Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘books’

For some people, the beginning of a new year (and their birthday), is a sad day. When everyone around talks about goals, motivation and New Year resolutions, it is hard to avoid measuring our achievements from the previous year and those we have not achieved stand out like a sore thumb. “There you have it – another proof you have not achieved your goals and time is ticking. If you don’t get your act together, it’s going to be too late”.

Is it?

The ticking of time as it runs out is an illusion we adopt as soon as we learn to tell the time. Together with the sense of the achievement (that we can tell the time), the loss of freedom and hope starts creeping in as time starts to control us. This is the birth of the notion that something can be “late”, which sits in our mind together with frustration, helplessness and giving up. From there, the road to “too late” is short.

In the last 25 years, while I was working with teens and collecting information for my book Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers, I have discovered many important things about being a teenager. It was funny to discover these things when I was no longer a teen myself. This is the paradox of being a teen – you only understand what has happened to you when you are no longer a teen. Catch 22, don’t you think?

Fundamentally, I do not believe anything is “too late”. There is always something you can do with a new learning to improve your situation now and in the future. However, many bits of information have lot less value when your situation changes.

How many times have you said, “I wish I knew this when I was a teen?”

In the past few weeks, I overheard talk about a teenager (let’s call him Jonathan), who used to be friendly and “normal”, besides being very talented, but who recently started to miss classes, show up late, fail various subjects and behave indifferently. One speculation was that he might have started using drugs, but he was clearly troubled.

Eden got this nickname when she was 7 years old and her teacher complained she was reading out loud while all the other kids switched to silent reading. The teacher was concerned that reading out loud would interfere with her reading development.

To handle the need to verbalize what she was reading (a kinesthetic need), Eden started to whisper. It started with fast and unclear quiet whispers, like shorthand. she read for hours every day, so from age 7 to 20, you could hear indistinct whispers in our house at the table, in the toilet, behind the sofa, on the floor or on her bed.

All my 3 little book worms go to the public library every week and borrow 20 books for each membership card (and we have 5 cards).

For the love of reading

Kids who love reading are every parent’s dream. Developing imagination, getting exposed to richness of information and inspiring emotions through the written word are only some of the advantages of reading.

Last week, I talked about two reasons for reading. Reading for information and reading for pleasure and gave tips parents can use to teach kids how to obtain the information they need.

One good way to inspire motivation is to use others who have succeeded as role models and try to learn from them. Can you imagine kids growing up to think that many people around them, both younger and older, are sources of inspiration?

Reading is an important tool for gaining knowledge. When I was a kid, my teachers provided us most of the knowledge we got. Today, my kids get most of their new knowledge by themselves, much of it by reading. In fact, I believe that getting our kids to love reading is the single most significant thing we can do for them.

As an author, people ask me about the origin of my stories. Almost every person who has read my stories has asked, “Are they real?” Maybe this is a good opportunity for me to write how I came up with them, because some of the stories are so real it was painful. All my characters are based on real people whose personalities I borrowed without their knowledge, but some parts of the stories are twists I created to convey a message.

Although my mom could not read properly, my dad read a lot of books. He was a crossword puzzle and word search person and eagerly solved everything in the daily and weekend papers when I was a kid. Most of the books in our home library he won by sending his answers to the newspapers. Inside each one was a sticker saying he had won this book as a first, second or third prize. So you see, for me, books were rewards since before I was able to read.

Every human being is delivered from a warm, dark, quiet and completely safe environment into the ever changing, sometimes rough world. Most modern babies’ first experience outside their mother is a bright light in a cold room, being shaken (although not stirred) and handled by many hands. Imagine the fear in the little creature! Some people think this is so traumatic it must be cleared from the psyche to ensure emotional health.