| Children and Kids articles catalog |
Children and Pessimism - By Carol TuttleChildren need emotional validation. If their negative feelings about what is happening in their lives are not validated, they may continue focusing on the negative until they are validated. Children can become pessimistic if they do not feel they are being emotionally heard and validated.As the parent of four children, I have learned to not skip the important step of emotionally acknowledging my children. Before I realized how important this was, I was eager to try and quickly change their negative feelings and views of their life into positives. Once you have validated your child?s negative feelings, you can give your child a choice: to continue to perceive his/her situation as negative, or to choose to change it to a positive. The first choice teaches our children to be victims in a world of random events they are powerless to control. The second choice teaches them they have the power to change anything for the good . Recently my daughter came to me expressing her negative feelings about a friend?s treatment towards her. I could have quickly dismissed her feelings and encouraged her to not let it bother her, or joined her by saying, ?That is terrible! She is so mean.? I did neither. Instead the conversation went something like this: Mom: ?That is unfortunate, Anne. You must feel really sad about the way she treated you.? Anne: ?I do. I don?t like it when she treats me that way.? Mom: ?I understand. Nobody likes to be treated that way. You deserve to have your friends love and respect you. When you are ready to clear these negative feelings, and would like my help, let me know. Or, you can continue feeling bad. But remember, whatever you focus on in life, you will have more of it show up as your experience.? Anne: ?I want to clear these bad feelings right now and create a positive friendship with her.? At this point I took Anne through a process called ?Emotional Freedom Technique? (see attached) which is designed to clear negative feelings and stressful energies that keep us from progressing. I have taught my children that the law of attraction, or the law of the harvest (which is that whatever we put out returns to us multiplied) is in constant operation in their lives. If they put out negative thoughts and feelings, they will have more negative experiences show up in their lives. If they put out positive thoughts and feelings, they will have more positive experiences show up in their lives. Anne understands this universal principle and was eager to clear the negative thoughts and feelings and change them into positives. It was important that her negative feelings were acknowledged and validated first. Most adults in our world were not emotionally validated. They were emotionally shut down or ignored. As parents we can do a much good job of validating our children?s emotional response to their lives? events?free of any judgment. Once validated, those negative thoughts and feelings can be easily released and positive thoughts and feelings can be created. After Anne cleared her negatives, she decided what she wanted to create was a fun-loving, kinder relationship with her friend. She helped put this into motion in her life by speaking what she wanted in positive ?I am? statements such as this: I am experiencing all my friends respecting me and being kind to me. I am respectful and kind to all my friends. We have fun together and support each other. Things always work out the best for me. I am grateful for the love and support of my good friends. After Anne?s energy-clearing session, she called her friend and easily made amends. Her friend was apologetic, they laughed and started planning their next activity. What Anne had inquire about ed for in her affirmations had already begun to show up for her. Children model their parent?s perception and language about the world. If Mom
and Dad are pessimistic, the children often are too. If Mom and Dad are optimists
who are willing to validate their child?s negative emotional responses to a situation
and then help them change that, they play a powerful role in teaching their children
they can have lives that are positive with many successes to look forward to.
Carol Tuttle is the author of the best-selling book, Remembering Wholeness: A Personal Handbook for Thriving in the 21st Century. www.caroltuttle.com. Her ?Best of Carol Tuttle Live? CD series will ?rock your world? by helping you with money, sex, love, healing, relationships, health and weightloss. Dyslexia and/or ADD equal Speed Reading Giftedness - by George StancliffeAlmost two years ago, a lady who had signed up for one of my speed reading courses showed up early on the first day of class to privately inform me that she had a reading disability, so that I wouldn`t be too frustrated at the poor performance that she was expecting in the class. I gave her some words of encouragement and told her that she might do better than she thought she would. I`m glad I encouraged her. She ended the course reading 18,000 words per minute. While it`s not uncommon for children to attain such reading speeds, I`ve only had one adult student in my life who could go faster. Last night I just finished talking to my friend, Troy, who teaches school (in fact, the charter school that he taught at for the past two years has 50% of the students DIAGNOSED with Attention Deficit Disorder [ADD]). He and I have the same hobby: We teach children to speed read. It was nice to find out that Troy has noticed the same pattern that I have noticed in our speed reading students: Some "learning disabled" people are EXTREMELY gifted when it comes to speed reading. Specifically, the children who have ADD and Dyslexia tend to catch on to speed reading better than most other children, based on what I have seen in my speed reading classes. Recently, new evidence had come forward that verifies what Troy and I have discovered on our own. In 1997 Jeffrey Freed, M.A.T.; published his book RIGHT-BRAINED CHILDREN IN A LEFT-BRAINED WORLD, in which he explains, among other things, that Child s with ADD and Dyslexia are usually gifted when it comes to speed reading. This is because normal reading and speed reading are each processed in completely different parts of the brain. Normal reading takes place in the Left half of the brain. But speed reading is processed in the Right half of the brain. Since children with ADD and Dyslexia are universally right-brain dominant, it makes sense that they would have an easier time of learning to speed read than to "normal read". ADD and Dyslexia are not really "disorders." They are just different ways of processing the same information. The "solution" to these conditions is not the traditional therapy, but rather a different APPROACH to learning altogether. Although I am not an expert in the field of education, I agree with Mr. Freed, based on my experience as a speed reading instructor. As I recall my star students, most of them had the symptoms of being right-brain dominant. Also, as I recall those who had the most difficulty, usually adult students who struggled, they, in contrast, disgame ed the symptoms of left-brain dominance. Of course, Troy indicated that all those ADD students at his school were universally his best speed readers also. If you have a child who may have either ADD or Dyslexia, and you want him/her to be a better reader, one of the best things that you could do is to teach him/her to speed read. It`s all pretty easy, really. There are two articles that have recently been published on the subject of how to teah your children to speed read. You can do it successfully even if you don`t know how to speed read yourself. One article is found on this website under the subject of "speed reading." The other one recently came out in the Sept-Oct 1999 issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, pages 42-47. The Backwoods article may also be found on the backwoodshome.com website after Oct 1999, as they often post articles from previous issues on their website. The Backwoods article can be used for children of any age from 8 on up, while the selfgrowth.com article is geared for intelligent children aged 8-12. If you would like to have the most complete information available, there is currently only one manual out on the subject, SPEED READING 4 KIDS. It has been successfully used in the classroom and at home for teaching ADD and Dyslexic children, as well as "normal" children, to speed read, (even some children who were so poor at normal reading that they were considered non-readers). Though it is recommended for children who have attained 3rd grade reading level before beginning the program, it wouldn`t hurt to give it a try if you have no other alternatives for your child. It is available from speedreading4Child
s.com.
George Stancliffe lives near Yakima, WA, and is the author of the manual SPEED READING 4 KIDS. In 1997 he formed The American Speed Reading Project, with the goal of making speed reading a universally learned skill for all children by the age of 12. He conducts special workshops and teaches speed reading courses from coast to coast. He can be contacted at his e-mail address: george@speedreading4Child s.com Children articles catalog
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