How to Raise an Entrepreneur

In another article in the Wall St. Journal (June 13th) Barbara Haislip interviewed some famous entrepreneurs to learn what experiences they had as children that enabled them to develop the skills necessary to become risk-taking successful entrepreneurs as adults.

Among those interviewed was Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, who now has his own highly successful foundation. He discussed the importance of living in two quite different communities and learning: “Being exposed to and learning about these cultures taught me early on that there are different ways to think about any single situation, and that you don’t always have to do things the way they’ve always been done.”

Another article talked about teaching children how to expand their thinking capabilities, thus potentially raising their IQ. They created a game for the children that was actually a mental exercise that gave cues and puzzles to be solved – which according to the authors reduced squandering time on less short-term memory things than necessary such as irrelevant details. They say: “The children got better at separating the wheat from the chaff across a variety of different tasks” – according to John Jonides, a senior author on the paper, being quoted by Jonah Lehrer.

In my book, I have a chapter about teaching children how to resolve conflict. Basically, I ask parents to consider how they are depriving their children of learning opportunities by always acting as decision-makers and arbitrators.
Children need a vast variety of experiences in order to grow to be independent, creative and successful adults.