How to Raise Happy and Successful Children

There are many so-called experts in the field of raising children, and parents laugh because single people offer the most tips on raising children.

But raising children is not like filing your taxes, buying a car, or following a recipe.
Rather, great parenting is none of the above.

Great parenting comes from one word - loving.

You'll notice I did not say Love. People generally do not do Love very well.
They get confused. They trip over the how to mechanism.
Loving, on the other hand, is a breeze. It's engaging in conversation, cuddling, chasing, making stuff, laughing - all the things we do naturally.

If great parenting is so easy, why don't we see more successful, happy people? I think it is in a large part due to our marriages.
Our marriages challenge us, hinder us, anger us, and cause us to seek help through friends, drinking, outside the home activities, etc.
All activities that do not make for loving. The solution? This is where things become work-like. I believe the solution comes from support more than anything. Supporting one another financially, with time, with patience, with making one's spouse's life easier.

And we do not see much evidence of this. If we did, drinking would drop, married people would spend more time with the family, and loving would prevail. Let's dive a little deeper into support and how this makes raising children easier and more successful.
My wife does not work. This is a sacrifice we make.
Her income would be wonderful to have.

Also, my income is not great, but I save 30% for my children.

Easy to say I Love You, hard to do it over time.
So my two boys will graduate from high school and have over $300,000 each.

That's support.
That's loving.

What we get in return for our sacrifice? My wife cooks organic meals for us. She welcomes my one son home from school.

She slowly, at his pace, gets him off to school.

She has a relatively stress-free life to "be there" for them.
It's old school, but old school works in the poorest countries in world.

Think about that - the poorest countries in the world have bad water, limited food, and yet there is growth. I attribute this to mothers mothering their children. It happens all over nature.

Looking at this from another angle, a mother drops her child at day care and says I Love You.
Really, then why don't you spend time with me? Answer: I prefer not to.

I support my wife in being a mother, and when the boys are old enough, she will return to her career.

In the meantime, these two boys are loved and well cared for.

Also, for me, I get healthy meals, I live in a home where there is patience, long conversations, and a fun environment.

That, I believe, is the goal: a fun environment.

This supports our home life, where we spend a relatively vast amount of time as a family raising our children.