7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids

I began this project six years ago as a newspaper article. My editor at the National Post asked me to interview kids and find out what tools they used to succeed in school. Now I must confess, I was never an amazing student _ at least not in the narrow classroom sense of the word. I succeed now, as I did then, by busting out and trying new things...I think we should measure kids by how well they tackle many different challenges: ski, swim, ride a horse, wash the dishes, get along with their friends, jump off a cliff into the lake, do magic tricks, or sing a song. So I set off to look for kids I believed to be successful. And I asked them their secrets...But they talked, I scribbled it down, and in 2001, their stories and their secrets became the first edition of this book...Five years later, those books are all sold. So we decided to put together a new edition. I dug the index cards out of the file box that_s been sitting on my desk all these years, and wrote to the kids, to see how they were...A lot can happen in five years, so I was a bit nervous about what I might learn. But lo and behold, the secrets worked! The kids are all right...To see what I mean, read the seven updates _ one per secret _ that we include in this new edition. Of course, the kids had changed...But I am happy to report that in one key area these young people have not changed _ they are still living by their secrets. This proves the key message from this book: the foundation you lay down in middle childhood, for overcoming odds, will serve you well throughout life. The kids, of course, cannot succeed alone...The stories in this book prove that, when parents let their kids choose which quest or passion they want to pursue _ within the parents_ budget and boundaries, of course _ kids love to sparkle, shine and succeed. So enjoy this book. Then go out there and find your own personal success. And while you_re doing so, for goodness sake, have a good time!Kuitenbrouwer, Peter is the author of '7 Secrets of Highly Successful Kids ', published 2006 under ISBN 9781897073414 and ISBN 1897073410.