As a mother or father, you have a lot of responsibility to deal with just in taking care of the basic necessities of your child and growing that child into a ‘good citizen’. This takes a lot of your time, focus, and other resources, so you might not have the ‘chops’ yourself for doing what it takes to be an entrepreneur. But, since we are all born with some basic entrepreneurial ‘tools’, It’s very possible that you have created a budding entrepreneur who just needs your support to grow into a full-fledged success.

There are many children out there in the business world who are doing extremely well at things they enjoy doing. Certainly child stars in the entertainment business will be one of the first things that come to mind. But did you know there was even a nine-year-old who became a successful writer? There is almost no limit to what a young person ‘on a mission’ can accomplish when they find their audience and are not burdened with the negativity and “can’t”s that most of us seem to learn to accept as we are getting older. Imagination is the key to bring your budding entrepreneur into full blossom: “Impossible” is not yet ingrained in their vocabulary and you should discourage your child from using that word, just as you should consider that it is possible your child is the next Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Henry Ford or Howard Hughes. In reality, it’s even possible that YOU could be the next Colonel Sanders.

Encourage your child to use his/her imagination at every opportunity. Playing “What if” is an excellent way to stimulate your child’s imagination and can be done almost anytime, anywhere. Do not restrict your child’s creativity by responding with words like “can’t” or “impossible” when they seem to be imagining things that are totally foreign to you. Remember, they have an entirely different point of view than you and their minds are like blank sheets of clean, white paper. With genetic engineering, “When pigs fly” is not such a foreign, ‘impossible’ concept anymore. They will probably have dreams and visions unlike any you’ve ever had. Expose them to as many different characters, environments, and problems-to-be-solved as you possibly can and encourage them to ask questions. Never betray their trust by being dishonest and claiming knowledge of things about which you are ignorant, but, instead, show them where they can find the answers to their questions. Trust may even end up being more important than love. Betrayal of trust can cost you love.

You are not in competition with your child. As a parent of a young entrepreneur, you must be the coach/advisor. Some of the best coaches were not necessarily the best players, and you can’t both be the chief if your child has an idea that he/she wants to ‘run’ with. But you also cannot put too much pressure on them as children are fickle and the brilliant idea they had today may be much lower on their priority list tomorrow as, say, playing video games with a friend. If your child displays a solid interest and level of excitement in any sort of business venture, you may even consider entering into a ‘contract’ with your child that provides for a course of action to follow that you both agree on and penalties if the child abandons that commitment. An important aspect of entrepreneurism is a person’s ability to make a decision and commit to it. This is also a fundamental characteristic of leadership and most entrepreneurs automatically take on a leadership role because of it. It’s never too early to teach you children games, and business is the greatest game in the world. Your child should learn to love business and the basics are not hard to learn. You are more experienced with people’s moods than your child is, depending on age and maturity, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you to be able to judge your own child’s mood at any given time and adjust your response to that mood to create the most positive outcome. Any entrepreneurial endeavor on the part of your child has to maintain a ‘fun’ element, as should most aspects of your lives.

There are certain ‘people skills’ that your child will learn to develop, if he/she does not already have a natural inclination in those areas. These are all inter-related as they have to do with (public) speaking to people, selling to people (even the front yard lemonade stand requires some marketing), networking with people, and customer service (what if the lemonade tastes strange?). As when you improve by competing against people whom you believe to be better, faster, more experienced, etc., than you in sports or even working tasks, your child will improve when he or she is given challenges to overcome. The more exposure to others with developed skills in the areas where your child may be lacking, the greater and faster his/her improvement will be as long as you are there to support your child and act as the ‘cheerleader’ as well. Never discourage your child from interacting with others, even strangers, as long as you are there to protect him/her and he/she understands the parameters. Find out who your child likes or admires and take him/her to where that person is speaking or conducting presentations in front of audiences. Even if you are uncomfortable with public speaking, selling, networking, or customer service, make sure you don’t project that onto your child’s ‘blank slate’. You are your child’s parent, not their ‘friend’, and your job as a parent is to make your child the best person that he or she can be, which often means giving your child the tools and opportunities to become something more than the person you may be.

How can you recognize the entrepreneurial ‘spirit’ in your child? There are certain characteristics, or traits, that most successful entrepreneurs have been shown to have. Some your own child may display that suggest an entrepreneurial bent can be imagination, creativity, commitment (once an idea has been formed) and passion (to execute that idea), and tenacity or stubbornness (once the commitment to the idea has been made). Remember the thousands of light bulb filaments Thomas Edison experimented with before discovering the one that he always believed was there. Your child may also be someone who is willing to ‘put it all on the line’ for something that he or she is passionate about. And, it is important that the young entrepreneur have a passion for solving problems once one has been brought to his/her attention and caught his/her interest. Introspection is also an important trait when it is used to analytically self-examine motives and reasons for failures. With these traits on hand, other ‘tools’ can be had through education, which is where you come in. You may not display the traits listed above, but you can, and must, be the support system for your young entrepreneur. Education for a young entrepreneur is not likely to come from the local school system, so you have to augment it, or provide an alternative. Home-schooling is a possibility, and some organizations provide entrepreneurial programs for children, albeit teenagers, mostly. Even the U.S. SBA actually has a teen business site.

It is your responsibility to see your child is educated, but also is grounded in reality should his/her endeavors start to bear fruit. Children typically have no concept of money or fiscal responsibility until they have started receiving an allowance, or making money themselves, and spending it on the things they want. If your child is to be an entrepreneur, then you have to teach that child to understand and be comfortable with the idea that he/she may not be able to rely on a ‘regular paycheck’. You may not have had training in money-handling as a child yourself, but now, as an adult, you have some of the knowledge that you will have to impart into your child should his/her efforts start to ‘pay off’. You have to educate your child in the concepts of ‘income’ and ‘profits’ and make sure that you do not attach a negative to making profits as some of us ‘economic martyrs’ have a tendency to do. One of the other traits that successful entrepreneurs have is the love of making money, as it allows them the freedom to do other things and to contribute to the world’s bigger pictures. You need to teach your child about money and to love making it because of its value as a tool. If your young entrepreneur want to be “rich”, then play that “What if” game with him/her and explore the possible outcomes of having riches. Would they share? Who would they help? With those questions in mind, you will also be equipped to teach your child about the value of saving and, ultimately, investing.

Other things that may come up if your little entrepreneur hits an innovation homerun: Do you need an investor? How do you find one? Is this an idea that is better served by taking it public as opposed to keeping it private? Will you need additional help? The answers to these and many other questions may not be in your area of expertise, so you may have to enlist the aid of an outside consultant or mentor. They are out there, so don’t panic – you may even have someone close to you whom you haven’t considered.

Certainly there will be times when your child makes mistakes &/or fails at something. Your job is to keep the level of motivation up and maintain the child’s passion and elevated mood that he or she may have temporarily lost, regardless of whether he/she is destined to be an entrepreneur or not. Unlike the way most adults deal with failure, almost every setback with children is temporary. Mistakes and failures are all part of it and you will probably find yourself becoming a happier, more productive person by teaching your child these life lessons.

Author Bio: RRTeddy is committed to helping you improve your financial situation, regardless of which direction the economy is taking. We are building our site to provide links and other resources for you to use in the quest to bring in more usable income by making changes to the way you do things. I don’t believe you would be reading this, or any of our articles, if that isn’t what you were looking to do. Improve yourself! Check us out as we add content at: http://www.BiteTheRecession.com © 2010

Category: Parenting
Keywords: Entrepreneur,children,success,support,business,imagination,dreams,trust,love,commit,excitement