Transfer Skills

Parents play a vital role in helping their children climb the social (?) ladder. I am not sure if the term social ladder would be accurate, but for the sake of this post, as you acquire more soft and hard skills, a better way of thinking, and a strong yet founded self-confidence, you go up in the social ladder. I don’t think money is a factor here because, unlike the mentioned criteria, money can be easily lost; however, money can indeed help you quickly create a fake facade. Do you want to call this ladder something else? Sure, be my guest; however, I imagine it as someone going up or down depending on various factors.

So it boils down to this, at which step will you find yourself as you grow independent from your caregivers? Consider this an experiment I have conducted over half a lifespan; based on my observations of various cases; I noticed two categories:

1. Parents who have helped their children reach a ladder step higher than the level they have been living at. The trick is simple; assuming that the parent is 20 years older than his/her son or daughter, try to imagine the number of learning experiences he/she can give the child. So technically speaking, assuming the child became independent at 18 or 21 or 23, he/she could have acquired considerable skills from his/her parent(s). The parent is older; hence, the child is starting way ahead of his/her parent when the parent was the same age.
2. Parents who ignored their children and only let them reach a ladder step lower than the parents’ level. Suppose a parent has the mindset that he/she wants their children to have but, for some reason, cannot dedicate the necessary resources to raising them properly. In that case, we cannot expect the children to acquire remarkable skills except the bare minimum for their survival. Most likely, the children would lack many skills that their parents enjoy. A straightforward example would be when the father lives in a different geographic location due to work requirements. Regardless of the father’s skills, there would be no way to transfer most of them to the child with the geographic distance. Another example is when the mother is too overloaded with her work, shifting the responsibility to a nanny, the mother won’t have the time to teach her child what she already knows unless she can dedicate the necessary time for that.

What does all of this mean? This means that, by the time you join college, you will suddenly find yourself managing with a certain mindset and an acquired/inherited set of skills that will either give you an edge over your peers or give others an advantage over you. If it is the latter, don’t give up; once you become aware of any of your shortcomings/weaknesses, you can at least start to seek a remedy. However, you must become aware of it and admit it. If you deny it, you won’t have any reason to fix what does not exist.