The 18-year-old's father reveals his top parenting tip, saying, "I take a hands off approach," after his son was employed as a Google engineer.

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 The 18-year-old's father reveals his top parenting tip, saying, "I take a hands off approach," after his son was employed as a Google engineer.

Stanley Zhong is not like other eighteen-year-olds. Nor is he your average Google  developer.

Zhong received a weighted GPA of 4.42, a SAT score of 1590, and an e-signature firm named RabbitSign as graduation gifts from Palo Alto, California's Gunn High School earlier this year. In addition, he received waitlist or rejection letters from 16 of the 18 universities he applied to, including Stanford and MIT.

Google intervened, offering Zhong a position as a L4 software engineer, which is one level above entry level. Zhong intends to work there for a year before going to the University of Texas, thus it's only a temporary position.

Even while the job title and the offer may have surprised some, Stanley's father Nan Zhong claims he wasn't taken aback.

Nan tells CNBC Make It, "I've seen him writing code since he was 10 years old." And when he got hired by Google, I was no longer astonished since he had given me enough shocks along the road. His entire life has been wonderful.

Nan, a software engineering manager at Google as well, claims he has never had to coerce Stanley into practising coding or to perform well academically.

He states that the most important thing he does to help his high-achieving son is to be hands-off.

Give resources rather than road plans.

Being a hands-off parent does not imply abandoning your child or not enforcing rules or obligations. Nan says it means letting his son follow his passions unrestrictedly.

We are willing to assist Stanley in exploring any interests he may have. We will assist in lighting the way if he wishes to follow this specific one, replies Nan. "However, it is entirely up to him to decide how far he wants to go, how quickly he wants to go, or whether he wants to change his course and take a different path."

Nan uses Stanley's chess experiences, which he started at the age of four, as an illustration. Stanley placed ninth in the subsequent national competition at the age of six after winning the Washington State competition for his age group, according to Nan.

Stanley showed enough potential to challenge for the national championship the next year, so Nan hired a coach for him. But to everyone's surprise, he announced to his coach that he was giving up chess, according to Nan.

Despite not understanding why his child decided to give up the sport he had spent years perfecting, Nan claims he was totally supportive of the decision.

"We have faith in him," Nan says. And he chose to take a different action. We provide him the tools to succeed fast in any endeavour he chooses to pursue. He is on his own, though, except from that.

Assist in preparing your child for luck

Nan claims he didn't use any dubious tactics to get his son a position with his firm. "That's all very, very strongly protected," he says, adding, "I have absolutely no way to get into their process."

Instead, Stanley started his path to Google with the creation of RabbitSign five years ago. A Google recruiter noticed the firm, but Stanley was too young to be given any kind of consideration, according to Nan.

Stanley was reminded of the Google recruiter from years ago when he got a note from an Amazon Web Services recruiter as his high school graduation date drew near. He got back to me, which led to another round of interviews.

Stanley is fortunate in that Amazon AWS took notice of what he achieved. And that helped him land a job at Google," Nan adds.

Hence, part of Nan's role as a father was to assist his son in getting ready for those lucky breaks so that Stanley could take advantage of them when they materialised.

Author of "The Luck Factor" and psychology professor at the University of Hertfordshire Richard Wiseman says you can help almost anyone achieve this by urging them to do four things:

• Seize new possibilities.

• Have faith in their instincts

• Keep an optimistic outlook

• Have resiliency

Bring up "healthy strivers."

Nan's methods are in line with studies conducted by toxic-parenting specialist Jennifer Breheny Wallace, who asserts that "healthy strivers" are the ones who are nurtured to be the most successful adults.

Healthy aspirants are driven by their own goals and do not view their achievements as defining their value as people. Wallace told Make It last month that you can encourage those qualities in children by making them feel like their communities depend on them and that they are respected for who they are, not for their grades or accolades.

Put differently, children must be made to feel important.

According to Wallace, "mattering functions as a buffer against stress, anxiety, and depression." It wasn't that the healthy achievers I encountered were without obstacles or failures. Mattering, though, was a buoy. It strengthened them and increased their resilience. 

Wallace remarked that by encouraging your child through difficult times, you are giving them confidence that they can overcome obstacles. Nan became an advocate for increased university transparency about admissions decisions, for instance, after Stanley was turned down by numerous universities.

We're merely asking for more information. What is absent? What may be improved upon? Says Nan. "Because, in my opinion, what irritates kids the most right now is when parents feel like they've failed and the kids are left in the dark."

Source cnbc.com