Most parents, given enough time to ponder this question, agree that the answer is "Happiness". When offered the choice from success, money, love, fame and other things people desire, parents overwhelmingly choose happiness.

The problem is that most of our daily parenting ends up being about other things, like academic success, winning competitions, behaving politely, earning money and so on. Children's future happiness is only used as an assumption, as in "If you do well at school, you'll have more options in life and be happier" or "If you learn how to keep a job and save money, you'll be able to afford the things that will make you happy when you grow up" (excuse me while I catch my breath).

Focus on happiness

I believe that focusing directly on being happy changes what we choose to do for/to our kids, motivates them more and will ultimately make them (and us) happier. Rather than assuming that happiness will be the indirect result of doing homework every day, why not start with what makes (or will make) our kids happy and then tie that to things we can all do every day to accomplish that happiness?

Kinds of happiness

Current positive psychology experts distinguish 3 kinds of happiness: thrill, flow and purpose.

Thrill is very powerful, but short-lived and has no lasting effects. It starts when the theme-park ride starts moving, intensifies as it accelerates and ends when the ride stops and you have to get off and back to un-thrilling life. Other examples are using drugs and having sex.

Flow is when you lose track of time, because you are so engaged in what you are doing and you are doing it with ease and complete focus. It lasts longer, but not long enough. At some point, you have to stop and do something else that requires effort. You know you have had a good time only when you stop and become aware of your surroundings again and for a while, you have the pleasant feeling that you have used your time well. Examples of flow can be found in most hobbies - painting, singing, playing music, putting a puzzle together, etc.

Purpose is when you do things that may not be pleasant or easy, but they serve some distant goal that makes everything worthwhile. People on a mission travel to remote places, fight fatigue, hunger and sickness or give their money away, but all that time, they see themselves stepping closer and closer to their destination and to sublime fulfillment.

Happy combination

To create a winning combination for ourselves that maximizes all 3 kinds of happiness, we would begin by finding a great purpose that inspires us and that we can feel motivated every day to work towards. From that purpose, we would derive some long-term goals, then some short-term goals. We would split those into milestones and each milestone into action steps. Then, every day would be clear, out progress would be easy to track and we would live a happy life indeed.

But this would not work with kids, unfortunately, because finding a purpose at the age of 5 is far beyond what they can do. Finding that purpose for them, of course, has little chance of success and is more likely to result in daily friction than in inspiration. In fact, it would be similar to what happens today.

What we need to do for our kids as parents is to teach them how to set and achieve goals and milestones that reward them emotionally and to expose them to many different experiences in life, so that they can choose their purpose wisely. As they grow beside us, we should also pay attention to what they like and what they do well and gently direct them towards life experiences that are most likely to help them make a wise choice for themselves when the time comes.

Good goal setting

A good goal is focused on happiness. The actions taken and the results achieved are just vehicles. The true aim of setting and achieving goals is a great feeling of accomplishment and a massive boost to the self-esteem.

A good goal meets the following guidelines:

• Specific - the outcome must be clear. "I want to be popular" is no good. "I want to have 10 friends at my next birthday party" is much better. In particular, the goal should specify an end date. In reality, that date may change, but the mental deadline provides powerful motivation. The question here is "What do you want to accomplish?"
• Achievable and inspiring - the outcome must be attainable within the given timeframe. Making a new friend every day will be intimidating for a shy child, but making a couple of new friends in a few weeks should seem doable and therefore encouraging. The questions here "How much can achieve in <3 months>?" and "Is this enough, or do you want to set a longer goal and achieve more?"
• Measurable - progress should be easy to track. This can be done using steps leading up to the goal, like "I will attend every party I'm invited to", "I will invite 4 friends to go ice skating" and other steps leading up to the birthday party. It can also be done using a numeric outcome, like "I'll have 3 friends in 4 weeks, 5 friends in 3 months and 8 friends in 6 months". The question here is "What are some steps long the way?" or "How will you know you're making progress?"
• Responsible - the only person in charge is the owner of the goal. Sure, Mom can talk to other parents and organize the birthday party, but for the child to benefit, every action and change done along the way, should be done by the child. The above goal may be better written as "I will make 10 new friends, organize a birthday party, invite my friends and have lots of fun". This way, the child is responsible for making friends, organizing a party, inviting and having fun, whether the friends choose to arrive or not. The question here is "How can you do or feel everything in this goal yourself?"
• Positive - the goal statement must use only positive terms. "I don't want to be lonely" will trigger thoughts of loneliness and inhibits creativity. The image of a party with lots of friends and fun creates a positive mental state and brings out wonderful ideas. The question here is "What's the opposite of this? What do you want instead?"
• Present tense - the goal should be stated as if it is happening right now. Our mind cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality, so if we keep imagining good things, we get used to them as if they were real. The above would be best written as "It is the 31^st of May, 2012. I have invited 10 friends to my birthday party. I am playing games with them and having lots of fun".
• Emotional - remember, this is the real aim of the goal. Besides having lots of fun, you could add "I feel popular and liked and I know I'll always be able to find friends to play with". The questions here are "How will this make you feel?" and "How will you feel about yourself then?"

With coaching clients, most goals range between 3 and 6 months. Since children cannot see too far into the future, start with shorter goals with very clear outcomes and rewards and work your way up from there.

Goals provide the purpose-like happiness for as long as they last. With experience and practice, teenagers can set long-term goals for 1 or 2 years ahead and keep themselves amazingly motivated and happy.

Milestones and rewards

Working towards a goal is hard, because we always try to achieve something we have not been able to achieve so far. It takes us out of our "comfort zone", so we need to build in some resting points along the climb. To squeeze even more happiness from goal setting and achieving, each goal can be broken down into milestones.

A milestone is the combination of a result (a "deliverable") and a reward. For example, going to a party when invited is an event your child can count and the reward can be a big hug, a chance to tell everyone proudly at the table about the party, one less chore or anything of value to the child that is equivalent to the (emotional) effort.

Milestones reinforce the purpose-like motivation and provide more changes for thrills.

Action steps

Most goals and milestones are achieved in little steps. In order to make friends, the child may have to approach someone, help someone with their homework, join a game or count to 3 before raging. When something big and scary is broken down into little steps, there is no more anxiety. The child should be able to say, "Oh, that's easy. I can do that", about every one of them.

Ideally, the list of action steps should also build on the child's strengths and the things the child likes. That is where flow comes in.

