Five years ago, my husband and I decided to decorate the backyard of our property with some fruit trees. We fully committed ourselves to those trees. Everything was growing nicely except for the early cherry tree that lagged behind the others. It was sad in a way, small, dissatisfied with its appearance and progress of development. It was shutting down… slowly, but surely.   During the second year, all trees were reaching for the skies, opening up its treetops and playing with clouds. The cherry tree was the only one that was looking sadly down towards the ground. It has lost all of its leaves and began to dilapidate and dry out. It decided to go back to the ground which it grew out of.

My husband suggested that we put it out when it completely dried out and plant something new instead.   I decisively declined and decided to help her out. That is what I told him as well. He looked at me, smiled and said: “Give it a try!”  I spent every day sitting on the grass next to her, held her with both my hands and sang to her. I told her how beautiful she was and that it does not matter that she is not so tall or that she does not have leaves as her older sisters and that she was born so as to rejoice in the sun and to enable her fruit to make friends with the sky.

Honestly, I believed that she will get better. I believed in her!

There was no progress to be seen, but I hindered the attempts to remove her. It was winter time. She looked as if there is no life left in her anymore.   I kept singing to her and kept telling her kind words. The miracle appeared!
No other tree delivered fruit next year as it takes at least three years since the planting for the tree to give fruits.

My beautiful cherry tree yielded a single cherry red as blood, beautiful as life itself despite it being small and with little or no leaves!

Even though I do not eat cherries, I thought that it was her gift for me as a unique token of gratitude for not giving up on her and for not having turned my back on her. I ate her fruit with delight and thanked her.
She is now barely one meter tall (her “sister” reached a height of 3.5 meters within five years). She is proud and happy because she knows that she is being loved despite her being tiny in comparison to all other giants.

Children need words of encouragement and support. They need to be given wings and then manage over their path as the most gentle breeze. Copyright: Yuganov Konstantin

This is not just a story about the cherry tree.

I am trying to say that you should never turn your head away from those that are weaker, lack self-confidence or those that think that they are less worthy, ugly or redundant in this world. Such people do not exist!
It is nice to give a hand to those that have lost hope, and tell them that they can do it, aid them in developing the most beautiful part of themselves and open up a path along which they will be making steps of happiness, filled with confidence and inner beauty!

It was Don Miguel Ruis that wrote in his book Four Agreements that everyone should be impeccable with their word. He used the example of a woman who was kind-hearted and intelligent. She loved her daughter infinitely. However, one day she came back from work exhausted and all she wanted were peace and quiet. The daughter was not aware of this and she sang merrily. She sang so loud that she made her mother’s headache even worse.

The mother lost her temper, looked at the girl with anger and told: “Shut up! You have a horrible voice. Could you at least keep it quiet for a little bit!?”

The truth is that the girl did not have a bad voice at all just that her mother did not have any patience for any kind of noise. The daughter believed in what her mother told her. She did not sing anymore after that, because she believed that her voice is bad and that it will be a disturbance to everybody that hears it. She became shy in school and declined to sing every time she was asked.  This example best illustrates how sometimes all it takes is a word to crumble all our dreams and make us give up on something that could have been predestined for us.

Children need words of encouragement and support. They need to be given wings and then manage over their path as the most gentle breeze.  Because, if you believe in miracles then you should believe in children!

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Once they start school, children face many challenges. How to master complex mathematical operations, how to understand the world of science and society, and how to develop expressive language skills. We were all told in school that the more we read, it will be easier for us to express and style our speech, thoughts, and beliefs.

  A person who develops a healthy reading habit is more than just a well-read person. He/she has more self-confidence, has more confidence in what he/she is saying and is able to deal with any unforeseen event. This is why we, the grown-ups, must pass the habit on to our children.

 How to inspire a child to read?

Experts believe that developing a child’s belief in his own ability to acquire knowledge through reading is one of the most essential encouragements for reading. This is what scientists refer to as the feeling of self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy   develops a positive self-confidence  in children  and  belief that their hard work and effort will pay off. They learn that through reading  they are capable of gaining knowledge and experience.  

In this way, children’s fear of reading is also reduced. If a teacher or a parent manages to develop the self-efficacy assessment ability in children, they are on the right way to inspire their children to make an effort to discover and resolve all the tasks that unfold before them as they read.

Some of the first steps that parents can take in order to develop a feeling of self-efficacy in children in the reading process are:

• emphasizing the importance and value of reading as a useful activity;
• creating a positive atmosphere for reading;
• encouraging the need for reading;
• helping a child to develop a believing in himself as a reader.

Teachers have a key role in motivating children to read.

Who should motivate a child to read?

Child’s motivation for reading starts from several places – parents, siblings, or school teachers.  A child’s love for books and their enthusiasm for learning and enjoying reading should be nurtured every day.

From the earliest age, the family should develop a positive attitude to books in their child. The child needs to believe that it is an active process as they grow up. A process which they will enjoy and which will provide the new knowledge and skills.

Teachers may have a key impact on the development of a positive approach to reading. Once the approach is ingrained in the child, reading becomes one of their favorite activities. Children themselves will initiate reading in their free time.

 How can  teachers in schools motivate children to read?

Teachers are the ones who create an encouraging environment in which a child continuously interacts with the reading process. They should create a socially-constructive approach additionally improving and encouraging a child’s motivation for reading.

A teacher can achieve this in the following ways:

• to the degree possible, by adjusting the topic of selected compulsory reading and homework with a child’s age and their interests;
• instead of a conventional approach where a child reads compulsory reading on their own, a teacher can organize activities of reading in pairs or in groups;
• by asking a child to share their experience after they finish a book, whether in writing or orally and with their friends;
• by motivating children to also link the books with their certain life experiences; and
• by organizing classes where children can talk about the material they read in their free time – online texts, manga comics, books other than compulsory reading, magazines.

The magic of reading! The moment when you sit in your special corner, holding a book and get transported to another world, often distant and unknown. The most wonderful thing is imparting love and a positive attitude toward everything  to children, even reading. Reading shapes us and makes us active, capable and wise. When they realize that they learned a lot of new things, children are motivated to keep searching for answers. That is why you should encourage the child to enjoy the magic of reading.

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