64 Comments on “What Parenting Practices Do You Do to Help Your Kids Avoid the Genius Dip?” - Post your own?

Saleema says

I have worked for the Head Start Project for nearly 30 years, start­ing as a vol­un­teer, then teacher, lead teacher, fam­ily advo­cate, and cen­ter direc­tor.
I believe in the power of thought and the effect of words on the devel­op­ment of the self-concept and self-esteem of each indi­vid­ual. I also know for a fact that the “under­priv­i­leged” of our world are at greater risk to expe­ri­ence what Burt calls the “Genius Dip.“
How­ever, a more gen­eral obsta­cle, which I would like to call “Equal Oppor­tu­nity Obsta­cle” is the absence of a sense of self-worth.
The feel­ing of being unim­por­tant, of not being “instru­men­tal” to the well-being of one self and to that of oth­ers is the biggest obsta­cle to per­sonal and social devel­op­ment. It’s the sin­gle most deter­mi­nant ele­ment in the loss of the per­fec­tion we inherit at birth.
Prob­a­bly, we all remem­ber a time in our child­hood when we felt invin­ci­ble. Most of us chose to for­get it, to avoid remem­ber­ing the pain asso­ci­ated with the loss of it…
Cul­ti­vate the child within your­self and take the hand of your child, before he “crosses the streets”…

Amelia says

Hi Burt

I’ve taught my chil­dren not to be sheep (fol­low­ers), but to be indi­vid­u­als. I’ve also taught them spir­i­tual insights from early on so that they can under­stand life and it’s lessons bet­ter. In their spir­i­tual stud­ies, my chil­dren and I have all been taught to med­i­tate to get answers, med­i­tate to relax, as well as visu­alise and cre­ate our own des­tinies. My chil­dren are quicker to cre­ate their lives, and as for me, I’m slower on the uptake but get­ter there!

Kevin K. W. Ng says

Mind is every­thing as noth­ing hap­pens with­out the knowl­edge of Mind

Josey says

Hi Burt,

Thanks for your will­ing­ness to do won­der­ful things for all our children!

I worked in the edu­ca­tional sys­tem for 16 years. It can be a very frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence for an enlight­ened per­son. The self-fullfilling prophecy is alive and well in edu­ca­tion and not in a good way. I’ve seen way to many chil­dren get labeled, for­mally or infor­mally, as slow learn­ers or learn­ing dis­abled. Once that label gets attached, the child’s aca­d­e­mic life can began a down­ward spiral.

Now for the good news! All it takes is some­one to believe in the child and to teach them at their edu­ca­tional level and a whole new stu­dent emerges!

I could prob­a­bly fill books on what I’ve seen that dis­cour­ages learn­ing as well as what truly moti­vates the so-called “slow learn­ers”. The prob­lem I always ran into was lack of time for teach­ers, due to hav­ing to meet cri­te­ria for the dreaded out­comes based (test­ing) edu­ca­tion, and/or too many “slow learn­ers” in one classroom.

The solu­tion? Edu­ca­tion can no longer be “one size fits all”. That is a factory-based edu­ca­tional method that does not address the needs of gifted or under­achiev­ing stu­dents. We must have indi­vid­u­al­ized edu­ca­tion for all! It can be done with the use of tech­nol­ogy that is avail­able at this time! We can no longer con­tinue send­ing chil­dren on to higher grades when they have, in no way, mas­tered the lessons pre­sented in their cur­rent grade. We need to address every student’s abil­i­ties at their cur­rent edu­ca­tional level. We can­not con­tinue teach­ing stu­dents at their frus­tion level and expect them to “all of a sud­den” gain the skills. It a com­pany ran their busi­ness this way, it would be bank­rupt in one month!

It is a very high per­cent­age of con­victed crim­i­nals, sit­ting in jail right now, that were labeled “learn­ing dis­abled” or “slow learner”. (I believe the esti­mate is close to 80%). What oppor­tu­ni­ties does a stu­dent have when they turn 18 and they have no mar­ketable skills or a gen­eral lack of knowl­edge of the game of life and how to play it? I firmly believe that once the edu­ca­tional sys­tem begins teach­ing stu­dents at their level, we will see many pris­ons close their doors 15 to 20 years later due to lack of need.

This is a “hot topic” for me. I saw way too many chil­dren get left by the way­side in our edu­ca­tional systems.

Now if only we had an enlight­ened leader in office that would see the absur­dity of our cur­rent edu­ca­tional sys­tem and com­mis­sion changes…hmmm

Thanks Burt!
Gotta go visualize!

David says

Hi Burt:
I won­dered what hap­pened to you, as I have not heard about any new “classes” from you the last few years (I have been tak­ing them for 15 years+ — So. CA area) Now I know–your and our kids.
Some­thing is needed in the school sys­tem. Two of my grand kids were taken out of pub­lic school grade 2/3 as they were not doing well, par­tic­u­larly in read­ing. They sub­se­quently were home schooled instead(my daugh­ter did not have any teach­ing experience).After a few years of home school­ing they became pro­fi­cient at read­ing and were put back into pub­lic school where were sub­se­quently became Honor Roll stu­dents until grad­u­at­ing from high shcol.

My grand daugh­ter also home schooled for sim­i­lar rea­sons is back in pub­lic school and is a “National Honor Roll” stu­dent — 7th grader. She reads a few hun­dred books a year.

My inter­est in your “cur­rent passion”,is what is needed to improve (not what’s wrong with the school system)to help our kids; partcu­larly now as my youngest grand­son has now also been taken out of pub­lic school (age 7)to be home schooled for same afore­men­tined reason.

