I’m sure you are aware of the fact that you cannot change anyone else, you can only change yourself!!! If you change your own perception of a problem from negative to positive, the problem has a tendency to disappear. In any kind of relationship this may contribute to a much more harmonious state of affairs. For yourself, getting rid of your own negative self-talk has a lasting effect on your happiness!

We are so used to focusing on what we don’t want, on constantly repeating what my (or your) problem is. According to the Law of Attraction, what you focus your attention on expands, becomes bigger and you get more of it….So if you really want a problem to go away, it is never a good idea to specify what you do not want. Yet that is what most of us do most of the time!

Thinking or saying: “My child is so messy!” will let you perceive every little incident, where this is or was true and in your brain you create a pattern that has you watch out for more of these incidents.

Instead you may start thinking: my child is very creative. This changes the negative perception of your child into a positive one, which again your brain will start searching for incidents to corroborate. Instead of constantly admonishing (which is never a good idea anyway), you may feel motivated to find outlets for your child’s creativity, that are less annoying to you. In the end you might feel proud of your child’s creative accomplishments, not feel half as bothered by the unwanted side-effects and also create an atmosphere of mutual appreciation with your child. This atmosphere actually induces the good will of this child to cooperate with your efforts to keep the creative mess in check… or whatever else the issue was.

Re-framing is also a wonderful tool in classroom settings where one or two students constantly trigger reprimands. Find that “Bright Spot” in your students, honor and appreciate it – and let your students know you see the positive aspects in them. If you can consistently stick to looking for the positive instead of looking for the negative, it will fundamentally change a negative relationship into one of cooperation!

for more on this and many other related topics check:
Parenting in the New Paradigm

To watch the Tony Robbins Video click here

Children rely on role models when growing up. Unschooling in its present form only works out if the parents fulfil certain requirements! Valuable role models in poor and struggling neighbourhoods can be far and wide apart. Even as mainstream parents, teachers and educators, we may have to learn new attitudes as we ourselves have been ingrained with an outdated belief system! We need to challenge our own beliefs in order to break free from our fears of what happens when children are given the freedom to design their own learning, i.e. if they are unwilling or incapable of learning to read and write before they are 8 or even 10 years old! That easily puts us into a spiral of fear. In our current system we tend to stigmatize either them or their teachers, which is totally contra productive!

Honouring the individual developmental stages of a child can produce mind blowing results in what they are really capable of learning at sometimes incredible speed! But that only happens if they are inherently motivated and inner motivation is only randomly accomplished in traditional schools. On the contrary – many of them leave schools with a strong distaste for learning and little or no idea about their purpose and passion. Much of their passion and creativity is actually educated out of them as research shows.

There are many reasons why we need a strong public school system! But we need a public school system redesigned to individual learning, and one that can choose and pick among those aspiring to become teachers. Good schools need good teachers, only then can they rely on individual responsibility by giving those teachers a great amount of freedom on how they go about their daily work. No administrator, no standardized curriculum, no set of strict rules will ever be able to bring out the best in every child. Adaptations need to be made within the specific circumstances in the classroom – and that can only be done by those feeling responsible for THEIR children – passionate, well educated and heart-centered teachers!

In our age of exploding information resources, even the most dedicated of teachers have no way of keeping up with ongoing developments, cutting edge knowledge and revolutionary breakthroughs providing the basis for thriving in todays changing economies. Self designed learning is instrumental in raising children’s skills way beyond those of the best of traditional teachers, but it takes teachers who are willing to take their pride in having students who far outperform their own knowledge and skills.

Private or chartered schools designed to making profits take away direly needed funds from quality learning environments, except if they charge at levels not too many parents can afford.

Competition creates few winners and many losers. Newest research shows that humans are originally wired for cooperation – not competition (Lynne Mc Tagert: “The Bond”)! Education needs to start honouring that, starting with those responsible in the administrations but definitely not limited to those! Cooperation needs to become a fundamental value in schools! Our competitive economy is leading this world directly into an environmental catastrophe – we all need to wake up to the consequences and do our best to avert them! If we don’t, the children of today, when grown up, will be faced with a planet that can no longer provide the resources for healthy living and even less provide them with a future quality of life we deem as our birthright (though only in the Western World)!

There is an inherent brilliance in each and every child – we need to bring it out, not dim it down because our measuring tools are limited to a certain academic performance. Many of the best contributions to our society come from those thinking outside the box, not those groomed into being straight A students!