Raising champions does not just mean having kids who win all the medals and awards. It means raising children who are champions in life, who know how to work hard, love others and stay honest. It means raising kids who make a positive impact on those around them.

How do you raise great kids? How do you become a parent who sees their children grow to be responsible, compassionate, strong, faith-filled, honest adults? How do you grow old without a mountain of regrets about the way you parented?

It starts with you getting up, getting ready, making breakfast and getting the kids off to school–one day at a time. How you do these mundane little things is how you will do everything you face as a parent. Who you are when you are not on display for other parents, neighbors and family members to see is who you really are and who your kids are seeing day in and day out.

Another way of putting it is that you should sweat the small stuff, you should pay attention to the details, you should be aware of the matters you consider to be trivial because the honest truth is that they are not so trivial after all.

As the great coach John Wooden said, “These seemingly trivial matters, taken together and added to many, many other so-called trivial matters build into something very big: namely, your success.”

The moments add up. Individually, they may not seem like much, but collectively, they result in something very big.

The little moments of you playing with your child, going to their games, listening to their feelings, caring about what’s important to them–each one individually may not seem too important, but when you combine them all together, they add up to a parent who is present, caring, and very intentional about raising great kids.

All the little pieces of your parenting matter:

• Your tone of voice as you talk with your kids
• Your body language as you listen
• The times you are more engrossed in your phone than you are in what they are saying
• The hours you spend sitting at their games when it seems like they could care less
• The effort you put into cooking, cleaning, and taxiing them
• The moments you set aside to intentionally connect with your child
• The honesty you show to the clerk or the waitress when your kids are watching

The list can go on and on. The little moments that are really not so little fill our days and weeks and it is way too easy to coast through them, paying little attention to the impact that those little moments are having on your kids.

This is the hard part of raising champions. Being intentional every single day and knowing that what you say and do every moment really will impact who your child becomes.

If you are at a stand-still in your parenting and feel the need for someone to help you become more effective, please take a minute and schedule a free intro call here. I’d love to help.