I will be encour­ag­ing my grand­son to use his visual and intu­itive abil­i­ties and sug­gest­ing to my daugh­ter she get on your web site,
Take Care,
David

Theresa Kannenberg says

Hello every­one, My name is Theresa Kan­nen­berg, a German-Canadian liv­ing in Gifu, Japan. I have been teaching

Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage here for 18 years. Even­though I had dreamt of being a mother for a very long time, I some­how knew in my soul that I had to do alot of learn­ing and heal­ing before I was going to be given the chance to raise a child. I truly believe that if I would have had a child ear­lier in life, I wouldn’t have had the nec­es­sary tools for nur­tur­ing. It would have all been about ME and not about the child. I would’ve had my own bag­gage and anger from my past.

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Over the course of 15 years while work­ing and trav­el­ing, I took a vari­ety of self-healing sem­i­nars and lis­tened to self-help inspi­ra­tional cds and dvds which helped me to grow as a per­son and to real­ize I do not have to keep re-living/repeating my past or carry the past around with me. Con­tin­ued Self-development leads to a bet­ter life, and puts you in a bet­ter posi­tion to raise a child. For­give­ness seems to be one key to liv­ing free from car­ry­ing oth­ers around with you.

HAVE A PLAN

Hav­ing a finan­cial plan before birth was the biggest life sav­iour ever. I rec­om­mend hav­ing a plan from the very begin­ning, a spe­cial account just for fam­ily plan­ning started even before you meet the part­ner of your dreams. I did, and it has taken the pres­sure off the money situation.

Money can be the biggest pres­sure on fam­i­lies these days espe­cially with ris­ing gas prices, food prices, etc., and this pres­sure can lead to early divorce, if you are NOT liv­ing a Prin­ci­pled based life sys­tem, which adds fuel to the fire of the Genius Dip.

By the time I had Deston (French for Des­tiny), I was ready, will­ing and happy. I lived cheer­fully from day one, lis­ten­ing to clas­si­cal music and chil­dren songs while dri­ving from les­son to les­son. Even to this day, I teach a vari­ety of ages, so my own child in the womb was able to be there with me before and after birth.

Even­though I am a work­ing mother, I have cho­sen an occu­pa­tion in which I have been able to bring my baby with me dur­ing work hours, not all but most. While I was teach­ing a les­son, my baby would sit qui­etly in his baby carry bas­ket beside me. If he began to feel uncom­fort­able I would give him a cracker or bot­tle of warm milk which I always car­ried in my bag. He enjoyed being there and shar­ing my life all the way.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD and CARETAKER SITUATIONS

It was harder after hav­ing the sec­ond child but hav­ing a stay-at-home dad helped tremen­dously, we have been incred­i­bly blessed to have had at least one par­ent at home on any given day (to tell the truth, I planned it that way.)

Many new par­ents do not have this lux­ury and have to leave their child with a care­taker or babysit­ter, for hours on end even; this can­not be good psy­cho­log­i­cally, or spir­i­tu­ally, and sta­titics have shown that chil­dren who spend hours and hours sep­a­rated from their par­ents have sig­nif­i­cant lower IQ scores and atten­tion dis­or­ders as well as dis­rup­tive behav­ior. This should tell us some­thing. Chil­dren need More Par­ent Time — direct love, encour­age­ment, and healthy input through active inter­ac­tion dur­ing play­time and mealtime.

I have observed some care­taker sit­u­a­tions as a teacher and have seen some scary tac­tics which can change a child for­ever. I have seen a cheer­ful child change over the course of a year because of being placed in the wrong hands. Glazed over eyes is a clear indi­ca­tor, and inces­sant cry­ing when being dropped off and the con­tin­u­ance of cry­ing for hours after being left. Clink­i­ness is another indi­ca­tor of an unhappy child.

If my child did this, I would.…well you can of course fill in the blanks here. Def­i­nitely choose another cen­ter or do it myself. I never leave my chil­dren with­out know­ing the entire sit­u­a­tion. The envi­ron­ment must have car­ing, atten­tive and cre­ative indi­vid­u­als who love being with chil­dren. This is so impor­tant for the over­all well-being of the child.

DIFFERENCES IN CULTURE

One dif­fer­ence I have noticed between Cana­dian child-raising and Japan­ese child-raising is the sleep­ing sit­u­a­tion. In all the writ­ing here, I have not seen any­thing writ­ten about this subject.

In Japan, the mother or the father goes to bed with the child or chil­dren. From baby­hood all the way up to about age 7 or 8. The child is given his first bed when turn­ing 6 or 7. When I babysat for fam­i­lies in Canada, the chil­dren were put in their own beds and the light turned out after the story was read.

We who live in Japan, go to bed at the same time, read a story or two, sing songs until the child is totally asleep. Once this hap­pens, the par­ent is free to con­tinue sleep­ing or get up to get some work done.

If the chil­dren are put in their own beds, they are free to come sleep with the par­ents dur­ing any part of the night with­out rejec­tion. The chil­dren are much more con­nected with par­ents emo­tion­ally and it gives them the needed phys­i­cal con­tact as well as that needed feel­ing of being safe.

I NEVER tell them there are mon­sters under the bed, a ter­ri­ble prac­tice if you ask me. Using fear to keep a child in bed is the worse case sce­nario and should be avoided. A child who sleeps peace­fully is a happy child when it comes to bed time.

ANOTHER CULTURE DIFFERENCE (maybe shock­ing to some)

The Japan­ese soci­ety is very pri­vate about show­ing affec­tion in pub­lic, touch­ing or hold­ing hands are rarely seen as well as hug­ging and kiss­ing are def­i­nitely taboo in pub­lic areas such as super­mar­kets and shop­ping malls. I of course show affec­tion whether I am at home or in public.

