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.

You may want to read

• The Mean Average
• Wisdom from the School of Life
• Competition, Perfection or Happiness

My schooling was a nightmare for my parents. I was not a good student (to put it mildly) and my parents really suffered for it. I was not very good in my academic studies, I had social problems, I had behavior problems and the whole school experience was very painful for me.

However, after being kicked out of school after 10^th grade for failing too many subjects, I became a good student and won a scholarship for excellence. I then realized that my parents could not have made life easier for me, because they had no rules about school to guide them. They wanted me (and my siblings) to go to school because this is what everyone did and because in their mind, not having education pre-destined you to a life of sweeping streets and collecting garbage.

My personal experience contributed much to my parenting bible. As I went through college, the rules and commandments about school and studies became much clearer.

I am particularly proud of my school commandments and of having kids whose schooling is one continuous ecstasy. Yes, their schooling was not a regular one, because they lived in different places around the world, learned in special programs (some of which I ran myself), skipped grades and did other extraordinary things. But this is what schooling is for me and I am happy and proud that my schooling commandments brought my kids to think of their schooling as the best thing that has ever happened to them.

I have over 1,000 rules related to school and studying. I will share 10 commandments with you today and I hope they will give you inspiration.

1. School/Day Care Center is the best place to learn social interaction - even the best mother in the world is no substitute for social interaction with other kids. Send your kids to a place with other kids as early as age 1. Do not keep kids at home with one parent or one carer. Home interaction, even with 5 siblings, cannot match up to the rich and varied social interaction needed for life.
2. Academic achievements are a product of emotional intelligence - schooling is not about academic achievements but about using them to find talents and boost confidence. Find a school that focuses on your child's physical and emotional health and wellbeing. Stay away from schools that only care about academic achievements, because they ruin the creative spirit.
3. Expect your kids to have high academic achievements but stay away from perfectionism - when you expect a lot of your kids, they usually perform better, but if your expectations are too high, the pressure blocks them. How can you tell? If your child is happy with their academic achievement and you are too, you are supporting and encouraging. If your child is happy and you are not, you expect too much. Happy kids learn better. Remember that.
4. Learn your kids' communication style - kids absorb and process information in different ways and learning is not the same for everyone. If you know your child's best way to learn, you can teach them how to learn better. Kids perform better in the subjects that are part of their communication style. Accept it! Help them accept it too.
5. Your kids' knowledge is your responsibly - never say it is the teacher's/school's responsibility to teach your kids. You need to make sure they can learn! You pay for the school's services through your taxes (and/or privately) and you are therefore a client. You must make sure you get good service for your money. Do not put your kids' future in other people's hands. They are there to help you, not to replace you! Parents are irreplaceable!
6. Grades are for teachers, not for kids - test results are not only an indication of how well a child has learned a subject but also how well the teacher has taught it. Grades are a combination of both the teacher's and the student's abilities and of how well they communicate their styles and needs. Never treat your kids' report card as a way to tell them how good they are. They are always good, regardless of their grades!
7. Homework is a requirement, not an option - homework is given to help the learning process. Homework must be done completely and all other activities (hobbies, friends, TV and computer games) can come after. Dedicate time for homework. Help your kids manage their assignments. Life is full of assignments (although later on, we do not call them "homework") and the more practice they get in completing them successfully, the more successful they will be in their life.
8. Reading is the most important learning vehicle - if you want your kids to have a good schooling experience, teach them to read well and help them read at enjoyment level as soon as possible. When they are learning to read, sit with your kids and read books with them so they will be at the top of the class at reading. Top of the class does not mean they get the highest scores. It means they always read at a higher level than expected for their age. Why? Because it means they will be able to absorb more information in the same amount of time.
9. Teach your kids to touch-type - regardless of what the school does, teaching your kids to touch-type is your responsibly and equips them with a tool that they will need for life. I added this to my commandments during a journalism course, when I realized the speed of typing with two fingers was an obstacle to my success. I gave my kids a touch-typing program in 1^st grade and told them it was Mommy's assignment that they must complete. When Eden was in 12^th grade, a group of friends came over to complete a project and the other girls typed with one finger. I then knew exactly why Eden's scores were higher than the rest. When you type each letter separately, your level of expression drops significantly and everything takes you much longer. At that point, the carving of this commandment in my biblical tablets got deeper.
10. Make an effort to find the right school for your kids rather than compromising on the local school. School is where your kids will spend many hours of their childhood life, so do not compromise on the school because of the location or price. Instead, compromise on where you live or on the type of home you live in and pick the best possible school for your kids. The best school is not the one that is famous for being highly academic but rather a school that their philosophy matches yours and will be the best value for your money (remember, you are paying anyway, either privately or though your tax).

I was very lucky to learn about school from the teacher's and principal's side to understand how parents can contribute greatly to their kids' school success, but I am sure that these commandments are nothing more than common sense things that every parent can examine and find ways to incorporate in their own parenting bible.

Join me next week for the parenting commandments about money.

Until then, be a happy parent!
Ronit

You may want to read

• Raising Grownups
• Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.
• One School Fits All – NOT!

Yet much of the time, most people operate under the assumption that "every child knows" what they know, that what seems clear and simple to them is as clear and simple to others. In fact, it is not the differences between us and the other people that create the friction, it is our expectation that they can see our point of view.

The TV series Lie to Me has brought the interpretation of facial expressions and body language into our living room, but unless you have developed these skills with a lot of supervised practice, it is likely that you can read what someone else is feeling correctly as often as not. If your partner walks in the door looking upset, are they sorry they are late, did they have a flat tire, did they get fired or did they just step in something unpleasant? It is hard to tell.

Here is an example.

John gets fires from work. He is so upset he cannot speak and decides to wait until the kids have gone to bed before sharing the bad news with Betty. Not knowing what has happened, Betty casually asks him if he can pick something up on his way back from work tomorrow.

John explodes.

Betty has no idea what just happened.

This example is blunt in order to be clear, but things could be a lot more subtle.

Betty's love language is Quality Time. When John travels on business, Betty becomes an emotional porcupine and grows quiet and touchy. Subconsciously, she feels deserted when he is away. When John finally returns, she needs some time to adapt to his presence and gradually warm up to him.

But John's love language is Affirmations. When he comes home, he wants to hear Betty say how happy she is to see him. He wants her to listen to his stories of success and provide words of encouragement that will make him feel good. When Betty seems distant, John feels hurt.

To Betty, it is obvious that being apart is difficult and requires great effort. What loving partner goes away for so long? Although she understands the benefits of John's business travels, this is the best she can do. To John, this is not obvious. Their loving phone call the night before was enough for him.

To him, it is obvious that when a loved one walks in the door, the person at home will show love by cheering, stating how happy she was with his return and verbally acknowledging the positive points in his very interesting story. Short responses and a focus on his absence are no way to treat a returning partner. To Betty, this is not obvious. How can anyone be cheerful after being alone for two days?

