Childhood doesnt just involve the freedom to play, run around with abandon, and finger paint to your hearts content. For children, it involves a constant learning ground of trial and error, and to obey their elders on everything from what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

Its dealing with bullying from their peers, which today is at an all-time high. Its trying to figure out how to speak to others and standing out while learning to fit in. Its staying away from the dangers of technology, while at the same time using it for their benefit.

And for most children, it involves the experience of mistrusting their intuition, in order to get their parents or teachers approval. Its not all play and no work in fact, children are working all the time, by learning how to do, see and perceive themselves through what is shown to them.

Come to think of it, being a child now is a world away from what it used to be.
Do you want your children to earn their passport to a confident, successful future? Of course you do, which is why you should consider this article their ticket to ride off into a prosperous future.

Apply these tips and youll help them ease from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood with a sense of security, freedom and the freedom to be who they really are.

Teach Them To Trust Their Intuition
Intuition otherwise known as your gut, its your all-knowing sense of whats right and wrong for you. And if childhood has taught us anything, its this at some point in our own childhood, we learned to mistrust it, only to have to re-teach ourselves in adulthood, how precious our intuition really is and how to use it correctly in our lives.

So, teach your children the same and boost their confidence, insight, intelligence and sense of self.
Teach them the things that will really matter in their lives how to tell the difference between what feels right and what feels strange, tense, wrong. If they meet a stranger who tries to touch them inappropriately, or a teacher bullies them in the classroom, how does this feel?

Does it make them scared, sad, or angry?

Spend time with your children, from the time they are toddlers to way into adolescence (even when they roll their eyes at you during a cheesy conversation about the importance of intuition) so that they can learn firsthand from you how sacred intuition is.

Dont Fixate on the Failures
Fixating lately on the failures of your children? While you, as a parent, arent perfect, neither are your children. Its meant to be that way, because both you and your children are evolving, one mistake at a time.

You cant have a confident, hopeful child if they are constantly being reminded or reprimanded for what theyre doing wrong, what theyre not succeeding in, or how theyre not smart enough fast enough, or creative enough in school or out of it.

Thats not the setup you want to create, and thats not a confident inducing environment your children will thrive in.

Thats setting your children up for failure and frustration.

If your child is naturally gifted at playing soccer, but struggles with algebra, dont push them into taking advanced math courses, and squash their dreams of going pro in soccer. Encourage it, and do what you can to help him improve his skills and opportunities as an athlete.

Focus on his/her strengths, gifts and unique talents that set them apart from everyone else.

Teach them to embrace who and what they are, independent of your own hopes and wishes for their future. Theyll pave their own way in this life your job is to help them get there as gracefully as possible as their number one fan, no matter what they end up doing, or what direction their enthusiasm points to.

Praise, Not Punishment
Children live in a world of You cant, instead of You can. The majority of the choices they make are dictated to them by a parent, a teacher, an older sibling, or a babysitter.

So easily parents can make their decisions on autopilot, or out of habit, that as they cross into adolescence (when some freedom is necessary) they continue the pattern of Dont do this! or Dont do that, that they cross over into adulthood, unable to make decisions for themselves.

Boost their confidence from their fifth birthday all the way to their twenty fifth by focusing on praising them, not punishing. Sure, this may be hard to do, and at times you may have to resist your automatic knack for telling your child what to do and when to do it.

But when you begin to open up the door of opportunity, and focus on praising them for their wise decision making, theyll begin to trust their intuition, all of which is a path you showed them how to walk.