We also take baths together in the evening — a well kept secret of the Japan­ese peo­ple. I believe hav­ing this cus­tom has reduced the num­ber of sex­ual pred­i­tors for rea­sons unknown to me — but I feel bathing together is an over­all pleas­ant expe­ri­ence help­ing to develop a healthy, com­fort­able atti­tude towards nudity. The phys­i­cal con­nec­tion between mother/father and child fos­ters a lov­ing trust and accep­tance of one another which lasts a life time.

CHILDREN ARE PEOPLE TOO

Dur­ing the day, I con­tinue to ask my chil­dren what they want or need and con­stantly explain the dif­fer­ences between need and want. I always give them a choice and they feel involved when they make their choices — this is so very impor­tant as it gives them a feel­ing of being in con­trol of the out­come. The par­ent isn’t always being the controller.

I unwa­ver­ingly ask my chil­dren about their day at school and take time out of every­day to sit, play and laugh with each one — which includes draw­ing, paint­ing, block build­ing, read­ing, watch­ing their favorite pro­gram, and of course hav­ing meal­time with them. They are humans in lit­tle form and I have great respect for the god who gave me a chance to learn from them.

ALL these things put together build a happy home for all con­cerned and help spur the devel­op­ment of a happy, healthy, well-rounded, soul­ful child. I am con­tin­u­ing to teach my chil­dren the abun­dance of the world.…they can cre­ate any­thing their hearts’ desire if they really want to.

Let’s raise the level of childrais­ing to a new level and not hand over this task to the less than per­fect edu­ca­tional system.

HEARTFUL THANKS

Love and peace to all those read­ing these heart­ful sto­ries shared the world over, and Thanks to Burt for let­ting us share our sto­ries here. I am look­ing for­ward to read­ing more so I may con­tinue to bring out the Genius in my own off­spring seeds who float upon the rapids Away and in Hopes eyes Back to me again.

Pur­sue Life, Knowl­edge and Wis­dom with Eager Feet, Always!

Sin­cerely,
Theresa
a.k.a. The TLCgirl

http://amazon.com/Symphony-Words-Images-Creative-Together/dp/0805974237

Kathleen Brewington says

Hi Burt,
First i would like to say thank you for your words and thoughts, i enjoyed hear­ing what you had to share. I am a mother of two beau­ti­ful daugh­ters now 8 yrs. and 17 yrs. of age, and also have two gor­geous sons ages 14 and 20. I have also been blessed with a grand­son age 18 months,who just lights the world.

I think one of things i do as a par­ent and grand­par­ent is allow my chil­dren to be out­spo­ken and to express them­selves freely. They feel safe speak­ing their minds and being cre­ative in many ways. My 8yr old daugh­ter Sarah loves to redesign her clothes and shoes, alot of par­ents i know would not allow this, my grand­son Andrew loves play with my pots and pans, skate­boards and has a great love to be out­doors immi­tat­ing birds and other ani­mals. I think par­ents can help fos­ter that cre­ative genius in a child by let­ting chil­dren express and dis­cover things with­out react­ing to it.So they make lots of messes in the process but enjoy with them how much fun they are hav­ing, try and see the world through their eyes, it is most fasi­nat­ing when you let go of react­ing and just watch them soar. Its okay to color out of the lines, its okay to exper­i­ment in the kitchen. My daugh­ter Sarah loves cook­ing and often comes up with her own recipes and con­coc­tions, and she loves every minute of it. She invents her own cook­ies, some of them have actu­ally been very tastey.Some of their ideas may seem off the wall but thats what helps their imag­i­na­tions grow and blos­som. I think it would be absolutely won­der­ful if we could get into the pub­lic and pri­vate schools a cur­ricu­lum like math and read­ing a sys­tem of edu­ca­tion that taught throughly the power of thought and imag­i­na­tion, to help teach chil­dren to allow their minds to soar, and to do so freely. This should be taught like math and all the sub­jects and should be regarded as an impor­tant part of edu­ca­tion, fea­tur­ing the works of all the great minds but in a sim­ple way a child can grasp its true understanding.We live in a totally cre­ative world, a men­tal thought world, and this should be taught to chil­dren early on, so they can let their beau­ti­ful minds can cre­ate.
When i was a child grow­ing up, my younger brother and I would go on adven­tures every­day. Each new day was a new adven­ture, some days we were great artisits, other days we were inven­tors, we did alot of inter­est­ing off the wall things some peo­ple would regard as just that. We once tried to make para­chutes with my mother’s sheets, jump ropes and back packs, one day we melted all of crayons down and made can­dles we sold at the park for a quar­ter a peice, another time we made kites out of my moth­ers old shower cur­tains. We just had a ball. My brother now is an ani­mater and artist. Our child­hood brought us the courage to dare to dream and to explore many things through our inno­v­a­tive ideas and imag­i­na­tions. I say allow kids to be kids, so they make a mess, so what, let them make a mess, let them dis­cover what they are capa­ble of doing, dream­ing and imagining!