So John and Betty resent each other for doing the "wrong" thing "to them". By expecting their partner to share their feelings and experience things in the same way, they conclude there is something "wrong" with their partner and that maybe their partner does not love them as much as they do.

Trying to tell each other what they expected of them does not help as long as it is done with the same expectation. It becomes a competition for being "right" and in most cases, since the expectations are so self-evident, they are not even stated.

John might say, "What's wrong with you?"

And Betty might answer, "What's wrong with me?! If you're not happy with me, maybe you should go away for a few more days".

Kaboom!

But what if Betty was John's 3-year-old daughter?

John would probably walk in the door, pick her up, give her a long, warm cuddle and be very understanding towards her when she looked upset. He would start by saying, "Hello, Betty-boo. Daddy missed you so much at work today. Did you miss Daddy too?"

And if John was Betty's 3-year-old son, she would not consider him a deserted for going to Kindie and playing with other kids. She would put a big smile on her face, give him a long, warm cuddle, ask him about his day, listen excitedly and encourage him, no matter what he said.

When a toddler does something we disagree with, we explain to them in detail why we would rather they did something else and what we would prefer them to do. When a teenager or an adult does something we disagree with, we get upset with them, because "every child knows" what the right thing to do is.

Except they do not.

Because nothing is absolutely right or wrong.

We simply prefer things to be different.

And when a toddler insists on doing something against our advice (and there is no danger), we are likely to let them do it and think how cute they are and maybe this shows that they have character. But when a teenager or an adult insists on doing something against our advice, we call them and their choices names like "stupid", "pig headed", "ridiculous" and plain "wrong".

Except they are not.

They are just different to what we would do.

They simply prefer things another way.

So one quick way to overcome relationship conflicts is to ask yourself, "If <the other person> was 3 years old and looking cute and cuddly, what would I say?"

Try it a few times and come back to tell us how you went.

Happy times,
Gal

You may want to read

• In My Opinion
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Role Model
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Change

If that is not enough, your partner may suddenly have strange notions of what should be done and how it should be done with money, around the house, in the yard or on vacation. You find yourself wondering if they have "lost the plot" and if you are the only person who can see things clearly.

These sorts of clashes can be very unpleasant and distressing. They also have the nasty habit of escalating to scary proportions very quickly. Whatever you do to make the other side "get it already", they grow more persistent, until both sides start throwing hurtful comments, calling each other names and absolutely fuming.

Well, I am here to offer another way of looking at things, which is likely to help. But first, a couple of stories.

The Experiment

Last week, Ronit and I watched a movie called The Experiment. It is loosely based on Stanford University's prison experiment, but instead of students, a group of adults who really need money are promised $1,000 a day for a "perfectly safe" 14-day experiment. They are taken to an isolated warehouse (the real experiment was in a campus basement), where they are divided into Guards and Prisoners. The guards are given simple rules and told to respond "commensurately", which means "in proportion to the offense", and never to use violence. In the "guard" room, there is a red light that will come on if the experiment has to be terminated.

Travis, one of the characters in the film, is a carer for the elderly and a pacifist, who has just lost his job and wants the money to travel to India with his new girlfriend. He is "the good guy" and throughout the movie, he consistently tries to "do the right thing".

Another main character is Barris, a 42-year-old loser who lives with his abusive mother. Almost from the first moment of becoming a guard, this man gradually transforms into a power-hungry beast that enjoys humiliating the "prisoners" and we ended up hating him with a passion.

But when looking at The Experiment as an allegory for a part of our life, there is a powerful lesson to be learned from it.

Everybody goes into the experiment with different motives and their roles cause them to take very different positions. One man, Benjy, hides his diabetes from the researchers and enters the experiment knowing full well he cannot bring anything, including insulin, with him and will have to suffer for 2 weeks. He does it to "toughen up". Yet, when Travis sees his condition, he pleads with the "guards" to sneak his insulin from Benjy's bag or call the researchers and get him to a hospital.

Taking either course of action will cause the experiment to end and everyone to go home empty handed (or so they believe). So the guards, led by Barris, maintain the position that Benjy knew what he was doing and the researchers will stop the experiment if he is ever in any danger. "See the red light? It's off", they keep saying.

But that does not stop Travis from being "the good guy" and "doing the right thing". Neither does his conversation with his cell-mate who actually has real prison experience and advises him to follow the rules and be quiet. He keeps going even when Benjy tells him he prefers to stay. Step by step, Travis makes his points and Barris responds with increasing brutality, causing him pain and humiliation, but also hurting the other "prisoners", until they find a way to take over the prison.

When the red light comes on and the doors open (way too late), the participants are picked up by a bus and given $14,000 each, although the experiment only lasted 6 days.

And the lesson I learned is this:

If you insist long enough on doing the right thing and ignoring other people's opinions, you will find yourself in a bad situation so fast your head will spin. What you believe is based on your life experience, but it is NOT the only option. Your personal opinion is not a universal rule, no matter how well you justify it to yourself, and someone who does not share it is not evil, just different

The Good Judge

In one of the lawyer programs on TV, I think it was The Good Wife, there is a fierce woman judge who makes all the lawyers say "In my opinion" when their statements are not facts or direct quotes of the law. Every lawyer that appears before her for the first time resents this requirement and makes a few attempts to dodge it, but the judge just says, "In your opinion" and waits for them to confirm.

Eventually, the lawyers get the hang of it and finish every little speech with, "In ... my ... opinion".

And it is, really, just their opinion.

How to never fight with your kids ever again

OK, so maybe this is not a total solution, but try it anyway, because it will help.

Whenever you hear yourself saying any of the following, stop:

• I have to
• You have to
• That's the right thing to do
• It's the only way/option
• Doesn't everybody?
• Of course (things should be like I said)
• How can you not see/understand this?
• This is just the way it is (going to be)

Many parents fight with their kids about money and what to do with it, about keeping the house and their room clean and tidy and about how they spend their time. They present the need to save money as an obvious and indisputable requirement, cleanliness and tidiness as obvious and indisputable necessities and high grades, further studies and stable employment as the best path in life. Their kids disagree.

So who is right?

Well, spending money is a matter of priority. Even when money runs out temporarily, there are still options, but mostly, the question is what is more important and the answer is a matter of opinion.

Keeping the house neat and tidy has levels. Time management is also a matter of priority and often, keeping things clean enough leaves time for other beneficial things. Also, people with different communication styles see order very differently. So what needs doing around the house is a matter of opinion.

Getting a stable job has made many a grownup absolutely miserable, after years of handing in assignments on time, getting good grades and following various instructions and rules. On the other hand, ask David Beckham how much math he needs to count the money he makes playing soccer. Here too, communication styles matter a lot in choosing our path in life and academics are not for everybody.

OK, so now that you have stopped, rephrase your message and say, "In my opinion..." (or "I think" or "Seems to me" or whatever your prefer, but you get it).

And while you are doing this, ask yourself this most important question:

What is the worst thing that can happen if I let go of this opinion?