If your child likes to paint, making friends at a special art camp does not seem like an effort anymore. You paint, you enjoy yourself, you make friends who like to paint too. Nothing to it.

Eden hangs out with friends who like to dance Salsa. Tsoof spends most of his time with musicians. Noff likes girls with a strong character who like to be active. Each one of them gravitated naturally towards friends and activities that most support who they are and what they enjoy. This way, when they are with their friends, they are in flow. It is effortless and fun.

I know this is rather technical, so maybe go over it again and talk with your partner about it. The challenge is making it work for your particular child, but the rewards are so great, it is well worth your time.

As a bonus for you, consider that goal setting can become an activity that connects you to your children. You learn to know them in a deep way. You win their trust through some of the most challenging times of their life. You celebrate their joys and help them overcome difficulties. And you develop a common language.

Please come back and share your story of goal setting for happiness.

Happy parenting,
Gal

You may want to read

• Competition, Perfection or Happiness
• Winners vs. Whiners
• Raising Grownups

During coaching, I usually share some of my personal experience with my clients, so it was very natural for me to share one of my horror stories from school. Unfortunately, I have had too many. When I tell them, I re-live them in my mind and have clear memories of them. I remember the names, the places, the settings and the feelings I have had. I shared these stories because I wanted my clients to consider that in spite the horrors of our childhood, we can all make it. In spite of our parents not protecting us, we can make it. In spite of our teachers not teaching us with the right context in mind, we can be very successful. And happy.

All of them just looked at me quietly for a while. One of them started crying (and it was not the 13-year-old). Another one said, "Ronit, you are making this up". The third one said, "It's impossible! You look like you've been successful all your life". Then, all of them left their sessions believing they can make it too.

Gal said I should write it down so more people will be inspired, more parents will be involved in their kids' schooling and more teachers will teach within their students' context, so here I am sharing with you my first horror story from school.

When you read this, please keep in mind that I am a teacher myself. I have a Bachelor of Education, I am a journalist, an author, a Justice of Peace, a motivational speaker and a state director for a big educational organization, yet I admit that my school was like a long and scary horror movie.

I grew up in a poor family. My parents had 5 kids, they left home early in the morning to go to work and on most weeks, my dad also had an second job in the evenings. At the beginning of each school year, my dad would buy us 5-7 notebooks - the simplest ones, with no decorations, just a plain brown cover. He also bought us 2 pencils each, one eraser and one sharpener, because it was very expensive to send all 5 of us to school. We knew that these must last us for the whole year and we would not get any more.

My 4^th Grade teachers' name was Hanna. I have had hundreds of teachers during my life and she was by far the worst, so I still clearly remember her last name, how she spoke, how she looked and even her hairstyle.

She hated my guts.

We had a diary for writing our homework and at the bottom of it was a place for the teachers' comments. Back then, teachers never thought of writing good things and only wrote complaints that we needed our parents to sign as a proof they were aware of the "horrible" things we did at school. My dad was very, very angry when he had to sign one of our teachers' comments and I was very scared of him.

What do you know, my diary was full of her comments. She wrote, "Ronit did not bring a pencil today", "Ronit did not have an eraser", "Ronit's pencils were not sharpened" or "Ronit talked in class today". My dad got very angry every time I asked him to sign one of her comments in my diary. I knew he would not buy me a new eraser or a new sharpener, so on top of him being angry with me for getting into trouble, he was angry with me for forcing him to buy me another pencil or whatever I had lost.

Some days, I could not ask him to sign, because he was not home. My mom could not read or write well enough (she went back to finish primary school at the age of 50) so she never signed the teachers' comments. On those days, I was afraid to go to school, because the teacher would write another comment, saying, "Ronit had a comment yesterday and didn't show it to her parents".

My diary was so full of these comments she used the space intended for writing homework. My diary was full of her writing. I hated writing my homework in it, because there was not a page that did not have any comments and my dad's signature.

One day, sometime around the middle of the year, she came to my desk and looked at me while I was writing in my notebook. It was just an ordinary notebook without any covers and it was pretty messy. When I did not have an erase, I would ask someone to lend me theirs. Unfortunately, this is how she discovered I did not have it and would write yet another comment for my dad to sign, so I stopped asking. The solution I found was to lick my finger and try to rub the writing off page. Sometimes, by mistake, I rubbed it too hard and it made a hole in the page.

That day, she stood there and then she started screaming. Everyone stopped and watched her holding my notebook, screaming and flipping the pages in a rage. "This is not a notebook", she yelled, "This is not how a notebook should look like. This is disgusting", and she tore my notebook to pieces and threw it into the bin.

I freaked out. I knew this would go very badly with my dad and he would "kill me" for it. On other years, when we reached the end of the notebook, we would staple or tape additional sheets of paper to the back of the notebook to make it last longer. Without thinking much, crying and hardly able see to what I was doing from so many tears, I went to her desk, where she had the big class diary with the class role, and I tore it to pieces.

You can imagine I was at the principal office in no time. I sat there and cried. My dad was at work, so they called his workplace and asked him to come to the school to pick me up. I thought he would be so upset with me for missing work that I imagined the worst. I heard the principal telling my dad I must apologize to the teacher, but my dad came and he heard what had happened and got mad at the teacher instead.

For 6 months, she had tortured me with her comments and he had told me off. Now, he was upset that she had torn my notebook, because he had worked so hard for it. So he said to the principal that I would apologize only after the teacher apologized for damaging my personal property.

The teacher tried to get her revenge for this humiliation, so she kept writing comments, but from that moment on, my dad refused to sign them. He was so upset with her that he used to say to me, "I'm not signing. Take this back to your teacher and tell her your dad said she's a <insert graphic label here>".

Do you know what I did?

I did not say anything, but my life changed from being afraid to come back home to also being afraid to go back to school. Instead of telling the teacher what my dad had said, I said, "He wasn't home" or "I didn't show it to him", which only made her write another note.

Some days, in order to break that cycle, I would beg my older sister, who was in 9^th Grade, to forge my dad's signature. I had to be her slave for days for her to do it for me (I thought that was fair and I appreciated her for it). I was still afraid and my heart would beat fast whenever I showed the signature to the teacher, in case she recognize it was fake. After all, she had seen so many of the real ones, she might be able to tell.

When she gave up on comments in my diary and realized my dad was not signing, she made me stand in the class with my face to the wall for hours, and then, she started sending letters home by post.

This would not be a problem for most kids, because they could just find the letters before their dad got home and get rid of them, by my dad was the postman. He brought the mail with him just before he went out to his second job.