shareece says

Hi Burt and thanks for the great report. Maybe you will also want to con­sider this: http://www.babyplus.com/prenatallearning.php

kind Regards and fur­ther suc­cess in help­ing out kids

Krys says

I have an ‘unusual’ mem­ory in that I remem­ber being born and my life up to now, age 46. Being told that you under­stand and remem­ber every­thing works. Never for­get­ting being a baby means I can say for a fact that baby talk from adults was absurd unless dur­ing play­ful moments. Don’t bother. It cre­ates no desired effect other than mak­ing kids won­der what you are doing and leaves us won­der­ing if we should join in, and not because we are dis­ori­ented or dumb, but, because we think we are sup­posed to act this way-is that what you want to teach? No motor con­trol does not mean we are ‘out of it’ wait­ing to be imprinted into soci­ety. I under­stood pretty well every­thing but I just didn’t have the body con­trol to form words to speak back or lift my spoon and so on. Read­ing while point­ing to the let­ters mak­ing the sound of the words being read is good and rep­e­ti­tion is good. It was for me. Point­ing out how things work together, serves a pur­pose by being ori­ent­ing. Later in life, when work­ing at a nurs­ery school, some teach­ers took it for granted that chil­dren are to clean up at the end of play period and the tots did so. These pre-schoolers also knew which teach­ers did not expect clean up, and would not do so. With my nephew, all of us adults around him, explained why he was asked to do some­thing, and we filled him in on news, and, found he wouldn’t act up when we did so. We also, with­out the pres­sure of a ‘have-to know’ expec­ta­tion, believed he under­stood what he was told and it appeared to be so. I think it’s impor­tant to instill self con­cern, trust of our inner feel­ings, to know that rep­u­ta­tion and con­se­quences of actions can pro­pel us or waste time. It’s impor­tant to know it’s excit­ing to pur­sue inter­ests and to know we can par­tic­i­pate and have an impact on society.

Alicia S. says

I come from an extended fam­ily, my mother loved chil­dren and very often we had lit­tle chil­dren around since I was very young. I have always admire chil­dren for their sin­cer­ity and clar­ity of mind. Once in Italy I had six chil­dren , between four and five years old ‚play­ing in my house; two ital­ians that only spoke their own lan­guage, two amer­i­cans that only knew Eng­lish and two Spaniards speak­ing only Span­ish. I sat down to lis­ten how they talked in their own lan­guage and answered to each other cor­rectly. I believe that when we grow up we loose that won­der­ful under­stand­ing of each other that chil­dren have, and as you say the Genius Dip is very preva­lent.
Dear Mr.Goldman; I admire you and the work you are doing. Thank you very much.

Michele says

I whole­heart­edly agree with your report and while change on a grand scale is slow, we can make the most dif­fer­ence in the home.

As a child, my favorite book was The Lit­tle Engine That Could. This lit­tle book was read to me so many times that it’s mes­sage has stayed with me ever since. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.….perseverance/mind over matter.

If I can instill that type of think­ing within my own chil­dren cou­pled with qual­ity time and a lov­ing envi­ron­ment, than I know my kids will do alright.

Also, I find it dis­turb­ing that kids as young as 3 and 4 are play­ing video games (with their own hand­held even). We don’t have those in our house. Rather, the back­yard is their mode of play.

I’d like to also state that while my kids are not short in the toy depart­ment — they don’t even play with them. If chil­dren are given fresh air, a bike, shovel and ball they will make their own fun and be tired out by bed­time. Mind you — they are still young.

John Barnes says

I am now 65, have cre­ated numer­ous com­pa­nies and thou­sands of jobs. I taught myself to read when I was around 5, and when I was 12 invented a sys­tem to teach my 4 year old sis­ter to read in 2–3 weeks while I was inca­pa­ci­atated with a bro­ken arm. She was read­ing the Wiz­ard of Oz within 3 months ther­after. I held her as capa­ble of that, and inter­acted with her accord­ingly. With my own chil­dren, I did “pre­tends” at bed­time, hav­ing them visu­al­ize accom­plish­ments (read­ing, sports, what­ever they wanted to accom­plish with excel­lence) in their minds from within their bod­ies, using their visual, audial and kines­thetic senses in their mind to rein­force the sen­sa­tions and implant the mem­o­ries. We had them try lots of dif­fer­ent things, always encour­ag­ing them, to see what inter­ested them. We always had lots of books around about lots of things, both fic­tion and fac­tual. We did not talk down to them, but talked to them at an essen­tially adult level even at a very young age. We encour­aged them to make dec­sions, and dis­cuss their rea­son­ing from young ages, and to accept the respon­si­bil­i­ties and con­se­quences of those deci­sions. With my grand­son who lives close to me, I began train­ing his eye hand coor­di­na­tion at age 1 by rolling a ball toward him and hav­ing him throw it back to me, and shortly ther­after, bounc­ing a ball on the edge of the playpen into his chest so that he could catch it in his hands. He soon got to where he could reach out past the edge of the playpen and catch it before it bounced on the edge of the playpen. He could hit a ball thrown in the air by the time he was age 2, by pro­gress­ing through incre­men­tal steps. At age 5 he was intro­duced to the pre­tends at bed­time, and uses visu­al­iza­tions on his own as well. He and his 3 year old sis­ter are being trained to speak both Eng­lish and Span­ish. They are both given ample oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice var­i­ous forms of art as well, paint­ing and draw­ing etc. My grand­son and I play video games such as Lego Star Wars that involve lots of solv­ing puz­zles to accom­plish the games goals. As a result he has highly devel­oped prob­lem solv­ing skills for his age. One of the biggest prblems that I see is that we accept way too much lim­i­ta­tion on the abil­ity at young ages. It is impor­tant to not press chal­lenges on one that they can­not han­dle, but acce­larate the chal­lenges at as rapid a rate as they can. Genius gets bored real fast, but thrives on inter­est­ing chal­lenges, and esp­cially on paced increases that keep it challenged.

ANUP ROY says

I try and but positve around because I seem to affect my son.