In most cases, you will begin to see that focusing on your own opinion has made you blind to others ways of doing things, other colors, other arrangements and other courses of action that may actually be better, especially if you take into consideration the other person.

Try it.

Good luck,
Gal

You may want to read

• Quid Pro Quo (2)
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Manners
• Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.

Today, I would like to introduce a solution, a cure, a way out of this endless search for the right and only-sensible thing to do, to think or to be. If you are like Mel in some way, I hope this will help you find peace, just as she did. If you know others like Mel, I hope you will share this series of posts with them so they may find their own peace.

The first step toward change is awareness.
The second step is acceptance
- Nathaniel Branden

Every time Mel left, I wrote my reflections on the session, as I always do after a session. In the Strategies section, I wrote, "Teach acceptance". For me, acceptance was a peaceful place, where I acknowledge things around me without resistance (every time I think of the word "resistance", I remember The Borg from Star Trek saying, "Resistance is futile". Sometimes it is useless and ends only in sorrow).

Mel thought acceptance was a form of giving up. "Do you accept wars?" she asked me (she knew how to press my buttons).

I said, "I do. I acknowledge the fact that there are wars. It does not mean I am happy about them, but they are part of life".

We cannot change anything until we accept it.
Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses
- Carl Jung

Three stages of acceptance

Although the idea of acceptance seems simple, it has more than one meaning. I find a common thread between them, which is "without resistance".

The three meanings I could think of were:

1. Acknowledgment or act of belief - "I accept the facts" (I believe they are true, "I believe in God" (I accept the idea or concept of God)
2. Willingness to receive - "I accept this award", "Thank you for your gift"
3. Agreement or approval of someone or something - "I accept the terms of the contract", "I accept him into the club" (team, company, etc)

I believe that acceptance is a process going through all the three meanings. I call them The Three Stages of Acceptance.

Letting go does not mean giving up, but rather
accepting that there are things that cannot be
- Unknown

Acknowledgment

Acceptance starts by acknowledging what is inside of me and what is outside of me. The first level of the emotional intelligence is "Recognizing my own feelings". The first level requires no action, just awareness and acknowledgment of the feeling - "I'm sad", "I'm happy" or "I'm frustrated". It may be surprising for you, but most people do not know how they feel, because they have never learned to recognize their feelings.

Recognizing our feelings is an important skill and in our stressful lifestyle, it is even more important. It is very important to distinguish between expressing feelings and recognizing them, because they do not necessary go together. Kids, for example, find it easy to express their feelings, but hard to recognize them, because of a limited vocabulary and few life experiences. They can be angry, joyful or excited, but when you ask them how they feel, they may not really understand what you are saying.

Unfortunately, if kids are not taught to recognize their feelings, they grow up to be adults who do not know how they feel and therefore cannot manage their emotions.

A big obstacle to acknowledgment of hard thoughts, feelings or facts is called denial. Denial is a chemical reaction in the brain that functions as a defense mechanism. It pushes a way thoughts and feelings that we may not be able to handle.

I remember the first time I realized this defense mechanism was taking over my thoughts. I was a special education student and I asked for a six-month practice assignment at a school for autistic children. The first day I came for a visit was a shocking experience. The kids at that school were severely autistic and the teachers in the kindergarten where I worked monitored every word they said. I was there for a full day and the kids only said about 50 words. Those kids were so beautiful and so "not there".

Two days later, Gal asked me about something I did and I remembered I had been there. In my mind, that day had disappeared, as if I had been unconscious the whole time I was there. My memory was still fuzzy and I only had flashes of what had happened there, but slowly they became clear. I forgot the day, erased it as if it had never happened and I do not think I did it consciously at all. My brain was taken over.

Denial is a natural reaction to hard things, but it is an act of resistance. Acknowledgment is the cure.

When we lived in Thailand, I bought Gal a meditation book he read on his way to work (his driver was driving). One of the exercises was to sit while being hungry, feel the hunger and not resist it. The theory behind it was that hunger was a "small Panic attack", a survival instinct, which we do a lot to resist. Yet, if we acknowledge the feeling, experience it and embrace it, the panic disappears.

Many times, when we accept the facts and do not argue with them, we find peace. In her book "Love what is" (highly recommended!), Byron Katie uses the technique of acknowledgment as a cure. She takes people through the process of examining their expectations and shows them that the more they focus on the expectation, the less accepting they are of the facts.

The wonderful process of acceptance or "loving what is" shows people that their attachment to a particular outcome is the source of their misery. In the same way, if your partner, child or boss is doing something you are unhappy about, you have proof he is doing it. The problem is not his behavior but your expectation that he will behave differently.

"If your students cannot understand, then you have proof they do not understand. Why do you fight reality?" I asked Mel, "Would it not more useful to change your assumptions and help them where they are?"

Resistance is futile. Acceptance is the cure!

Willingness to receive

When we acknowledge the fact and the feelings, we can progress to the willingness to receive. As you probably understand, the opposite of receiving is rejecting, which is a form of resistance. When we are given something, we have the power to receive or reject it. Our mind, much like with acknowledgment, rejects ideas, facts and people that seem to be a threat.

The challenge is that often the perception of threat is not clear enough. While in the distant past, the flight and fight response was very effective and helped humans survive, today, a word someone says can be as threatening as a lion and a gesture can create the same reaction as a thunderstorm. Most people are in a constant state of stress, which means their body thinks it is under some kind of a threat all the time.

Mel was under a constant threat. Everything she did not understand seemed like a threat to her and took her into the prehistoric jungle of life - fearing predators, thunderstorms and fire. Yet, under threat, she could not recognize good intentions and her mind was too busy to see a way out.

One form of resistance to receiving is avoidance and its source is the perception of threat. Mel avoided making decisions, because in her mind, doing something, saying something or thinking something might lead her to compromise and that was a threat - it triggered her allergy to mediocrity.

Resistance and rejection take a lot of energy and can be very exhausting. It is like the difference between wrestling and dancing - you need a partner in both, but in wrestling, you need to make sure not to get hurt, while in dancing you focus on having fun.

Receiving works great without judgment. Acceptance without judgment is like getting a wrapped gift and not knowing what it is. Basically, you accept the idea of the gift - the intention - and take it willingly and without judgment.

Life is the same. When things happen to us, they wrapped gifts. Some wraps look beautiful on the outside, but when you open them, you find little value inside. Other wraps look dull on the outside, but their value is high. Still, we need to receive both kinds in order to find out what they are.

If the first stage (acknowledgment) is the statement "I'm aware this is what is happening to me", the second stage (willingness to receive) is allowing what happens to enter my life without grading it.

For Mel, reaching this second stage meant accepting that people were different without judging whether it was good or not, which meant she could no longer hold her definitions of "fairness" or "mediocrity". She accepted that there were many possible definitions and perceptions and that hers were subjective. The biggest thing she got from reaching this stage was peace. She no longer had to put a label on whatever she did, thought or felt and on what others did, thought or felt. It was just "the way things are", "reality", "life".

