For many, being a parent is part and parcel of married life. Parenting can be said to be one of the most difficult as well as rewarding job that a person can have. What makes parenting even more challenging is the fact that the majority of us are never prepared for how our kids will turn to be. In life, we do not have a school that we can go to and graduate as a parent. Many times, we learn to do things through trial and error or follow the footsteps of our own parents. Nevertheless, we find that parenting, much to our horror, is not only about providing food and shelter for our kids but also about nurturing them to be better than who we are. It is here that many of us as parents meet our biggest obstacles as our kids never seem to understand the words that come out from our mouth even though we speak the same language called English.
No doubt many parents face this problem as their children grow older. The gap in communication becomes wider and wider with age and we find that out kids turn to their peers more than to us as parents for counsel. The upside of things is that parenting need not be an uphill struggle between your child and yourself. With the proper strategy and right frame of mind, we as parents do have the power to help shape our children lives positively. The key lies in being able to communicate with them coherently and I find the book by Adam Khoo and Gray Lee called “Nurturing the Winner & Genius in Your Child” an extremely helpful and informative book in this respect.
Adam Khoo, a best seller author and peak performance trainer, and co author Gray Lee, a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ (NLP) trainer and an MBTITM accredited facilitator have put together an excellent book that helps explain why our children behave the way they are. Together, these two highly qualified individuals have trained and empowered over 350,000 people to change their lives for the better. Their highly successful Superkids™, ‘I Am Gifted So Are You!™’,‘Patterns of Excellence™’ and ‘Wealth Academy™’ programs have already been adopted in several countries in South East Asia.
This book was written based on the premise that the positive development of a child is built upon on mutual active participation between the parents and the child. This is where this book differs from most of the other books regarding child development. As a parent myself, I have to confess that at times, due to the stress of modern life, we tend to overlook the emotional needs of our children because we took it for granted that they understand the adult world. I also have to admit that the time I invested into reading this book did indeed enlighten me about several aspects of parenting which never crossed my mind. One of the most powerful concepts that I was able to grasp was that in order for us to successfully develop our children mindset positively, is that the changes have to come from within us first. Adam Khoo calls this concept “Reframing the Mind”.
“Reframing the Mind” basically refers to changing the negative mindset and perception of a child to one that is positive in order that the child can be empowered and grow in self esteem. And this takes place at the contextual and as well as the content level of a particular situation. The book was able to clearly illustrate how this reframing of the mind works on both the parent and the child. For example, on the parental level, when a child complain that it is useless to further his or her studies and he or she prefer to start working early, our response as parent should not be to ignore their emotions and give them a typical response like “Are you crazy?” Instead the book advices us as a parent to first reframe our mind and approach the situation differently by recognizing and respecting the perception of their world.
In addition, the book is also filled with exercises that help parents to unlock the potential in their children mind. For example, in Chapter 2 of the book, it explains how we were all born with the innate potential to be geniuses and using the transformational exercises contain in the book, we can actually “unlock” our children learning potential. The book also uses Adam Khoo when he was young as an example. Using techniques like ‘Whole Brain Learning’, ‘Accelerated Learning’, ‘Mind Mapping’, ‘Brain Optional Learning’, ‘Super Memory Techniques’ and ‘Speed Reading’, he transformed himself from being a slow learner into a gifted student.
Overall, the book is well written and well laid out. The concepts and philosophy put forward are explained clearly. And written with a personal tone and at times humorous, it is easy to relate to what the authors are trying to say. This is not surprising as the book also reveals the authors' own personal challenges and experiences in their lives making reading this book all the more interesting and enjoyable. At times, I cannot help but laugh at what the book pointed out to me as a parent especially when it comes to the ways that we had reprimanded our children.
Our world today has changed tremendously from what it used to be. The ways we communicate with each other have also changed in ways that we could not even imagine 20 years ago. During our childhood years, we were playing with diecast toys or stuffed dolls for the girls; children today have computer games that are networked all over the world. At a single click of the mouse, they can reach out to almost anyone on the internet. Yet, despite all the conveniences of modern communication technologies, we find ourselves drifting further and further apart from our children. Ask yourself this, does your child spend more time on the computer or with you? This is one of the key issues that this book did point out me to me while I was perusing through it.
Computer games addiction is a very common theme among youngster nowadays. We adults can never fully understand why as we have never experienced the kind of “stress” that children nowadays go through. Chapter 1 of the book helped me to understand the reason behind the allure of computers games to children. One of the reasons is that, children used computer games as a form of regaining control of their lives although sadly within the confines of the virtual world. And this in turn, teaches children that instant gratification is the norm of life today. Unlike before, we were taught to appreciate the principle of delayed gratification. With the exercises laid in the book, we can actually discover the “root” causes of the problems faced by our children and deal with them accordingly.
Unless we as parents take the first initiative to learn to understand our children better from their point of view, we will never to able to bridge this communication gap. We cannot use the methods which our parents brought us up with and impose them on own our children. The world then as we know it is no longer as it used to be. With that, we ourselves must realize that the old ways of parenting are no longer applicable in our modern world. To nurture the development of our children positively, we ourselves need to, as Adam Khoo says, “Reframe our Mind” first. And that first step starts by reading “Nurturing the Winner & Genius in Your Child” and learning new strategies for effective parenting.
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