Each letter only got home 2-3 days after she had written it, which gave me some relief for a couple of days, but it forced my dad to sign. The letters upset him even more, because everyone at the post office knew he had gotten a letter from school and that shamed him and our family. I used to be scared out of my mind to face him when he brought one of these letters with him.

Only later on, I learned that my dad and my teacher were fighting with each other over my back. They were using me to abuse each other and making my school life horrible. She probably thought that with her comments, she could make him spend more time with us, pay more attention to us or buy us more equipment, while he just wanted the teachers off his back to allow him to survive working 16 hours every day and to provide enough food for 7 people.

Unfortunately, neither of them considered the impact it had on me.

Some horror schooling experiences are caused by parents, some by teachers, some by friends and some by circumstances. Everyone needs to take responsibility for their part.

Parents, remember

If you have a conflict with your child's teacher, do not be a coward. Never use your child to fight a teacher.

Never say, "Tell the teacher 'My dad said you're stupid'", even if you are only expressing your frustration. Your kids might take you seriously tell the teacher just that. If you are so brave, let's see you saying it to the teacher's face.

There is a big chance the teacher is teaching out of context. He or she may not be aware of what happens in your life. Yes, it is their duty to find out, but it is your responsibility as a parent to let them know and ask for their help.

Always protect your kids or things will get out of control. If you find that there is a conflict between your child and a teacher, try to resolve it. If does not work, get your child moved to another class (or school, if you have to).

Always make sure your kids have extra equipment - erasers, pencils, sharpeners and notebooks. School is not easy and they do not have to worry about asking friends for missing items. This makes the teacher think they are talking and whenever they ask for favors, they need to return them. If there is a need, check every evening that they have everything they need for the following day. Kids lose their items. It happens to all of them, so just live with it and help them be more organized as they grow up.

Teachers, remember

Always consider the child's life context. Your class is not the only part of the world that exists in their life. If they have a problem, ask yourself what could cause it and how you can help. Take a human interest in your students.

When you send messages home, make sure they are positive. Anything can be stated in a soft and supportive manner if you put your mind to it.

Forget the idea that if you put pressure on the parents, they will make sure the kids learn better. Most of the time, it is the opposite. Fear is part of many kids' life and creating more fear just makes the problem worse.

If you think parents are a pain (some may seem to be), keep your thoughts to yourself. Never use the kids to overcome your anger with their parents. It is not their fault - kids do not choose who to be born to.

If a child is dropped off late in the morning, never punish the child. This is something the parents do. Do not encourage children to lie about why they are late. They would rather say they woke up late than tell you their mom is in total panic in the mornings and screams for everyone to get ready for over an hour.

Remember, kids are not poor against you, they are not afraid against you, they are not hungry against you and they are not late against you. If they could do it all differently, they probably would, if only to stop having a frightening schooling experience.

Parents and teachers, you can make a difference, a huge difference! Happy schooling is our goal, because kids who love to learn can do anything.

Happy schooling,
Ronit

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• Thanks to the Teachers
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Now, I believe I know some of the reasons. Better yet, perhaps these reasons can lead us all towards a solution.

Almost invariably, you turn on the news or read the papers and find out about somebody who was caught scheming, embezzling or downright cheating. These people seem to have no regard for other people's wellbeing, possessions or money. Sometimes, people are killed over what seems like a minor conflict, because the killer values something else - their wallet, their leather jacket or their girlfriend - over their life.

In response to Ronit's posts on bullying, many readers have shared stories of workplace bullies who abuse their position, physical size or some weakness of their co-workers in ways that hurt them and ruins morale and productivity. Do these people follow a different value system to the rest of us? Given the rise of bullying, probably not.

While reading Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire with the kids (Eden and Noff have set a goal to read all of the books in the series together and I sometimes join them), I came across this lovely quote:

If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire

If you work, or have ever worked, in a big corporation or even in a large factory, you may have felt like a house elf sometimes - looked down on, continually given orders, criticized by people who seem to be doing less than you do and looking or feeling ragged despite your abilities to work magic, which nobody seems to notice.

But as a parent, I hope you realize this applies to you at home, too, only in the opposite direction. Kids are our inferiors in many ways and to know what we are like, one just needs to see how we treat them. I see children as magical creatures (they are also small, ragged and have big eyes), and all too often, I witness their parents belittling them, giving them orders and criticizing them in public.

So what is going on in the world? Has everybody gone mad? Is there nobody who still does the right things?

In his great book, Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely presents a conflict between two modes of living: the "social norm" and the "market norm".

In the social norm, we follow rules like "love your neighbor", "respect your elders", "be honest" and other such codes of conduct. When a friend wants our help to move house, we arrive early in the morning with enthusiasm and a cup of coffee. When we are invited to a party, we always remember to bring a gift, a plate to share or a nice bottle of wine for the host.

In the market norm, everything we do has a value and in order for us to do it, we must receive compensation of equal value. If we have a moving van, we charge by the hour, plus distance, and we charge extra for insurance. If we have an events or catering company, we organize the food and our client pays the bill, while participants do not need to help or contribute in any way.

The problem is that these norms cannot co-exist and once the market norm is used, social norms are out the window, almost never to be seen again.

I grew up in a small town, where the living was simple for most folks. As a young child, I knew I was safe, because many people knew my parents and looked out for my sisters and me. At the supermarket, I would just hand over all my money and Tanya, the checkout lady, would give me the right change. I was too young to check, but I knew she would be honest with me, as did my mother.

Life operated mostly within social norms.

These days, however, life seems to operate mostly by market norms, even, I am sad to say, within the family.

When Eden was about to graduate from high school, she told us that some of her friends were very worried. She said their parents planned to start charging them rent for living at home, for using the family car and even for their share of the groceries. Those who had older siblings knew it was coming and feared the change.

From a practical perspective, what is the big deal? High school students are at school most of the time, so their parents pay their bills, but when they become adults, should they not "carry their weight", like their parents do?

Sure, but the concern was not a practical one, it was emotional. From an emotional perspective, these young adults were being forced to switch from living at home as part of a social group - their family - where they contributed as much as they could and benefited as much as was possible, to trading with their own family according to the market value of the assets and services they used.

One minute, the family is one unit, based on caring and sharing, and the next minute, the young person is on their own, haggling over the cost of petrol and bread and the value of a square meter of living space.