Well I have to eat by please do more of this! PLEASE! I really like it.

as a friend

Toni Luoma says

I have been using law of attrac­tion and man­i­fest­ing from 9 year old. I AM now 14 yers old and I AM try­ing to pre­serve and increase what­ever capa­bil­i­ties I may have and get. THis is a jour­ney to the unknow. I know you’re all cheer­ing me on and I applaud and thank you for it. I AM doing this for the col­lec­tive good and I count on your sup­port. Thank you once again.

Susan Montierth says

Hi friends,
I think I was an indigo child. I feel things on a very spir­i­tual level. I have 5 chil­dren. My youngest has Down Syn­drome. God showed me a great spirit in my dreams before I gave birth to him. It was my son Michael. When he was born he sparkled like golden light. He was given to our fam­ily to teach us and give us an extra mea­sure of love and and an extra mea­sure of patience. Some day he will be restored to per­fect form. His spirit is great and so many chil­dren today have great spir­its, greater than what we can some­times com­pre­hend. Let us love and endear these spe­cial chil­dren. Life is eternal…we may not know but there are angels among us in a form we may not rec­og­nize.
My mes­sage is to embrace your lit­tle ones for who they are. Accept them. Love them.
Susan

stacy navarro says

Burt, I think this is a great topic, the most impor­tant
topic! My son is enrolled in a wal­dorf char­ter school
so he can be in a nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment that rec­og­nizes
how impor­tant art and music are for the human being.
My ideal school for chil­dren would be one that incor­po­rates
the free­dom of sud­bury and its demo­c­ra­tic approach, with
the beauty and spir­i­tu­al­ity of wal­dorf, a splash of montes­sori for more kines­thet­ics. I pre­vi­ously home­schooled
my son, but due to want­ing a more spir­i­tual part­ner, I have cho­sen to part with my hus­band and home­school­ing is
not very prac­ti­cal right now. My son is a genius and I do
won­der about the school envi­ron­ment hold­ing him back. I know it does not allow for him to have his indi­vid­ual con­scious­ness, but it is the most nur­tur­ing
envi­ron­ment I can pro­vide for him at this time. The Nur­tur­ing Project is a great site for info for the younger chil­dren or you can find out more by look­ing
up Life­ways. I have taught my son that he is the cre­ator
of his life and can man­i­fest what he focuses on, even at
eight. I feel good know­ing that he and my younger three year old son can go through life feel­ing pow­er­ful and skip the vic­tim men­tal­ity.
Thanks for all the great info!
Stacy

Sinead says

Hi again

You get so many com­ments! Seri­ously this is whoa, wow.

I think… When I was younger I still remem­ber now my par­ents sup­port­ing but… It’s grown a lot…

I seem to affect my par­ents ever since I started becom­ing obessed with self improve­ment they became obessed with self improve­ment or at least… I started to affect my mom. She had always been a bit grounded but…

I think that you can learn a lot from your chil­dren if you let your­self. Of course I can learn a lot from my mom but that doesn’t mean she can’t learn from me. I don’t like when peo­ple say or par­ents in gen­ral ‘I know what’s best for you.’

When some­one pro­claims they know what’s best for me it makes or gives me the idea that they are say ‘I am the only one who knows best for you.’ I think that par­ents should be more open-minded and let­ting their child be more, do more.

My father always had intense over-protective issues and I always felt restrained. When he loos­ened his grip on me a lit­tle more I felt more free, less domisticated.

I think peo­ple can still guide their child but still WITHOUT an addic­tive need to over con­trol their child. I think par­ents are only there to be role-models and noth­ing more. I don’t think they should con­trol who I should be with.

My par­ents give me a lot more free­dom than other chil­dren and I feel a bit more like wild-child, freer and hap­pier. I am not say­ing you should let your child steal stuff, but mostly if it’s legal I think par­ents should lay their children.

For exam­ple if some­one wants to focus most of their time on devel­op­ing a skill and not going to school or do ‘con­ven­tional’ work, I think you should or par­ents should sup­port them. Sup­port their dreams.

I didn’t want to con­tinue this pro­gram I was going to… I want to focus most of my time on self-improvement right now. I am con­sid­er­ing to become an ath­lete. I want to spead most of my time read­ing self-improvement books and excersing.

I remem­ber fidgt­ing in the car over the idea of going to this pro­gram I was bored with every­day. I didn’t go any­more… I didn’t want to dis­ap­point my par­ents though. This was about a week ago… And my mom and I had the most uplift­ing con­ver­sa­tion over the phone I LOVED it.

I asked dad to stop the car and I called my mom.

Eariler she had not been accept­ing me not con­tin­u­ing this pro­gram because she thought she knew what was best me. Of course I am the only one who knows that… and I was doubt­ing if I should not con­tinue the pro­gram and fol­low what I wanted. I self-doubted because my mother… but then…!

We had our con­ver­sa­tion and it was one of the best con­ver­sa­tions I had with my mother. I am not sure if she nesser­ally agreed with my descion but she said she ‘would sup­port me whole-heartenedly, whether I screw up or not or what­ever descion I made!’ I was so thrilled it encour­aged me to make the descion I WANTED.

It was uplift­ing. My father was the one who began to encour­age me along the words but I needed both of their sup­port so I called mom. I have the most WONDERFUL par­ents a young ‘teenager’ can have. They don’t hate me if I don’t make descions they don’t like, and they scold me MOST of the time.

I am strug­gling with some­thing else though… I want to stop… I don’t know if I want to work right now because it is my dream to be gym­nist… My par­ents want me to con­tinue going… well it’s more like a gov­er­ment plan here Canada…

It helps me a job but I don’t want one right now. I am wor­ried if I don’t a job I’ll starve or some­thing… well not really I guess I am wor­ried that my par­ents will be pissed.

