Stop messing up your kids with stuff. Give them these gifts instead.

• Responsibility.

  By coddling children, you do them a disservice and hinder their abilityto be prepared for life outside the home. Encourage them to volunteer,help around the house, get a job, and take responsibility for their actions.Teach them to balance a checkbook, keep commitments, and be punctual.Read our review ofThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

• Brain training.

  Stop asking teachers to accommodate your child, and instead address theroot cause of learning struggles. One-on-one brain training targets theunderlying cognitive skills that help us think, learn, process, memorize,and recall information. These cognitive skills include auditory and visualprocessing, logic & reasoning, processing speed, attention, and memory.Read what other parents have to say about one-on-one brain training.

• A love of reading.

  Does your child have a library card or access to e-books? Head to a usedor new bookstore, create a local book exchange with other parents, orfind out when the library is having its next paperback sale.

• Failure.

  Watching kids fail is hard, but how else do they learn from their mistakes?Part of the beauty of failure is that it encourages us to take risks andlearn that we can survive the results, no matter what they may be. Ashockey great Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots youdon’t take.”