Never Too Late

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.

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Take a Chance

This morning, the phone rang at 7:25am. During business hours, I normally say, “Be Happy in LIFE, this is Gal”, but it was only 7:25am during Summer Break (we live in Australia) and I was still in bed, so I said, “Hello”.

The voice of a teenage girl or fragile young woman on the other end said, “I think I got the wrong number”.

Realizing this may have been due to the way I answered the phone, I said, “Maybe not. Who were you looking for?”

She said, “I was looking for someone to talk to. I thought this was the number for a company that helps people”.

“It is”, I said, trying to encourage her, “You got the right number. It’s just a bit early, that’s all”.

And before I could say anything else, she mumbled, “Oh, sorry”, and hung up.

That left me feeling helpless and frustrated.

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If I Were Santa Claus

This entry is part 28 of 49 in the series Make a List

Before Christmas comes, I always think about kindness. Santa Claus is a very nice guy, don’t you think? He makes so many people happy and it is not only the kids, because what makes kids happy also makes their parents happy (in fact, to some extent, it even makes their parents kids again for a while).

Playing Santa Claus is a very good game for everyone, especially for kids, because it gives them the opportunity to enter the “Santa Club” in their mind and feel the joy of giving, even if it is just in thought. For older people, it is an exercise in financial freedom, very much like playing “If I were a millionaire” or “If I won the lottery”, only this game is all about giving to others and being kind.

I like this Santa game and find it uplifting and easy to play. I invite you to join in.

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Who You Are Makes a Difference

A teacher in New York decided to honor each of her seniors in High School by telling them the difference each of them had made. She called each student to the front of the class, one at a time. First, she told each of them how they had made a difference to her, and the class. Then she presented each of them with a blue ribbon, imprinted with gold letters, which read, “Who I Am Makes a Difference.”

Afterwards, the teacher decided to do a class project, to see what kind of impact recognition would have on a Community. She gave each student three more blue ribbons, and instructed them to go out and spread this acknowledgment ceremony. Then they were to follow up on the results, see who honored whom, and report to the class in about a week.

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Better Parenting Skills

… The most surprising reason I got was from a father who was not from the school. He said, “I have a teen son and three weeks ago, I had a fight with him. It was such a big fight, I was willing to send him to a boarding school. That night, I met a friend of mine who is a teacher at this school and told her about what had happened. She looked at me and said, “You need the Ronit Treatment”, so I begged the principal to allow me to participate. I’m here for the Ronit Treatment”.

Everyone laughed.

“I’m an accountant and a contractor. I gave up a paid day in order to come here today, because my friend said it’s worth it,” he continued.

By saying this, the man raised the bar for all the participants in the room. I knew the level of expectation from the workshop was high and I was very happy about it, but this took things up another notch. If you have been reading my posts for a while, you know I believe that the more you expect to get, the more effort you put in and the more you will get in the end. These parents expected a lot and now they expected even more!

I asked the group to open their workbooks in page 2 …

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How to Praise Your Kids (5)

This entry is part 5 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

For over 24 years, I have been focusing on emotional strength and I believe this is the key to any type of success in life. I think rewarding kids for emotional stretches is the best way to praise them. As a special education teacher, working with kids who struggle and kids who are gifted, praising for effort was always one of my main tools. Remember, it is not the success that counts, but the emotional stretch. Although it may be a cliché, “Good try” has real power.

Research on emotional intelligence has found that persistence is a powerful ingredient in any success formula. So how do you teach persistence? My answer is “Reward every attempt and praise it, regardless of the outcome”. As I said, in special education, it is a major teaching tool and I have countless examples. Here is one from my own home that happened recently.

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How to Praise Your Kids (4)

This entry is part 4 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

You can see them on the sports filed or in a lesson. They are smart kids, but they need constant reminders of their abilities and reassurance that they are OK. I often wonder how come those kids are so good, so smart and so capable, no one else around them can compete with their skills and abilities, yet are still very competitive.

It is because over-praising can backfire.

An analysis of over 150 studies about praise discovered there is a risk in praising. Being praised caused students to be less persistent, to need more eye contact with the teacher and to be less confident when answering a question (you know those uncertain answers that sound like questions). Students who were praised a lot were less independent in their schoolwork.

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How to Praise Your Kids (3)

This entry is part 3 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

In 1969, Nathaniel Branden wrote that self-esteem is the single most important factor in people’s life and people need do all they can to achieve positive self-esteem. Later, as it happens sometimes in the psychology field, the self-esteem movement took this idea to the extreme. Every kind of feedback was suddenly considered as criticism and swapped with “rewards” to build self-esteem.

However, this sometimes created over-rewarding and achieved nothing, if not the opposite.

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How to Praise Your Kids (2)

This entry is part 2 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

Yesterday, I wrote about Prof. Carol Dweck’s research on the difference between praising effort vs. praising natural talent. I encourage you to read about this research (if you have not already), because it highlights some of the issues with the impact of praising on kids’ self-esteem.

One big question that came out this research was “What can parents and schools do to still build kids’ self-esteem and enhance their performance (possible after the “mistake” of telling the kids how smart they are)?

Dr. Lisa Blackwell, Dweck’s assistant, conducted a research to improve kids’ math scores using the knowledge and information gathered in her work with Dweck.

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How to Praise Your Kids (1)

This entry is part 1 of 5 in the series How to Praise Your Kids

A few weeks ago, when my 8-year-old daughter Noff brought her “Alien House” from school, we were all very impressed. It was a tall 3-story box house, with lights (because her alien was afraid of the dark) and she had planned and executed her plan at school and had received an A+ for the assignment. The masterpiece stood proudly on top of our fridge for over 3 weeks and during that time, everyone who passed next to it, including her older siblings, praised her and said, “Noff, your alien house is just wonderful”, “Well done”, “You’re so creative” and “You’re so smart”.

What do you think? Did we do the right thing? Should kids be praised? If so, how should kids be praised for best results?

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