At that stage, she asked me if that was the reason we had "Be" in "Be Happy in LIFE", because accepting things as they are, accepting myself as I am, was moving to a state of "being".

Agreement or approval

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune
- William James

Reaching the second stage of acceptance can bring most people great peace. When you reach it, you feel like you have just finished a serious workout. Things are easy and light.

I remember having this feeling when we moved to Singapore after a year and half in Thailand. There was air conditioning everywhere, the streets were clean, the system was effective, the roads were free from traffic jams and I could order food in English. I had loved Thailand, but after about 4 weeks in Singapore, I discovered Thailand had been hard work (in some respects).

If you want, you can settle on this stage and be happy for the rest of your life, but as you might have guessed, Mel could not settle for it, which made me go with her to the third stage of acceptance - agreement or approval.

The third stage of accepting happens after opening the gift when you look at whatever is under the wraps and believe it is good for you somehow. It is this "All good" attitude.

Usually, when things happen around us, we do not have a problem if we immediately perceive them as beneficial for us. The problem is always when we first open the gift and find something that seems like a threat. Initially, it feels like an insult to accept things without judgment and then discover they are going to hurt us in some way.

Mel said to me, "If I accept something without judgment and then find out it was painful, I will doubt my ability to judge in the future. I can't trust my judgment anymore".

"You only need judgment to be able to predict the future, but we have already concluded you were not a fortuneteller, so why fight it?" I asked her.

We must accept life for what is actually is - a challenge to our quality, without which we should never know of what stuff we are made or grow to our full stature
- Ida R. Wylie

Various religions manage this level in a great way. They have solved the problem of dealing with seemingly painful things by accepting our inability to make sense of things because of our limited understanding. These religions explain things as part of a greater plan that is beyond our capacity to comprehend, so whenever things hit hard, believers accept that a mighty power has everything figured out and this power always chooses what is best for us.

When we open a gift and its value is low or negative, we need to find the good intention or purpose behind it by asking, "How can I benefit from this pain?" This is the reason religious people deal with difficulties and grief better. Jewish mysticism is called "Kabala", which literally means "Acceptance" or "Receiving", and I think it is called that because acceptance is considered the highest form of existence.

Other life philosophies do not accept a universal power, but they still promote the belief that things are painful or threatening only when we cannot found a way to turn them into strengths and realize their benefits.

When I told Mel that one of the gifts I had received was the loss of my two children, she looked at me with anger at first. I offered her something that seemed like a huge threat - no good could possibly come out of losing two kids. Yet, there I was and when I stopped fighting and resisting and accepted my loss, I was able to ask myself that question until the answer came.

When things hit you hard, accept the belief that you have the power to find some good that will come out of them, agree to search for it and when you find the answer, there will be no more pain. There will only be good.

I hope you will learn from Mel as much as I have.

I wish you a happy and fulfilling life with lots of acceptance.

Hugs,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Acceptance (2)
• Acceptance (1)
• The Art of Misery (Advanced)

Fairness

Mel thought there was such a thing as Ultimate Justice that all people must follow. She had a very strict concept of Right and Wrong. Fairness was always examined from her point of view and her point of view was the center of the universe. Mel never thought fairness was relative and influenced by culture or upbringing.

When I described to her how the Thai people charged tourists and locals differently at temples or for food, she could not understand how that could be fair. When I gave her an example of a clash between different people's definition of fairness, she had a "system failure" in her mind.

I remember myself writing protest poems at the age of 14. My notion of fairness was very clear and naïve then. When I was 27, my youngest sister came back from a trip to India and showed me her journal, where she had written, "Is it fair to make your child blind so he can be a better beggar and bring home more money to feed the whole family?" I experience that same "system failure" about fairness at the age of 27, when I tried to answer that question. My immediate reply was, "No, of course it's not fair!"

But as I thought about it some more, I realized it is not that simple and there is no single right way of doing things. I was already a mother and I was pregnant, which made this realization more difficult, but I understood one big lesson about acceptance: what is fair for one is not necessary fair for another. There is no ultimate fairness. Fairness is totally subjective and we cannot judge others for having a different definition of fairness to ours.

Logic is pure thinking

That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove
- Dan Brown

For Mel, everything in life had to make sense. She thought "emotion" was a dirty word and emotional only cluttered the mind. Logic was her weapon against life's turmoil. She was very puzzled when I told her that I based most of my decisions on gut feelings and that according to the theory of Emotional Intelligence, success in life depends mostly on our ability to recognize and manage our feelings.

When Mel talked about feelings, she talked about them from a scientific point of view. When I asked her, "What do you feel towards your husband and your kids?" she said, "I love them", but whereas my definition of love was a vague feeling of warmth and happiness, she had a clear scientific definition, saying, "I know it is love when I want to be with them, when I want to do things for them, when I think that…"

For Mel, everything had conditions. Whenever I needed to explain a feeling, I would find an example and say, "It's like when you…" Mel always sounded as if her descriptions had come out of a dictionary.

I do not think I know what pure thinking is, but there is nothing pure in precise definitions and putting conditions on every action. Logic is no cure for heartache and pain, because there are many things around us without logic and Mel refused to accept them.

When I asked her to imagine a great future that made sense to her, she said, "There is no logic in bringing images into the mind, because imagining them does not make them reality". I told her how Gal had come up with an image of the kids coming home after school and everyone having a great afternoon together, and how it had happened exactly the way he had imagined it on the same day. She stood there confused and nodded as if telling me, "I know you are telling me the truth, Ronit, but it still makes no sense". Until the end of our coaching, dreaming of a happy future was not a technique that worked for Mel.

Advantages and disadvantages

Mel thought that making every decision could only happen after a thorough analytical thinking process of weighing advantages and disadvantages. At first, I thought it was a good idea.

I once saw a movie about a relationship coach who took all his female clients on a date and sat in a restaurant facilitated their process of weighing the pros and cons of leaving their husbands on a napkin. He helped all of them go back to their husbands. In our family, we call this method "The Napkin Technique".

But it was not as simple with Mel, because she did not settle for just listing advantages and disadvantages. She also had to weigh each of them differently. This was still manageable, because I used KT Analysis for assigning a weight to each item and adding them all up, but then Mel added short term, medium term and long term considerations and that really messed up the napkin.

"What about doing things because you want to or feel like doing them?" I asked her.

She seriously did not know what that meant.

"You know, just like kids do, without too much thought. Where do these things come from?" I kept asking.

I thought that being so self-conscious about everything meant not accepting the fact that we are human - we cannot plan everything we do and cannot weigh every choice and decision. To herself and to everyone else, Mel looked like a procrastinator, because instead of living life, she was contemplating every little movement as if she was searching for an exact number that meant it was going to make her happy. Mel could argue about everything for so long there was no point when she could decide what to do about it.

Making decisions was not her strongest ability and she felt she was not controlling her life, because things kept happening to her while she was trying to make her mind up.