Even though my was sup­port­ive of me when the pro­gram I ditched called her she got a lit­tle freaked out. Just self-consious or some­thing. I don’t want her to get like that again.

I have been read­ing books that says I don’t need to ‘worry’ about stuff. I know I won’t always have my par­ents to watch my back but… I want to train so I can be ath­lete! I want… I don’t know how to tell my par­ents. I don’t know what to do… I sup­pose I do know but… I don’t know.

I know some tips. I think the MOST IMPORTANT thing to do for your child is be com­pletely sup­port­ive of he or she no mat­ter how stu­pid you think their idea is. AND DO NOT tell them what you think of your idea if you think its stu­pid. That is the most stu­pid thing you can do because the child who relies on you for sup­port, as idol, some­one to model on, who relies on your believes…

Like me they become depressed and crushed. That’s what I want my par­ents to do NO MATTER what. I think I can still be sup­port­ive them. I try to be.

I have this cousin who is very dear to me. She is three or four years old, and she is kind of spoiled with so much love from so MANY of my reli­tives. I think that’s cool and awe­some, I used to feel slightly jealous.

I think if you have two chil­dren, my mother doesn’t play favorites she loves us both so DEARLY it’s like we’re her every­thing. Once she said she loved us more than her­self and my dad.

If you love or express, or spoil another child or sib­ling more than another they will feel neglected or hate you. I felt resent­ment when my ‘Nana’ never paid atten­tion to me and only to my ‘favorite’ other cousin Sammatha.

Any­way, I love Han­nah, the three old whole-heartedly… So I don’t resent her… Any­way I want to help her attain or delevop her genious.

What I try do is when I visit her and her fam­ily I like to be pos­i­tive and not cute with her. I try to treat her as a equal but not harshly. I appri­eted when some­one treated me equally when I was her age.

I try and but positve around because I seem to affect her.

Well I have to eat by please do more of this! PLEASE! I really like it.

Your friend,

Sinead

P.S–

Do more reports and things this please.

Don’t just help the tod­dlers though, there are peo­ple a bit younger than me who are into this stuff.

More than before a lot of peo­ple near my age or yonger are into things like ‘the Secret’. The talk of that around my friends was spread­ing like wild­fire! SO AWESOME!

Any­way just say­ing. Should be chil­dren of all ages. I think that’s what you mean when you say child right?

If this is a lit­tle long deal with it, you did want my thoughts.

Atilde says

Dear Burt

The answer to your blog, very well serves this pur­pose too.

I very much sym­pa­thise with most par­ents and spe­cially teacher Jorge who wrote in your blog. Indeed it is so sad what the gov­ern­ment is doing to its chil­dren. Chil­dren should be respected as the future gov­er­nance. This gov­er­nance is not there for­ever, for sure. So they want to live a her­itage of dead and dull sleep­ing pop­u­la­tion liv­ing a life on the obliv­ion? How sad! The power in a coun­try, soci­ety or planet depends on their peo­ple and their four spouses (body, mind, resources and soul). It seems that putting all this chil­dren asleep we will have no future, we will have a coun­try of sick or ill (bod­ies), mind­less with no capac­ity to gen­er­ate resources and soul­less peo­ple with­out intu­ition at all. Is it what we want for our future and the future of our loved ones? Cer­tainly not! Who votes for gov­ern­ment? We do. So we still have the power to change things, let’s do it now, before it is to late.

And God bless you Burt and other peo­ple like you who are fight­ing for the right to give a true inher­i­tance for our chil­dren, –their own true and gen­uine geniuses!- I rec­om­mend our gov­er­nance to read more of Con­fu­cius and Mar­cus Aure­lius model of gov­er­nance and really embrace love and coop­er­a­tion, after all, they also are peo­ple and have chil­dren. God bless them and their chil­dren too. For we for­give them and their lack of intu­ition, they too, may be, also have been vic­tims of the system.

And I rec­om­mend par­ents to learn the truth about par­ent­ing, for edu­ca­tion indu­bitably starts at home. A good level of self esteem in our chil­dren will help them immensely in their edu­ca­tional endeav­ours. Chil­dren are acquir­ing low and mid­dle self esteem from us par­ents and to change that, we have to rise our lev­els of self esteem now, our self esteem have been dam­aged by our past sys­tem, so please pass it not to our chil­dren, that is why it is para­mount to learn it at once. Oth­er­wise we will force Burt to be on Earth for thou­sands of gen­er­a­tions. At the moment he already has to restore the self esteem and geniuses of circa 6.000.000.000 (six bil­lion) peo­ple. It is the par­ents respon­si­bil­ity to cure the future cause, so please do read self help books and books on how to improve your chil­dren self esteem and main­tain their geniuses through life, learn with Burt, or con­sult a good fam­ily ther­a­pist. I also find Tony Humphreys’ books very updated and easy to fol­low. I rec­om­mend a pos­i­tive think­ing course for every per­son what­ever their age and pur­pose. It helped me and made a dif­fer­ence in my life and the lives of my loved ones to attend a Silva’s Sem­i­nar and Burt’s Cen­tral Stage Technique.