Going back to the workplace, most of the businesses in my hometown were small, were privately owned by a family and employed locals, often based on personal acquaintance. In that setting, everyone in the business worked together to keep the business running, to serve clients who were also connected to them in other ways, and to contribute to the economy of the town. People often joined a company for life, making it part of their identity and representing it proudly wherever they went.

Nowadays, companies are not loyal to their employees or their clients and often serve only the mysterious "share holders". Employees are hired and fired over petty cash, while their unique personal abilities are never explored. Purchases are often decided "on the figures" alone, without a long-term view or relationships in mind.

Life has changed from mostly-social to mostly-market.

By intensifying testing, measuring and comparing, school systems (in a social norm, they would be called "education systems") have made this problem worse and have started inducting children into the market lifestyle from a very young age. As if this is not enough, consider all those computer games, in which the aim is to collect as many points as possible and win, no matter what you have to do, including killing other humans, even if they are animated.

So what can we do about it? How can we make this world a more social place, if not for us, then for our children?

Fundamentally, we need to decide to prefer social values over market values. Then, we need to systematically apply our choice to everything in our life (within reason):

• Run your family as a social unit, where everyone contributes according to their abilities and availability and receives a fair share of the family resources. Pocket money can be used in small amounts to encourage "emotional stretches" (see Motivating Kids), but everybody should pool their efforts for the benefit of the family
• Instead of focusing on your kids' academic performance, encourage them to be happy, to have friends and to be driven by their heart in everything they do
• Kids being little mirrors of you, of course, use your own heart to make decisions, so they will have a role model. Choose to buy and participate in things that are good for the community and that make you feel good about yourself. Volunteer, pick a charity to support, be a Scouts leader, organize social gatherings and parties and participate in local community bodies
• Choose a moral code to live by. This can be a religion, a formal spiritual alternative or a personal set of rules, but it must be something you can use to guide your everyday decisions and make them easy. Deciding not to cheat or hurt another person when you are young and affirming these decisions regularly make your choice a no-brainer when the opportunity presents itself
• Social behavior is based on the assumption that everybody has a shared interest and that people are essentially good. Spend some time every day being curious about people without judging them. Find out more about them and count the good things they do for you or for others. This focus will make it a lot easier for you to do your bit in return
• Move to an area where there is a strong community, even if the houses are not the nicest. Send your children to a school with strong ethics, an emphasis on education and an active parent body, even if it does not produce Rhodes scholars every year
• Never ever pay your kids for academic performance. The rewards for learning are knowledge and an open mind. Never let your child compete for the best fundraiser. The rewards for raising funds are a better-equipped school and a good feeling
• [State elections are coming up here in Queensland, so] Vote for the political candidates who put people before personal gains and show themselves as true public representatives in action and not just in words. In fact, if you feel strongly enough about a candidate, help him or her get elected
• To paraphrase John F. Kennedy's famous words, "Ask not what the world can do for you - ask what you can do for the world". Join Avaaz, support Together for Humanity or The Global Learning Centre (Ronit works with both), loan money to third world small business on Kiva or promote any other cause that makes the world a better place. Whatever you do, also make your kids part of it, so that social behavior naturally becomes part of who they are

Together, let's make the world a place for everyone, where friendship and integrity count more than money.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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But maybe it does not have to be.

In the past few days, I have been reading an excellent book called Predictably Irrational by Professor Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at MIT. In one of the chapters, he describes experiments that show humans are so sensitive to loss they do everything they can to avoid losing even things they could have, but do not actually have. One of these things, he says, is options.

In his description, he give parents' decision-making about their children's development as an example of how irrationally expensive it is to keep our kids' options open. If you do the math, he says, you see that spreading the family resources over 4 different activities each week, say ballet, piano, art and karate, means your child makes 1 unit of progress in each of them every week, as opposed to choosing just one activity, say piano, which would allow the child to make 4 units of progress every week and become really good at it.

From a mathematical point of view, ¾ of your money is wasted and your child never reaches a level of competence that would make their chosen pursuit generate significant enough rewards. It is therefore irrational to pay for and drive your child to many afternoon activities and a more economical choice would be to pick a single "winner" and give it all you have got (or a couple of related/complementary "winners", perhaps).

Reading this, I was tempted to agree, and this post was almost about how much his point made sense, but then Eden and I went for our morning walk (it is so great she starts late on Wednesdays) and reviewed her life, the lives of Tsoof and Noff and those of other kids we know, and my view of this issue changed completely.

You see, the discussion of how valuable each extracurricular activity is depends on the chances of success you expect in each field, as well as what you value. Alas, in real life, there are only a handful of really great opera singers, world-class painters, immortal actors and champion martial artists. In any global competitive field, the likelihood your child will "make it big" is low, no matter how much time, effort and money you put into it.

This leaves a life of repetitive disappointment and unhappiness, which, if you think about it, is really the opposite of what you want for your children. No matter how we put it to the parents we meet (and we meet many), if they had to choose one thing to give their kids above all else, it would be happiness. That is their highest value as parents. Happiness.

Let's say you consider developing the artistic side of little Bobby. Subjecting him from his 3^rd year to 6 hours of painting classes a week may improve his painting technique beyond that of most other people, but can you already sense the pressure building up? Can you sense how little Bobby might feel imprisoned by his parents' choice for him? Can you imagine what teenage Bobby might choose to rebel against? Can you predict Bobby's life after his art receives lukewarm reviews from some people who matter in his field?

How will grownup Bobby do socially? Will he be able to mingle with athletes or musicians? Will he be able to enjoy a walk in the park, a movie or (gulp) a visit to an art gallery? Will he be able to carry on a casual conversation about any topic other than art and painting?

I doubt it. If Bobby accepts his parents' choice and pursues his art, he is more likely to be single-minded and unhappy that a loveable, outgoing and social butterfly. If Bobby rejects his parents' choice, then their investment of time, effort and money, as well as his entire childhood, have been a waste and he will have to start building his life from scratch.

On the other hand, kids who are exposed to a wide variety of activities and experiences, while they may not excel in any of them, develop their mental flexibility, learn to engage many kinds of people in many kinds of situations and build resilience. They gain emotional intelligence that will serve them well every day of their life, everywhere they go.

In the past week or so, our family has been watching a series of programs called "Music School". Out of thousands of children, the producers picked 16 kids, aged from 8 to 13, who want to be singers. Each program shows 8 of them preparing and performing a song, guided by a famous musician.