Frustrated fortuneteller

Mel really believed that logic, a strong sense of fairness and her ability to analyze things could make her come up with the "right" decision. She repeatedly said, "He should have done that", "It should have worked", "It was supposed to be…" Accidents and mistakes were not part of her vocabulary. Every future was supposed to be perfect, exactly the way she expected it to be. That way, she sentenced herself to life in the prison of frustration.

To all my clients, I say that when you play Solitaire, you need to look a few steps ahead in order to predict the future outcome of your actions. I can go in my mind 5-6 steps ahead, but I cannot cover all the possibilities. Life it is a very big Solitaire game and there no chance in Hell we can predict every step of the way.

To help me survive my inability to "play God" and predict the future, I often read the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference

Mel had never experienced serenity, because she thought there was nothing in the world she could not change.

I told her that on a wonderful day, a day that was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life with the birth of my son, turned out to be one of the saddest days of my life, because he died from a heart defect. Mel looked at me with teary eyes. I could see in her eyes the endless loop of examining the options. I remembered myself in that loop. I had never thought there was nothing I could not change, because I had figured out by then I could not change my height, my parents or the past.

I think that story hit her hard. "Couldn't they find he had a heart defect in an ultrasound?" she asked desperately.

"I had done 4 ultrasounds and they hadn't", I told her.

"Maybe it's the person who had done the ultrasounds?" she pleaded.

"I'd had a total of 6 ultrasounds done by 6 different people in 2 different countries", I replied.

"Maybe if you had done one closer to the delivery, the heart would have been big enough to notice the defect", she kept going.

"2 of the ultrasounds were done the week before he was born", I said.

"Isn't there a special ultrasound that can find such things?" she could not let go.

"There is, but you can only get it if you've had a baby with a heart defect already, but my daughter was perfectly healthy and my pregnancies were great", I explained.

"Well, that's good, right? Because it meant that with the next child, you could do that special ultrasound", she said.

"I could and I did. I had a baby girl with a perfect heart, but she had a cord accident and died inside me on the 32^nd week", I told her.

"No!" Mel said in anguish, but I knew she had finally gotten it, the hard way.

We cannot control everything that happens to us, but we can control how to respond. Trying to predict everything that will happen and being frustrated it does not happen the way we have predicted it is like being a bad fortuneteller that cannot come to terms with their inability to tell the future.

Allergic to mediocrity

Mel could not settle for less than the best. She wanted to be the best mom, the best wife, the best daughter and teacher and expected the same from others. She talked a lot about her students being lazy, stupid and slow. She was very surprised when I told her I was kicked out of school in 10^th Grade because I had no idea what the teachers were talking about in Physics, Biology and Chemistry.

"Why would you tell me you're not good at something?" she asked, surprised. For her, being good at everything was the ultimate desire and she was convinced it was the same for everyone.

"Because I'm not", I said, "Are you good at everything?"

She thought about it for a while and said, "Well, eventually I will be! If I'm not good at it now, I will become good".

"Great, so eventually you'll be a great mother, wife and lecturer", I said.

She looked at me and smiled with understanding. Nobody is good at everything all the time. Not even Mel. And that is OK.

Mel had no understanding of different abilities. When I taught her about communication styles and how we each learn differently, she was shocked. "Do you mean that when I explain something to my students, not everyone understands the same?" she asked and looked like she was in pain when I said it was true.

Mel was one of those rare digital people who could learn things in a flash and memorize many details. From time to time, when I explained things, she would say to me, "Ronit, you've said that already". I explain things from different angles to make sure things are clear, but she only had to hear everything once and could not imagine other people might need more than one example.

It was a challenge for Mel to be surrounded by so many "stupid" people who need so much time and so many examples to understand something. So we spent a long time questioning Mel's definition of stupidity. The best way I could do this was by giving myself as an example. For Mel, giving myself as an example was a brave act of admitting my "stupidity". Accepting we were "wired" differently gave Mel a key to understanding herself and others. Later on, she changed her teaching methods and even the way she interacted with her kids. She then started to say that "maybe they aren't that stupid".

Accept everything about yourself. I mean everything. You are you and that is the beginning and end - no apologies, no regrets
- Clark Moustakas

Motives and reasons

For Mel, everything had a reason and every person had a motive, but she could not figure the reason or the motive. When we talked about the unfairness of the world, people had reasons to be mean to her and motives to fight with her. She was always on guard. For the whole year that we met on my balcony and in our emails, Mel kept torturing herself by assuming people have bad motives and wanted to harm her.

I told her that in her mind, the world was not safe and she needed to trust that people are good and the things they do are not against her. People do everything because they believe that, in some way, they will benefit from doing it.

One day, when we discussed motives, I told Mel about our experience of giving free hugs at the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane. We went out 4 times and each time, many people stood there and asked suspiciously, "Why do you do this?"

Mel immediately said, "I would've asked exactly the same question. Why on Earth would you go and hug total strangers on the street?"

"We wanted to make people feel good", I said.

"How do you feel good by giving people hugs?" she asked.

It was very funny. That happened on the street too. Some people said to me, "OK, I'll give you a hug" and others said, "Sure, I'll have a hug". People like Mel thought they were giving me a hug and doing me a favor, whereas I thought hugs were a two-way street - you give and receive at the same time.

"It's a wonderful feeling to hug and be hugged by hundreds of people", I told Mel.

"Even if you don't know them?" she asked, really curios to know my motives, "Didn't you take some advertising flyers?"

"No".

"Why not?"

"Because we wanted to advertise hugging, not Be Happy in LIFE", I said.

"What did you tell people?" she asked.

"That they needed 12 hugs a day to keep the doctor away", I told her.

When we talked about motives, she wanted to know why I did the things I did and my answer, "To feel good", just did not sink in. When I talked to her about drawing, she could not understand why I would bother to draw or paint if I was not a professional artist, my art would not be displayed anywhere and I would not be paid for it. Doing things for fun was not a valid motive for Mel.

Some of the sessions seemed like she was conducting a research on me. She asked me questions and I answered them. She wanted to know how I thought and why I did the things I did. I sometimes said I did not really know why I had chosen to do something. I sometimes do things just because I have a feeling they will be the right things to do. Mel said feelings could not be measured, so they were not a good tool to measure motives and reasons.

Acceptance is not submission. It is acknowledgment of the facts of a situation, then deciding what you are going to do about it
- Kathleen Casey Theisen

More acceptance on Friday…

See you then,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Acceptance (3)
• Acceptance (1)
• The Art of Misery (Advanced)

Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance
- Unknown

Mel sat on my life coaching deck with a curious smile. Her mind was working at full speed. We always joked that her thoughts were on a constant race to nowhere. Sometimes, when people come to coaching, it is clear to me what they want to achieve, but Mel was different - she wanted someone to debate the philosophy of life with her. She wanted to achieve an idea. When I figured it out, I told her she could register for a philosophy course.