Thank you Burt for bring­ing such an impor­tant mat­ter to the lives of so many peo­ple. This is like an awak­en­ing blog and I feel it is my duty to con­tribute too. Thank you very much indeed. God bless you and your family.

margarita says

Burt, you are so spot on. I just love what you do and I agree 110% I am try­ing do do some­thing to encour­age chil­dren to find new resources with­ing them­selves. It is only in infancy. I am so heart­ened by the response to you and am slowly read­ing through them. The imag­i­na­tion is such a pow­er­ful resource and it is being neglected. Have you ever seen Project Sanc­tu­ary by Sil­via Hart­mann. She thinks like you but in a dif­fer­ent way. Have a look at her site. Just google Emo­trance. Long may you be with us to give such wise and kind direc­tion to our lives.

God Bless you

Mar­garita

Dorothy says

As par­ents in today’s soci­ety we would do a lot bet­ter by edu­cat­ing chil­dren at home. This also advan­tages the chil­dren as their par­ents can super­vise the friends they play with. If par­ents can do with­out a tele­vi­sion in the house all the bet­ter as chil­dren will go into them­selves and become more cre­ative in their think­ing and play­ing. I didnt have a TV in the house for the ini­tial learn­ing years. I found it eas­ier to bring them up with­out all the unnec­es­sary inter­fer­ence. The chil­dren were cre­at­ing their own thoughts on whats good and whats not. Its too much infor­ma­tion for under age chil­dren and for par­ents to keep up with the childs thought processes. Take the chil­dren to the library once a week. Read to them often dur­ing the day and just before bed­time. Let them watch the videos of the cho­sen book you would like them to see. There is more choice at the library than on TV. School­ing chil­dren at home allows the free­dom for inno­cence to grow. Tightly struc­tured classes which are nec­es­sary where chil­dren in a large num­ber are edu­cated together can pre­vent them from devel­op­ing as they should, its all too rigid. Par­ents must choose qual­ity not quan­tity in their child’s edu­ca­tion and only smaller per­sonal and home classes will pro­vide this. School­ing at home pro­tects from other chil­dren who might want to bully. This is a dis­as­ter. Tak­ing the slight­est chance for a child to be bul­lied can destroy them for many years. Teach­ing spir­i­tual, moral and eth­i­cal val­ues is done best in a pro­tected home envi­ron­ment until they are men­tally and emo­tion­ally mature enought to make their own minds up about who they should fol­low and what they should think. Fam­i­lies who choose to edu­cate their chil­dren at home are more likely to pro­duce a more men­tally bal­anced and whole­some child who is more likely to go fur­ther with their sec­ondary and ter­tiary edu­ca­tion. This then could start the argu­ment about both par­ents need­ing to work and thus the child/ren are given very very lit­tle time each day on the really nec­es­sary aspects of life ie learn­ing with mum, dad and sib­lings. I am mak­ing this com­ment with regard to chil­dren of kinder­garten and infant school age. I had my chil­dren at home rather than put them into a pre-school and gave them semi-structured free time in paint­ing, draw­ing, play­ing inside games, play­ing out­side with prams, dolls, bikes, child-size foot­path cars. I adver­tised my child-sitting skills in the local shop strictly for the ben­e­fit of my chil­dren hav­ing oth­ers to play with and that I could over­see their play with out­siders, and I got a good response. Some par­ents came for part of the morn­ing and left later com­ing back after they had done their shop­ping. Their chil­dren also ben­e­fited. I think its most impor­tant that chil­dren are given a pro­tected, healthy and happy kinder­garten school­ing with a mix­ture of other chil­dren but its much more ben­e­fi­cial if you are on the “cause” side and not on the “effect”. Every par­ent can be on the “cause” side of their genius child if they so wish. Giv­ing chil­dren the best envi­ron­ment for as long as pos­si­ble is the home envi­ron­ment for upbring­ing and parent-sponsored edu­ca­tion. Its the childs foun­da­tion for learn­ing which is also very very impor­tant. This all comes with a price. The price of maybe not own­ing your own home for a while. Not work­ing until the chil­dren are at least 8–10 years old. Pur­chas­ing second-hand clothes, fur­ni­ture, etc. My grand­mother didnt work and she pro­duced 6 chil­dren of her own and she adopted 2. They were all taught at home ini­tially. The first child (my mother) was a child prod­egy and did all her school­ing at the Con­ver­va­to­rium of Music and later became a music teacher. The eldest son put him­self through uni­ver­sity (BA Degree) by doing home deliv­er­ies from the local gen­eral store dur­ing the day and built up one of Australia’s biggest trans­port com­pa­nies. The sec­ond eldest son became the CEO or Chair­man for the ANZ Bank, Aus­tralia. In those days the bank paid for the house they lived in and on his retir­ment the bank gave him the house. The youngest son of my grand­mother started up a shoe chain-store includ­ing qual­ity ladies hand­bags and acces­sories and fin­ished up with many stores. If par­ents want a child-genius they must put in the hours.

Sarah says

My son is extremely sen­si­tive and has a always had dreams deter­min­ing future events that have occured.I used to ignore his dreams until he they could no longer be ignored. I beleive he got this from me as I do believe but have no “pow­ers” of any kind except “sen­si­tiv­ity” and my par­ents think that it is all rub­bish. My son has intro­duced me to the pow­ers of crys­tals and I used to think it was weird but now I have made it all a part of our every­day life. He is great at Maths but extremely poor at Eng­lish and slip­ping through the school’s cracks. I am teach­ing him med­i­ta­tion to open his mind and to think pos­i­tive (as his lack of school­ing knowl­edge upsets him and he quits too easy now). My son and I do a lot of things that the aver­age house­hold wouldn’t even think of doing but I do believe that we are evolv­ing as human beings into the higher realm of spir­i­tu­al­ity. I want my son to keep going with this when he leaves the nest and to teach his chil­dren, and so forth. His strengths may no lie in “school edu­ca­tion” but his “soul edu­ca­tion” is far greater than most chil­dren I meet and it is notice­able. Encour­age your children’s spe­cial lit­tle gifts more and more each day. I beleive that one day the world may have to rely on some­one that has “a gift” and not nec­es­sar­ily a “big brain”. All skills — men­tal, spir­i­tual, psy­chic, aca­d­e­mic are as impor­tant as each other for the human race as a com­bined “whole”.