As you would expect, these young people are pretty amazing singers, but that is not the most important part. When they are interviewed, their level of expression is very high, most of them can speak more than one language, they have great relationships with their families, they quickly befriended one another, they connect to the lyrics of the songs they perform intensely and they "work the crowd" in a natural, effortless way.

Moreover, the ones who do best are those who can handle pressure, keep themselves positive and motivated and accept the challenges thrown at them by the panel of "music teachers".

It is not talent and success that create happiness. It is happiness that allows talent to be expressed and creates success.

As parents, rather than trying to find the area in which your kids will shine and frantically exposing them to activities in the hope of finding "that special talent" they have, let them experience many things for the sake of enjoyment, balanced development, priceless social practice and networking and the feeling that they can do anything they want once they put their mind to it.

Rather than subjecting your children to hours of drilling and endless pressure on the way to achievements that would one day make them happy, make them happy today and every day by accepting their choices, encouraging them and using your resources to help them achieve what they want to achieve, to experience life and to build their character in the process.

Happy parenting,
Gal

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In a book called The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman wrote in 1950 that people could be split into two groups. He said that the inner-directed person "has a trustworthy character and builds his life on the stability and security of his family. Usually, he believes in the Judeo-Christian faith". The other-directed person, on the other hand, is "dependent on the approval of others, especially experts. They are consumed by a quest for personal happiness, so that ... anything becomes permissible if it makes me happy".

Yes, this is an old book, but I read this quote this morning in a much newer book on personal power and relationship skills, so the notion that our pursuit of happiness makes us selfish and self-centered is still very much alive today.

So what's the deal? Does personal happiness equate to selfishness? Does the search for personal fulfillment make us lonely?

"Pooh!" the bear snorted, "Again I say pooh!"
- The Big Brag, Dr Seuss

Being a selfish happiness seeker is like drilling for oil in your own back yard. No matter how much oil you find, the yard will never be the same, your house will stand out from the rest and none of your neighbors will remain your friends. It is like cutting down the trees in the Amazon and making a quick buck, but destroying the future of your children and their children.

Happiness is not the same as instant gratification. It is not the same as temporary joy, excitement, elation or even comfort. Happiness is a state of mind that permeates everything in your life. It must be sustainable.

If not, all we have left is the pursuit, and that makes for a very hard and disappointing life.

So how can you tell if your focus is on the right sort of happiness and that you are not wasting your time on becoming more and more self-centered and self-serving?

I suggest that whatever you do and whenever you have a decision to make about a course of action, you use the following questions:

1. Is it good for me?
2. Is it good for others?
3. Is it good for the Greater Good?

Those who stop after the first question may very well make selfish decisions that hurt them in the long run, hurt others and ruin the future. But those who keep going through the list and assign the same level of importance to all of the answers make decisions that will lead them to more and more happiness over time.

Notice that these questions are all based on your personal interpretation of what is "good", who are "others" and what is the "Greater Good". It really does not matter how you see each of these, the simple consideration of other people, future generations, some kind of a moral system and/or society in general will always yield better decisions with more sustainable outcomes.

You see, the world is a very (VERY) large mirror. What we see in the world is a reflection of what is inside us, at least in some way.

Let's say your life is stressful and you decide to go on a 6-week meditation retreat on a mountain in India. Your partner will have to take care of the kids and your family will miss you terribly, your customers will get no service for a long time and your business will suffer from this, which will later hurt your ability to provide for your family. Sure, it will make you happy, at least while you are meditating, but at what cost?

By realizing the effects on others, you could instead learn to meditate at home, spend some time every week doing Yoga, possibly with your partner and children. It may take you longer to relax fully and feel pure and healthy, but you will find a lot more support around you to sustain your journey.

One of the worst trends today is divorce due to one of the partners being unfaithful. Every couple's life involves pressure and even conflict. Finding a fresh person and satisfying our hunger for attention and love with them may be a quick and easy way to temporary happiness, but at what cost?

By realizing the effects on others and on us in the long run and by looking at our society and seeing what this trend is doing to it, you would see that taking personal responsibility for your actions and investing in your existing relationships is a more sustainable approach. After all, there is no guarantee the new person will keep making you happy for long either.

As a parent, you may be happy when your kids play quietly, particularly if others see this as testament of your good parenting. So if your little boy starts throwing things around, you may feel he is stealing your happiness and making you look bad. You can call him "naughty" and do your best to "discipline" him, but at what cost?

Although you may feel justified in "setting him straight", when he stops trusting you and avoids your company, your will regret your actions and may not be able to recover from them. Moreover, if you examine the behavior of other kids whose parents react in a harsh and self-centered way, you will realize your influence on the world in which your kids grow up. It can be a place full of "naughty" people who feel bad about themselves or a place of trust and respect for all.

By realizing that your best parenting asset is your child's faith in you, you could try to find out what troubles him and guide him towards peace of mind.

Similarly, many parents link their happiness to their children's academic performance. If your teenage girl's grades begin to drop, you can nag her to do her homework, tell her she is lazy, forbid her to go on Facebook and ground her for weeks. You may see yourself as providing order and proper priorities to your daughter at a time of hormonal unrest, but at what cost?

By realizing your support role in her life, you could make her feel safe enough to pour her heart out and tell you her boyfriend broke up with her, let her cry a little on your shoulder and reassure her you will always be there for her. This will teach her how to handle grief and disappointment and validate her emotions.

All too often, there is a conflict between our immediate satisfaction and our long-term happiness. That is just how life works. What is good for us right now is never just that. We are surrounded by people with different interests, beliefs and desires that still matter. And even the people who live far away often have some influence on us (like those clearing the jungle trees in Indonesia or those who make our clothes in China).

So practice asking the questions above. First, you will have to think about every answer carefully, but over time, it will become second nature, like riding a bike. And just like riding a bike, it will make you happy.

Have a great life,
Gal

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Kids are not born with reading skills, but they still need them to build their knowledge and understanding. We develop these skills in them by reading for fun or by reading to get information.

Although I believe that reading for fun is very important and can help increase your vocabulary and understanding, I think it is limited, because kids cannot check on their own if they understood the stories or not. Many books have layers of understanding and the young reader cannot tell which layer he or she is reading at and what they might be missing.

School is pretty much the only place where we can check kids' understanding and help them develop their reading skills and teachers are qualified to tell which level of reading and which reading skill is expected at each age, but as a parent, there are things you can teach your kids at home that will help them greatly with their reading development.