"No, Ronit. I can't do that with a bunch of young students", she said with a smile. Mel herself was a college professor.

"Why not? Why does it matter there are other people in the class and why does their age matter?" I asked.

"They are young and haven't had time to develop their thinking. I want a private philosophy lesson, in which you help me question everything in my mind", she said.

"And what makes you think that my thinking is developed enough?" I asked, unsure I could cope with her speed.

"I know you can. I've researched you for days and read everything about you. There is some sense about you that I want to learn", Mel said confidently.

Suddenly, it was not the Be Happy in LIFE coaching program I needed to use but something else that was foreign to me. Coaching is never about the coach, it is all about the client, and I had to make sure that would be the same with Mel.

"What do you want?" I asked her (this question repeated many times during our sessions).

"I want you to question what I think until I find the thing that I'm missing to make sense out of life", she said.

"Why would you want to do that?" I asked her, a bit worried. I never thought I had my own perfect formula, let alone someone else's. Making sense was not one of my greatest strengths and for a second, I was not sure how to give her something I did not have.

"Because something doesn't make sense and I can't live like this", Mel said.

I have heard this sentence in many different ways. For some people, things need to make sense and for others, it needs to feel right. It is almost like there is an ultimate truth or feeling that we need to discover in order to find our place in life.

"What will happen if you find a way to make sense of everything?" I asked her.

Mel stopped and looked at me surprised and then smiled a big smile. I knew my question had taken her to a different place in her speeding mind. She was happy, because I did exactly what she wanted. I stopped her thoughts for a second and put them on trial.

"I think this is the ultimate happiness", she said with a big happy smile, as if she had experienced that ultimate happiness for a brief moment, "There is peace and quiet in understanding everything". I got scared for a second, thinking I did not know I could help her understand everything, because I did not understand all of it myself.

I chose to tell you about Mel because she was generally miserable. On the surface, she ticked all the boxes of a wonderful life - she was a college profession, she had the cutest kids and she loved them very much, she was married and loved her husband deeply and she was financially secure. Yet, nothing made her happy - thoughts were her allies, but she found people most unreasonable. She was unhappy with the way they behaved and kept saying they did not make any sense.

Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world.
Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped. Acceptance makes that distinction.
Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action. Acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens
- Arthur Gordon

Although I am not convinced there is a formula for being happy, I think there is formula for being miserable. Mel had that formula and lived by it every day of her life. Through clients like Mel, I have seen how the mind can create this suffering. As a very smart, curious person, Mel had some beliefs, thoughts and ideas that made her miserable and caused her to think she did not understand the world and could not make sense of it. What Mel missed was the understanding of acceptance. She confused acceptance with having low standards, with compromising on mediocrity and with giving up.

Mel was an amazingly smart woman, but she could not understand why others did not understand what she did. She did not understand why people did things that hurt others. She did not know how to relate to people without knowing their motives. She did not understand emotional (she called them "illogical") decisions. When I told her that I never make logical decisions, because I am kinesthetic, she looked at me shocked. "What else is there?" she asked.

For me, 6 things summed up Mel's thoughts and ideas and contributed to her self-torture. They were:

1. Fairness
2. Logic is pure thinking
3. Advantages and disadvantages
4. Frustrated fortuneteller
5. Allergic to mediocrity
6. Motives and reasons

To be continued on Wednesday…

Ronit

You may want to read

• Acceptance (3)
• Acceptance (2)
• The Art of Misery (Advanced)

Luckily, I am not a doctor and I do not need to prescribe medication to kids, but when parents want my opinion, I usually say, "Try as many other things as you can before you consider Ritalin".

In fact, this happened to me again recently.

Luke is a 6-year-old boy who came to see me because he was diagnosed with (are you sitting down?) ADD, ADHD, autism, Asperger Syndrome, ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). The doctor was pushing the parents hard to put him on Ritalin, but his mom did not like the idea. She changed his diet and said there was a significant improvement at first, but felt that after 6 months of a strict diet, the effects had worn off and he was becoming more agitated and getting into trouble at school again.

During our first session together, Luke was quite hyperactive - he moved from one place to another frequently, touched everything in the room and was generally very loud. But shortly after he arrived, I noticed he talked to himself and "excused" all his actions. "That piece is hiding. Where are you?" he said to the letters he was trying to find.

It did not take me long to discover that dear little Luke was an auditory child, so I turned on the musical keyboard and allowed him to play with it. Whenever I asked him a question, I sang it like a tune and used auditory words. Luke and I quickly became friends.

In our second session, I allowed Luke to play some more musical instruments (we have plenty of them, because Tsoof is an auditory child who would buy himself every musical instrument out there if he could). This time, Luke was much more relaxed. He talked to me (at a high level of conversation) and worked well for a whole hour. He worked for 10 minutes, played the flute and came back to continue his activity until it was finished.

When he came for our third session, Luke was relaxed and happy. He still played the musical instruments, but his productivity grew 3 times over the previous session. As long as he was allowed to make noises in a controlled way (in-between activities), he was much less noisy while he worked.

In the fourth session, I sat with Luke's parents and talked to them about my observations. I said to them that many years ago, when I studied special education, one treatment for hyperactive kids was … coffee! Yes, I know it sounds strange, because coffee makes most people more edgy, but I learned that some kids react to coffee in the opposite way and coffee makes them relax.

I remember that when I studied it, I was shocked. You see, I had never liked coffee. The only thing I loved about it was the smell. One day, my friend Kathy, who loved coffee, took me to a coffee shop in Texas that sold flavored coffee beans and I thought it was one of my most memorable experiences. Kathy bought some vanilla coffee and when we went home, she made me a cup to taste it. I concluded that I just do not like the bitter taste of coffee, unless it is mixed with a lot of milk and whipped cream and ice.

So when I learned about the effects of coffee on hyperactive kids, I said to myself, "It will be impossible to convince kids to drink this bitter stuff", but my teachers said that even a mild ice mocha blend can do it, so I tried and it was magical. Every time I had a kid who was labeled as hyperactive, I suggested to their parents to try coffee.

This week, I met Luke's mom again. I asked her how the coffee experiment was going and she said to me, "Ronit, Luke does not like coffee and we have not found a way to give it to him yet, but I have a message for you from a guy who works with my husband. He said to tell you that when he and his wife heard about giving coffee to hyperactive kids, they started it immediately with their son. He asked me to say thank you, because they have noticed an immediate change in their child's behavior. The day after, they had a new child and they wanted to thank you for saving them".

I was very happy to hear that one more child had been saved from medication. I do not even know him, but I am very happy for his family. That also reminded me I could share this great tip with the thousands of parents who read this blog. This technique can be useful for them too.

So if you have a kid who is hyperactive, do not say anything to him/her about it. Just offer them some of your coffee (if you drink one) or mix a little instant coffee (and sugar) in their milk and see if it makes a difference. I would personally try it in the morning and not in the evening, just in case it makes their hair stand and make them even more "awake". Try this over a week.

