run, feed himself, communicate with others, read, walk around the neighborhood, drive a car, and pass his high school exams. At each stage, his biological instincts and the human spirit push him toward the next developmental hurdle. He struggles, sweats, clears the hurdle, regains his balance, and then pushes forward again. Is it an elegant process? Rarely. Can you trust Mother Nature to help your child get it right? Yes.

But what about the glitches? Some children certainly have difficulty learning to read, communicate with other children, move from one situation to another, control their moods, or remember their bags. Every child needs extra support from us in some area at some point in their life. This is the scaffolding that helps your child develop a sense of mastery.

But many of the challenges our children face in their normal development are entirely avoidable. In fact, we parents often unwittingly create them. The irony is that out of our desire to help our children succeed—and our concerns about whether we and our children are good enough—we try to shape them in ways that are counterproductive and destroy the joy they find in developing a sense of mastery themselves. We overdo it.

In motivating them, we over-help, over-protect, over-schedule, and over-control. These three basic principles provide antidotes to these tendencies and save us from our own fears.

1. Unconditional love. Some parents think that unconditional love kills a child’s desire to work hard, because she is accepted as she is. So they try to encourage mastery by pushing their child toward achievement, inadvertently sending the message that their love is dependent on whether their child is doing well. The tragedy is that by helping a child succeed, these parents destroy the foundation of her happiness—the belief that she is loved for who she is. Ironically, fear saps the joy that children need to achieve mastery. The hard work that leads to mastery requires a passion that can only come from within a child, a joy in every step of practice and exploration.

2. Respect. We show respect by appreciating our unique child wherever she is in her development. We respect her exploration and self-discovery, rather than feeling like we have to rush in to teach and rescue her. We respect her play, daydreams, and other interests as her primary work, rather than interrupting or directing her play. We don’t insist that our child play a sport or play an instrument we love when her interests lie elsewhere. We respect her plans and passions as they unfold at each age. We may expect our child to persevere in school as best she can, but we don’t force her to sacrifice her curiosity and self-interest for the sake of (achieving) on ​​standardized tests. We don’t see ourselves as our child’s boss, but as partners or even helpers who help her determine her own path, and we are always there as a reference. Instead of evaluating her according to some imagined developmental norm and setting her up for failure by pushing her to do things she can’t yet do, we support her to develop as she is, regardless of what other children her age are doing.

3. Scaffolding. What is scaffolding? It’s the structure that surrounds a building while it’s being built. After the building is complete, the scaffolding comes down—the building has outgrown it, and it’s no longer needed. But a building can’t be built without scaffolding. The scaffolding we set up for our child is what allows them to build their own internal structure to be successful in each particular behavior. It includes:

* Routines and habits (we should always put things back where they belong when we’re done with them).

* Behavior expectations (in our family, anything worth doing is worth doing).

* Modeling (look, if you push it here, it will open!).

* Safe environment (child-proofing tools).

The best way to help a child experience mastery is to observe them respectfully, see where they need support, and then build scaffolding in those places. For example, we might teach a child who loses possessions specific habits to keep track of things. Or when our child is having a disagreement with another child, we can listen empathetically to her grievances and then help her come up with ideas for what she could say to the other child, rather than approaching the other child’s parents directly. Respectful observation and strategic scaffolding require more effort on our part than stepping in to do things ourselves or simply expecting our child to master things on her own. But the result is a confident, self-motivated child who sees herself as capable of taking on new things and succeeding.