1. Title - Guessing ahead is a good skill in reading. Teachers ask kids to guess what the story is about by reading the title only. This is an easy game that you can play with kids of all ages. Give them a title and ask them to guess what the story, the article or the book is about. They do not have to be 100% correct to develop this skill. They only need to have a good association with the title in their mind. When they can read more, give them paragraphs and ask them to come up with a title. The primary question the title needs to answer is, "What is this about?"
2. Content page or headings - Reading a content page or going over the headings can help us greatly to understand the structure of the book or article, to "get into the author's head" and to discover the flow of the book, article or essay. You can ask children to guess what each chapter or section is about from its heading. One sentence is enough to get the picture. If kids read lots of content pages and lots of headings, it can help them with their writing skills too, because they can understand how to structure an essay on any topic. First, we find the title, then we make a skeleton of the things we want to say and only at the end, we write it all down. Often, the content page and the headings are enough to help kids remember a book or an article when they need to.
3. Pictures - Photos and drawings are a very good way to communicate ideas. Even before kids can read, you can use pictures to help them "read". I remember 2-year-olds in my childcare center reading books to me using only the photos, so every child can do that. Ask your kids to guess what the book is about from the pictures. When they grow up, they will also use the photos and artwork on the cover of the book to pick books from the library.
4. First and last paragraph - In every article, section or chapter, the first and last paragraphs are the most important parts for the reader. The author is supposed to write in the opening paragraph what the article will be about and in the closing paragraph what the article was about. Crossing those two paragraphs can give a very good indication for what children are supposed to remember when they read. Later on, it can provide a quick way to review and recall the information.
5. Taking notes - Turning your reading into something short that you can remember is very important. Do not wait until the end to memorize. Instead, at the end of every chapter, write down in one sentence what you have read. Do it in your own words and keep your notes in a handy place. If you can write inside a workbook, that would be the best place. If not, write on a piece of paper and insert between the pages like a bookmark. Teach your kids to do the same.
6. Highlight - I have always loved books and taken good care of my books. However, whenever I bought the book and it was mine, I wrote my notes inside it and highlighted the most important parts of the book. Highlighting makes sure you pay attention to only the important things in the book or article. It is also extremely helpful in remembering what you have read for an exam and for finding great quotes to references in your own writing. Show your kids how you do it and teach them to do it too.

Your kids' teachers will probably dedicate lots of time to teaching these skills, but they need to teach 25 to 30 kids and every year, there will be another teacher doing it, with a different style and a different approach. You are there all the time for your kids, so when you help them do their homework, you can easily teach them these tricks to help them become effective readers.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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Computer games are not a dirty word if they support the development of the player. When a child plays a puzzle on the table, their cognitive skills are stretched as much as when they play a puzzle on the computer.

I remember preparing hundreds of pages that ask the kids to circle the "odd one out". Now, they can play many computer games that are way more colorful and varied that reuse the same "cards" for the children to choose from. I was limited by the number of stamps and my drawing ability and used lots of paper to allow each child to have enough pages to experience and learn. Now, any simple computer game can give the kids endless opportunities to find the odd one out, with great graphics, sounds and animation.

Some computer games are very effective at teaching kids cognitive skills. If you choose games that are not violent, no one needs to die and the player develops some skills or learns some strategy (not pure luck) then there is a good chance they will be effective as a teaching tool.

A research done on elders in East Carolina University's Psychophysiology Lab reported a sizable improvement in cognitive abilities among older adults who played casual games, like Bejeweled.

"The initial results of the study are very intriguing, in that they suggest that the 'active participation' required while playing a casual video game like Bejeweled provides an opportunity for mental exercise that more passive activities, like watching television, do not", said researcher Carmen Russoniello, "Future applications could include prescriptive applications using casual video games to potentially stave off Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-type disorders".

The difference between what we used to do in the past and what happens now is that I knew the kids' level at any stage, because I needed to facilitate their learning, and now they move quickly and parents and teachers do not have to sit with kids while they are playing to monitor progress or time spent in front of the computer.

If you monitor the time your kids spend on the computer and make sure there is a good balance between machine interaction and human interaction and if you use the computer as a helper, not a substitute for your presence, you could realize the benefits of using computer games to sharpen your kids' minds and ... have fun yourself!

Happy parenting,
Ronit

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Nothing is worth more than this day
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Kids are little philosophers practicing the theories of the great philosopher of all times in real life. They live in the simplest stage show that is their life, without much sophistication and with no budget. This is ability smart, knowledgeable and experienced grownups need to learn from their children.

Kids do not have tomorrows. The younger they are, the more limited their understanding of time and the harder it is to explain to them what they will gain tomorrow if they just try a bit harder or wait a little bit longer today. One of parents' biggest frustrations is their inability to explain why to try harder today for some imaginary tomorrow. Kids, on the other hand, do not understand why they should try harder, because from their point of view, fun is the best way to navigate through life and "hard" and "fun" do not go together.

Fun as a Compass

Kids' attitude to fun as a compass is perceived by grownups as a limitation, a lack of perspective and experience. I wonder sometimes who is missing perspective. Kids, the artists of living in the now, whose present is full of fun, or their parents, the champions of living in the future, whose present is an endless cycle of anxiety?

Children invest all their energy in what they will achieve in the short term. Adults, convinced they need to delay their gratifications, exaggerate this and without meaning to, they have invented the opposite of enjoinment and fun and have turned their life into a dress rehearsal for the "real thing".

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things
- Henry Ward Beecher

If you are a parent doing everything you can to better tomorrows, if you are a parent telling your kids off for behaviors today that you are afraid they will keep doing tomorrow, if you believe that whatever happens today is a sign for what will happen in the future, if you think that pain today justifies potential gain tomorrow - you have just passed the most important audition of your life and have been accepted into The Big Dress Rehearsal, where you might spend the rest of your life.

Many parents fall in the trap of separating life into living in the show of life and rehearsing for it, as if they need to prepare all their lives for an imaginary future, when they will have everything they want, but they never take center stage and actually play in the show. The problem with living in a dress rehearsal is that you become very good at rehearsing and not at performing. Many parents invest in preparing their kids and become very good at preparing and not at implementing these preparations. In extreme cases, this imaginary future makes parents so anxious they torture their kids today and justify it by claiming they will be happy for it someday.

If you have ever had a conflict with your child that was very critical for you and you were worried they would take this to their future, while your child thought you were making a big thing out of nothing, you have been in the conflict between life as a rehearsal and life as a show.