If things get worse, stop immediately. Remember there is caffeine in coke, energy drinks and energy bars, so keep those away from your kids for a week instead and see what happens. They may just be hyperactive from too much caffeine and sugar…

If you want the experiment to be clean, ask someone outside the family (like a teacher) to examine your kid's behavior over a week, but do not tell them what you are doing or when. Just say, "I'm giving him/her medication and I want to know if you notice any positive change".

You do not need a doctor to monitor the effects of coffee on your kids and you can tell what works by yourself. When you have the results, please come back and share with us what happened.

Happy parenting,
Ronit

P.S. I may share more of my observations on kids' behavior from child assessments for you to enjoy and see how easily we label kids and say they have problems, when in fact, we just cannot relate to them in their preferred way.

You may want to read

• The Wonders of Ritalin
• Parental Troubleshooting
• TV Diet (9): Kids’ Personalities

The walls of my deck have heard many stories. Some have been sad and heartbreaking stories of loss and abuse, while others have been inspiring and wonderful stories of victory, success and personal growth.

I have heard from other coaches that when you have many clients, you start confusing them, so I made an effort to write notes on all my clients' files to remember what happened to each of them. After they go, I sit down and reflect about the session, writing wonderful stories of achievement and failure, heartache and triumph. Anyone who ever reads my notes will never know what the story is about, because I write in a different language and I have codes of writing that no one else understands. So it is only me, the walls of my deck, the flowers on my table and some nosy birds or butterflies that hold those stories.

For a while, I have been thinking about this. What a shame! Do you know how many times I hear these stories that say to myself, "I wish everyone could hear it"? Sometimes, I hear shocking things and I think, "I'm fortunate, because people go through much tougher things than me in their life". I have enough material for thousands of stories, and I mean real life stories, although some clients' stories are so unreal they sound like fiction.

This week, it hit me big time. Some of the stories I heard from my clients made me cry - one made me cry of sadness and the other made me cry of joy. So I made up my mind to share with you some of those stories. I will write more about the joy and happiness and less about the sadness and I will keep my clients' privacy, so the names, professions and even gender will not be their real ones, but the essence of the stories will remain powerful.

I hope you enjoy and benefit from this series.

How to help your kid drive

I have only met Joanna twice so far. All she wanted was to be a good mother for her three kids, but she found it challenging, thinking she was a bad role model for them. Joanna was insecure due to a long history of neglect and thought she was worthless. She was underpaid in her job, but never protested, because she needed the job. When people treated her badly, she blamed herself and immediately thought something was wrong with her.

In our first session, we talked about who she was and what she wanted from life. She was very clear about being a good mother and her desire to support her kids. When I asked what she meant, she said she was doing her best, but it was obviously not working, because her kids were not happy and neither was she.

Our second session was about communication styles. As we talked about auditory people, Joanna said, "My son Jack is definitely an auditory kid". Every time I talked about auditory kids, she said, "Unbelievable! Everything you're saying is so spot on. It's as if you know him". Usually, this session helps the client find their communication style and their family's communication styles, but it takes one or two sessions for the whole thing to sink in. I have been doing this for many years so I have many techniques to assess communication styles, which is why I am always impressed by people who can do it within an hour. Because Joanne found out her family's communication styles so quickly, I dedicated more time to talk about ways to help each styles blossom.

This week, I met Joanne again. We sat on the deck and I asked her about her week.

"I had a tough week, but something wonderful happened to me", she said, very happy and proud of herself. I could swear she was holding her body differently too.

"What happened?" I asked with excitement. I love stories, especially the wonderful kind.

"My son Jack went to get his Learner's (in Australia, new drivers must pass a written test and get a Learner's License, after which they can practice driving with their parents with a yellow 'L' sign on the car). When he failed his first test, I told him he would have to pay for the next one with his own money and that he should study harder. He studied, paid for the second one and failed again. I was very upset. It was his money and he doesn't have much money, so I told him he probably didn't study enough. I took him to his third test and he failed again. He failed 5 times! You should have seen him. He was devastated and I kept saying 'You just have to study harder'.

Well, this week, I went with him to his 6^th test. He failed again, but as we were about to leave the licensing office, I remembered you told me that auditory kids performed better verbally, so I told my son I would go to the counter and ask them if they would read him the test. My son got upset and said, 'No, mom, don't go. I'll study harder for next time". Well, I had never in my life done anything like that, but I remembered your words and did it anyway. Surprisingly, the man at the counter smiled and said, 'Of course'. He took my son aside and read the test out to him.

Jack scored 100%! Can you believe it? He cried and I cried. He thanked me over and over again and I was so proud of myself. On the way home, he asked if I would pay for that last test and I said 'Yes'. I figured I needed to pay for telling him to study harder when he knew everything so well already".

She was teary even when she told me this story and I cried with her.

Jack is 17 years old. Can you imagine how much heartache, frustration and negative self image his mom could have prevented from him if she knew he was auditory when he was 5 years old?

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Literacy, Numeracy, Emotionacy
• How to Raise Organized Kids
• Make a list: Beliefs about Kids cont.

Lately, I have had many requests for kids' coaching from parents who were concerned about their kid's behavior. When I asked them to tell me why they thought their child needed coaching, I discovered the most of these kids' behavior "problems" were the result of teaching difficulties.

Teachers, as most people forget, are just human beings with a big task. If you hang around teachers long enough, you will find out teaching is not an easy profession. Teachers have the ability to make a huge difference in a kids' life, but they can do it in a good way or in a bad way. They can instill passion, motivation and interest or kill them for life.

So what can we do about this as parents?

Since teachers come and go and you remain the stable educator in your kids' life, it is your responsibility to add your support to the great teachers and compensate for the troubled ones.

Over 15 years of schooling (give or take), your child will meet many teachers. In the early years, they will have fewer teachers and their teachers will be more holistic in their work and will be more involved with the child's emotional and social life. As your child grows, his or her teachers will be more specialized and will be less and less involved in the kids' life, which is a shame, because teens require stronger role models and more social and emotional support.

The good news: no matter how old your child is, you are there for them!

Over years of schooling, the chance that your child will have 100% excellent teachers that cater for their every need and interest and motivate them is very slim. Even if you choose the best school, your kids' enthusiasm to go to school every morning will depend greatly on their teachers' ability to motivate and interest them.

Finding the source of the problem

It is very important when trying to solve any academic, social or behavior problem, to find the source. If the source is the kid, the required solution will be different than if the source is a teacher who is angry, boring or just not suitable to your child's communication style.

Unlike what people think, when parents face such a problem, they tend to blame their kids first, which only makes things worse. Kids who behave normally starts developing a negative self image when being blamed for not succeeding in school - "you are lazy", "you didn't do your homework", "If I were the teacher I would be upset too" or "you need to study harder for your exams".

As a special education teacher, I can tell you that overcoming a learning difficulty is much easier than overcoming negative self-image. Whatever your kid's problem, blame is NOT a good idea. You must always keep yourself on the same side as your child if you want to help.

Symptoms of a problem at school

The first thing you need to do is recognize that your child has a problem. It is good to have your antennas tuned to find out when it starts. Usually, kids show signs in their behavior and language.

1. If they complain a lot, listen to them! Every kid has a complaint pattern, so study your kids' patterns and when something changes, find out why.
2. If your child is sick too often, this may be a sign that he or she is disturbed about something. Try finding the source: exams, someone at school - child or adult, social anxiety, sports, not keep up with school work, etc.
3. If your child is very emotional, cries too much, seems too sensitive or feels insulted immediately, this is a sign that he or she is struggling emotionally and needs support. Try to find the need that is not fulfilled.
4. If your kid's academic achievements drop, this is a sign that something is happening. Any significant drop (two marks) is a sign that something is happening.
5. If your child starts saying negative things about himself, like "I'm stupid", "I'm not good at this" or "I'm lazy", this is a sign that he has already developed a negative self-image and that something is definitely wrong and needs fixing. Do not allow your kid to say bad things about himself and try to find out where he got the idea in the first place.
6. If your child does not want to go to school, this is the ultimate sign. It is OK to say, "I don't want to go to school" when they are tired or when there is a special occasion they do not want to miss, like going to the airport to pick their grandparents up or watch a sibling perform on stage, but if every day is a challenge, the kid has a problem and need help!

There are two approaches to finding out that your child's teacher has teaching difficulties. One is to move your child to another class and the other to keep them in the class and help them handle the situation or compensate at home for what is missing in class.

If you move your child to another class, you hope to get a better teacher but your child's ability to handle different teachers will be reduced. However, if you keep them in the same class and help them cope, you risk your child dropping in academic achievements or losing the desire to go to school at all.

In my opinion, the two approaches need to be implemented in order. First, it is better to help the child handle the situation and compensate at home and when things gets out of control - for me, this is when my kid does not want to go to school - the next level is to move them to another class.

Our Daughters' teacher

This year, I had to really walk my talk on this. My 9-year-old daughter Noff has a teacher who is the opposite of what she needs. When I heard she was going to have a male teacher, I was very happy, because I believe every student must experience a male teacher at least once in their school life, but when she started complaining and crying and changed her behavior, we knew something was going on.

Noff is a brilliant student and a very confident girl. She is colorful and friendly and loves dancing, moving and singing. On the first day of school, there was absolutely nothing on the wall - no pictures, no posters and no signs. On the adjoining class' door, there was a sign with the name of the teacher and the names of all the kids. The parents from Noff's class stood there feeling unsure they were even in the right place. Her teacher did not even write his name or "Welcome" or the board.

We said to Noff, "Maybe he's the kind of teacher who wants the kids to decorate the class instead of the teacher".

The first week of school, she came and said Mr. M talked about being organized and did not want to see anything outside the "tidy tray" (the tray under the kids' desk). She said, "What is he talking about? His table is so full of stuff, he can't find anything in the mess and he wants our stuff in the tidy tray?!"

We said to her, "Maybe it's just the beginning and he has lots of paperwork to do".

Then there was the form system. When you misbehave (Noff said this included making the smallest sound or even sneezing), Mr. M gets upset and gives you a yellow form. Yellow forms go home to be signed by the parents. 3 yellow forms lead to a green form (go figure) and 3 green forms lead to a red form, which is when the principal takes over.

We said, "Noff, this is not the end of the world. If he is the kind of teacher who is sensitive to noise, just don't talk when he does and you'll be fine. You always get along with your teachers, right?" We what did not say was, "Why on Earth would anyone who cannot handle noise become a teacher?" Do you think she knows this is what we think? I suspect she does, but why make things worse by saying it?

Things got worse when Noff sat down to do her homework and said to me, "I don't know how to do this" (adding up 3-digit numbers).

I looked at her and said, "Of course you know how to do it. You and I have already added up 6-digit numbers, so 3 digits are a piece of cake for you".

Noff was still stressed. She started carrying and saying she could not do it. I sat next to her and said, "OK, let's do it together" and as I sat with her, I realized her teacher had given his class a crowded, messy sheet with not even enough space for the answers.

Many things happened over the first 10 weeks of the school term. Every time, we gave Noff some explanation for Mr. M's messy, black and white, rigid style of teaching, but we quickly realized she was having a problem.

Two years ago, Noff had a teacher who was exactly what she needed - a fun, artistic, singing and dancing teacher. Every day was a fun day. She got up in the morning and went to school happy, bright eyed and excited. That year, we had no requests to stay home at all.

Last year, Noff had a teacher who was good for her. She was not as jumpy and jolly as the one before her, but she was artistic and very encouraging and Noff loved going to school. Last year, Noff asked to stay home once or twice, but this happened because she was tired.

This year, she asked to stay home 6-7 times in a single term. Gal and I talked about it and realized we needed to give her other reasons to go to school. This is what we found to be working.

1. We asked her what she loved doing with Mr. M and she said he did science experiments and she loved them, so now we pay more attention to her stories about science and are very supportive when she needs to bring something to school for an experiment - egg cartons, plastic cups or whatever.
2. Since Noff is in a choir, we remind her on nights before choir days, "Choir tomorrow. How exciting" and when she comes back from school that day, we ask a lot about the choir.
3. We registered her for an after-school Art class, which made her very excited, and we talked about it and she brought some work home and we did it together, so Wednesdays were fun days, because she had Art.
4. We registered her for dancing, so the night before, we prepare her clothes and she is very happy and excited and she comes home and shows us the dance moves, which makes Fridays cool, because she has dancing.
5. Her school runs a Dance Fever program, which teaches the kids dance during school hours. Last year, Noff won the prize for the Most Groovy Girl because she danced so beautifully and inspired her friends. So we remind her on Dance Fever days she is going to have a fun day and it works!
6. On one of the days, Noff goes to after school care with her best friends (they are not in the same class), so that gives her something to look forward to.
7. We do our best to come up with exciting things in her schooling. When the students in her class formed clubs, we helped her make cards with the name of the club she made up. When she wanted to invite friends to her birthday party, we encouraged her to take the invitations early so the kids would talk about her for a while. We use every tiny thing we can think of to make her happy and interested in going to school.

I have to say that compensating for a teacher with teaching difficulties is not easy and requires a lot more work, but I believe our role as parents is to make sure Noff's teacher does not kill her enthusiasm and the most important thing is to recognize she is her normal self and she has no difficulty.

This term was much better. Out of 7 weeks, Noff has only asked to stay at home twice and both times were after very long evenings when she was tired. So it seems like she is managing. But if it things gets worse again, we may have to go to Level 2.

Tell us what would you do if your child says he or she does not want to go to school?

What is your approach to teaching difficulties?

Happy parenting,
Ronit

You may want to read

• Literacy, Numeracy, Emotionacy
• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: School
• The Mean Average