A classic example of the life as a rehearsal and life as a show conflict is school. In my parenting workshops, when I ask parents about big conflicts with their kids, they say that most of their parenting energy is spent around school, homework, managing time, grades and teachers. Every argument over school starts with our belief as parents that the imaginary rewards of our kids' schooling in the future will justify their pain in the present. Not many parents ask themselves whether school today is really preparing their children for the show of life they will have to perform in their future.

Our kids do not go to school because they want to. We keep them there with our belief that their future will be better for it. In the cheapest format of schooling, we invest 13 years and tens of thousands of dollars on this school rehearsal and we do not stop to ask if we know for sure what will be the format of the show they will have to perform in the future and if it justifies the long preparation. What we can say for sure is that we have become so good at preparing that we have no clue on what kind of a stage our kids will have to perform in 15 years.

Parents differ from their kids in courage. Kids are not afraid of a show that is not perfect, a bit clumsy, without any status or experience, because what directs them is having fun right now. Their primitive compass, called "fun", has stood strong in the auditions of all times, in shows of all generations and on stages of all successes and challenging experiences. By following this primitive compass, many authors have written thousands of books kids have never read, producers have made movies kids have never seen and philosophers have described theories kids have never heard of.

Enjoy the journey, enjoy every moment and quit worrying about winning and losing
- Matt Biondi

Many parents, on the other hand, prefer the illusion of "the future". They prefer putting off the fun of now and invest lots in preparing for life, in hope that fun will come, later. Parents go to work and dedicate hours of being away from their partner and kids in order to make money and have fun with their partner and kids on a short yearly vacation that they end up spending on renovating the shower, "because it cannot be postponed any longer". They get into an endless cycle, where they do not know what started first, the chicken or the egg.

Kids live without too many conditions. As long as they have fun, with a little bit of company, not seeking a big crowd and not dedicating hours for rehearsing or putting on makeup, they will perform on a small stage or in a solo performance, holding a balloon and celebrating their total ignorance of the future. Parents, on the other hand, have endless conditions on the location of the show, who will be the stage manager, what the content will be, who the other players will be, the director, the salary, who will be invited and how hard they will need to clap. But so many conditions and fun do not go hand in hand.

We can learn from kids how to have the courage not to treat life as a dress rehearsal or an imaginary show that we constantly need to prepare for, but to live in a simple, magical, natural show that happens every day in every second of our imperfect, clumsy, fun life.

We should learn from kids about "performing" and having fun today, because there is a real danger that if we keep preparing, when the time of our show comes, if ever, when we are finally thin, rich, happy, pretty, successful, with a high social status and lots of the latest gadgets, it may be too late.

If we argue and worry about a show that never happens, we can only imagine a sad show, in which our kids will be just like their parents and stop believing that more importantly than being thin and skinny, we need to love our body, more importantly than making money, we need to be content to put it to good use or give it away, more importantly than striving for happiness, we need to be happy along the way, more importantly than being pretty in other people's eyes, we need to feel pretty, more than wanting to be successful, we need to celebrate our existing successes, however small, more importantly than social status, we need to enjoy our friends and family and more importantly than buying gadgets, we need to enjoy them.

For kids, every experience is a show. It is natural and without conditions. They cry a little, laugh for no reason, sometimes they fail and they always get up. They do not have to have an audience and if they do, they do not try to please everyone. When they do not get any cheers and claps, they applaud themselves for participating.

We can learn philosophy from our own children, small, inexperienced and lacking perspective. We can learn from kids that life is a show that starts when we give up on endless rehearsals, when we stop trying to come up with the best show ever and we just participate and have fun. We can learn from kids that fun is an enormous force.

May the force be with you!
Ronit

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In Australia, there is now something called NAPLAN - National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy, officially described like this: "Every year, all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 are assessed on the same days using national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy".

This means that absolutely NOTHING else matters to most of the teachers and parents of students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. After having quite a bit of fun in Prep and Years 1 and 2, the poor kids in Year 3 are taught things by the book, tested every week, deprived of play time, music, art, sport and extracurricular activities and subjected to constant pressure to perform. State Education ministers go nuts from it, so Department of Education executives go nuts from it, so principals go nuts from it, so teachers go nuts from it, so students go nuts from it.

The same thing happens all over again 2, 4 and 6 years later.

And that is really bad.

Because learning should be fun and because all that stress actually blocks learning.

Think back to your time at school for a moment, particularly to 3^rd Grade. Could you study well when you were tired? Could you concentrate in class when you were hungry or when you had to go to the toilet? Was it easy for you to work with numbers after witnessing your parents having a big fight the night before? How well did you do on exams when your dog died or your best friend moved away?

Not too well, right?

School systems are just like conventional medicine - they focus on the symptoms, ignore the personal context and completely miss the underlying issues. They do it because the symptoms, literacy and numeracy in this case, are easy to test and measure. It stands to conventional reason that by teaching more reading, students' reading will improve and by administering more math homework, students will get more practice and get better with numbers.

Ronit and I see just how wrong this approach is with every child that comes to our assessment service. One after the other, parents bring children aged 5 to 14, asking for help with their performance at school. One after the other, these children reveal gaps in their learning due to emotional traumas and communication style incompatibility with their past or present teachers. Ronit advises all of their parents to handle their emotional wellbeing first and one after the other, they pick up speed in their studies as soon as they are able to smile and feel free.

We have seen close correlations between gaps in reading, writing and math skills due to the illness and death of a father. Would you care how much 2 + 5 was if your father was dying?

We have seen gaps in academic performance due to frequent changes of teachers. Young children look up to their teachers and idolize them. That is why they trust their teaching and follow their instructions. Would you be able to trust your 6^th Grade 1 teacher after being "deserted" by the previous 5?

We have seen children whose mother or father had a mental disorder, which forced them to help extensively at home and gave other students at their school plenty of bullying material. Would you be able to motivate yourself even to go to school if this were your situation?

When a child is overwhelmed by strong emotions, pressure to perform only makes things worse. The child feels ignored, abused, rejected and belittled. They lose trust in teachers, parents and sometimes even in "grownups" in general. So they hide their challenges, which makes them even harder to detect, and they go on missing more and more spelling, grammar, arithmetic, shapes, money, graphs and all those other things that show up later as low test scores.

Emotionacy

What kids really need to learn is not literacy or numeracy, it is "emotionacy". They need to learn how to recognize and manage their emotions. They need to be encouraged to express themselves, to explore and to learn what and how they like. They need to be valued as people-in-the-making (my kids have an awesome music teacher who refers to her students as "short people") and to be developed based on their own choices.

Reading something interesting is far more beneficial than reading standard text. Sure, it is not as easy to monitor and regulate, but kids who follow their heart LOVE to read. They read without any external pressure, they learn far more from what they read and they read so much that their level of literacy is actually better over those who are forced to read standard boring stuff.

Give any child a cool science project where they need to measure quantities, calculate fractions, draw a graph and analyze numerical data and they will jump for joy at each discovery and conclusion. They will remember the experiment forever, keep the results in their room for months, show it to everyone and proudly EXPLAIN the math to anyone who will listen. In the context of something exciting, kids have all the skills for math.

Pay attention to how a child learns - by writing and drawing, by listening and talking or by doing - and adapt your teaching to it and all of a sudden, a "slow" child seems "bright". Suddenly, they like coming to class or doing their homework, they love the teacher (or you, their parent) and their scores improve dramatically.

Find out how a child feels, no matter how long it takes and how difficult it is for them to describe (particularly at a young age), help them feel better and you will get a bundle of joy that finds little in class challenging. Use stories, symbolic play with dolls, drawings or any other non-verbal method and you will discover the blocks to natural learning. Give affirmations, touch, quality time, little presents and helpful services and you will see moping turning into energy and a long face becoming a smile.

When you need to teach a child something, present it as a game. Learning happens much better when it is fun and then, the child wants to learn even more, because it is fun. Kids would play games all the time if they could, so just let them. Use their endless energy and fill their games with useful learning and they will be unstoppable.

Academic performance is natural for children when they can "afford it" mentally. When they are too busy surviving emotionally, they can learn nothing, but no matter what their top potential is, they will get a lot closer to it when they are happy.

So check your child's emotionacy and help them get better at it. Write your local representative and speak out at parent-teacher meetings and parent-body gatherings. What your kids need is emotional intelligence and the rest will follow.

Happy parenting,
Gal

P.S. A good starting point is to work on your own happiness, because happy parents raise happy kids.

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In the past three weeks, he has had many awards night, celebrations, final concerts and farewell parties. During those events, Tsoof received many awards for excellence, for leadership, for showmanship, for his contribution to his school, his friends and his community and we felt honored and blessed for his talents, his kindness and his love for what he does.

You seen this in the movies: the parent of the star performing on stage is sits in the crowd, looks around and tells everyone that sits next to them in excitement, "This is my son" Well, this is how we felt at every event. Tsoof is so talented and so famous we introduce ourselves as "Tsoof's mom/dad/sister" and we were very proud.

At the end-of-year Performing Arts evening, as the winner of the prestigious title "Performing Artist of the Year", Tsoof opened the night and said, "Good evening. My name is Tsoof. I am a school captain, Vocal Harmony and Wind Symphony captain, a member of the Senior Percussion Ensemble (Mac-cussion), Show Choir and Big Band. Thank you for coming this evening".

Gal, Eden, Noff and I sat the whole night proud as peacocks for being associated with him.

That was his last performance with all his ensembles, where he said goodbye to those who had contributed greatly to growing his talents, enthusiasm and passion for music - his music teachers. Three of them had been his musical mentors and had taught him for eight years, through both primary and high school.

David Adelt had been his percussion teacher and mentor since 5^th Grade. Lee Norell had been his band conductor since 5^th Grade and his composition and voice tutor in 12^th Grade. Jody Lutherburrow had been his band conductor since 5^th Grade. Tamara Luski had been his Vocal Harmony and Show Choir conductor and his classroom music teacher for the past 3 years. Sandy Armstrong had been his Performing Arts Coordinator and Music Extension teacher for the past 4 years. From every stage he performed on, he looked at these 5 teachers and thanked them for supporting and developing his talents.

As you know, teaching is not a very prestigious profession. The financial rewards are not that impressive, but the emotional rewards are enormous. When your students are successful, it is a record of your teaching ability.

When we sent our kids to school, I knew that some of the teachers they would meet on their journey would influence their life. I never dreamed it would be such profound impact, carved on every musical piece he writes, every tune he plays and every song he sings.

It is very rare that you have the same teacher for 8 years, let alone 3 of them. If they are great teachers, you can easily explain the excellence.

It was the end-of-year concert and I watched Tsoof performing in most of the numbers of that night. I looked at his teachers and realized they were sitting there, much like us, with teary eyes, proud as peacocks. Every one of them thanked the parents for supporting their kids in their musical pursuits and I whispered, "Thank you!"

Dear David, Lee, Jody, Tamara and Sandy,

I thank you for teaching my son about commitment and that getting up early in the morning, when it is still dark outside, is worth the effort.

I thank you for telling my son over and over again that he needs to play and sing for himself and not to please his parents, as that has developed his self-motivation.

I thank you for being role models for my son. Thank you for being generous with your time and modeling how putting your hand up to help others can make you a better person. Thank you for showing him that giving is the best way to receive.

I thank you for teaching my son that real winners are not those who get the best part or win the competitions but those who have the courage to stretch their boundaries, to try, practice, learn and compete with others, even if they don't have a chance to get the first prize.

I thank you for inspiring my son to embrace every opportunity and make the most of it.

I thank you for being so professional and having high expectations of my son, because I believe that his professionalism and excellence is a result of this constant stretch for excellence.

I thank you for not giving him "discounts" and lowering your expectations just because he had a busy schedule and other things to do. Thanks to this, he has proven to himself he can excel in academics too, despite his being so busy with music.

I thank you for teaching my son to be humble and setting an example of accepting others and their abilities without making fun of them or judging them.

Thank you for teaching my son teamwork, because the success of the ensembles in every piece played or sung was the result of everyone's ability to put the success of the team above their own.

Thank you for allowing him to wear his hat, grow his hair long, keep his uniqueness and show others around him that respect is something that comes from within and the urge for self-expression can be channeled in good ways.

Today, at the graduation ceremony of the Class of 2011, I wanted to say to you that as his teachers, my son spent more time with you than he did at home. I am a proud mother and I couldn't have done it without you.

Thank you so much!

To honor these teachers, Tsoof put together a band of friends to play an original song written by Andrew Butler, Jamee Seeto and Tsoof. They rehearsed for hours and at the final concert, they asked the teachers to sit in the front row and played their song for them. Unfortunately, there were some technical glitches, so when we got home, I asked Tsoof to record a simpler version of it. It is called "Goodbye" (temporary name) and describes the students' feelings about leaving their teachers.

Enjoy,
Ronit

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