Cathy says

Hello Burt,

thank’s for open­ing this venue,I as a par­ent believe we have to invest in our children.We need to send them to church & teach them how to pray.As a child grow­ing up my mother taught me spir­ti­tual val­ues this was first.
also we need to encour­age our chil­dren to read spir­i­tual books & watch TV shows RE: Touched By An Angel,etc, any acts of kind­ness this will help our chil­dren grow & develop.
Most impor­tant we must be there for them to lis­ten & encourage.The power of pos­i­tive thought is of great value,love, respect for all humans.

Than you
Cathy

Judi says

I was won­der­ing if Silva has done any study on work­ing with ADHD kids. I am a ther­a­pist and have observed that some of these chil­dren may be in the alpha level to some degree, instead of the beta.

Phung Phan says

I am not a par­ent nor do I plan to have one of my own. How­ever, I plan to raise chil­dren that do not have par­ents or have par­ents that are not so ideal. Despite lack­ing much par­ent­ing expe­ri­ences, I believe that I am an extra­or­di­nary being because I come from an impov­er­ish his­tory and being the first gen­er­a­tion in my fam­ily to grad­u­ate col­lege and head­ing off to med­ical school. I know that I could not have made it if I did not get the right influ­ences from the right peo­ple. I have that most lov­ing, and under­stand­ing par­ents who are very able to change in the midst of need. They taught me how to be thank­ful for my sit­u­a­tions and how to change to become bet­ter. A lit­tle pride is good they tell me but don’t be arro­gant.
Bud­dhism helped me to be who I am today as well. It has taught me to learn with my heart and fol­low my own path toward spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment. I have even gone so far as to reject cer­tain Bud­dhist prac­tices as essen­tial such as mantra chant­ing and belief in rein­car­na­tion.
And of course, thanks to my “Life after death” pro­fes­sor Dr. Fasching, I was intro­duced to Jose Silvia’s sys­tem which even­tu­ally lead Burt Gold­man! At this point of my life I learned how to con­vert my most hor­ri­ble habits and turn them into tools that help me attract the events and peo­ple I truly need and desire.
To recap on what I think a child need to avoid the Genius Dip is:
–Show uncon­di­tional love by acknowl­edg­ing your child and their work
–Don’t lec­ture your child about your life and your mis­takes but give them all pos­si­ble out­comes that could hap­pen depend­ing on their choices (Kids usu­ally have a good sense of what’s right and wrong but they do not have a well devel­oped frontal lobe to han­dle long term goals and plan­ning)
–Teach them all the reli­gions and let them decide on what they want to fol­low. Make sure you teach them tol­er­ance and that there is no such thing as right and wrong when it comes to other people’s beliefs (sci­ence can be a reli­gion too!)
–Teach your chil­dren the mechan­ics of think­ing pos­i­tive and make it a habit for them. If you don’t know how, get Burt’s sys­tem or use the Silva Ultra­mind sys­tem or read “the Secret”.
–Teach com­pas­sion to all sen­tient beings because chil­dren can be cruel to each other which may cause unfor­tu­nate events like Columbine or WWII.
–Lis­ten to John Lennon’s song “imag­ine“
–Read “the Art of Hap­pi­ness“
–Be open to your child’s aim in life. Careers can be uncon­ven­tional such as comic book draw­ing, teach­ing dance, art, cook­ing, design­ing under­wear, pro­fes­sional gamer, etc. Any­thing is fair game in this world, peo­ple can make a liv­ing doing prac­ti­cally any­thing today. So, let your child do what­ever that they are nat­u­rally capa­ble of because I believe that no one job is more impor­tant than the other. EVERY job is essen­tial to the func­tion­ing our world.
Again, thanks to every­one that influ­enced me the cor­rect way. I am truly grate­ful and will pay back to soci­ety my debt to my fullest extent.

Joseph William Stasaitis says

Hi Burt,

Well said. Focus­ing on pos­i­tive solu­tions is the way to go. Over the years work­ing with kids with dif­fer­ent chal­lenges, I have found that plant­ing pos­i­tive seeds on a con­sis­tent basis with­out attach­ment to results works best.

Just yes­ter­day I ran into a per­son I had worked with five (5) years ago, who is now doing well work­ing in the com­mu­nity. Have worked with SED, devel­op­men­tally dis­abled, gang-related, autis­tic as well as main­stream kids over the years, it’s great to see when a child is able to inte­grate some of the ideas pre­sented and make some pos­i­tive changes.

Here’s a free email series for deal­ing with chal­leng­ing kids that may be help­ful. Before a child can access their cre­ativ­ity and genius capac­ity, they often need to work through the resis­tance they have built up by being exposed to the all too preva­lent “mod­els of insan­ity” out there.

http://www.overcomingdefiance.com/

Being the per­son with the spe­cific traits that you would like to see in your child speaks a lot louder than words. Kids pick up quickly if an adult “gets it” or not.

All the best.

Joseph

raselmahmud says

it is a rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea. i am always eager to get new idea.

Teresa says

I have always taught my chil­dren to believe in them­selves. Ask them what they would like to be and encour­age that — no mat­ter how big or odd it seems. This gives them a great sense of empow­er­ment. Stop telling them. Ask — learn to ques­tion — openly — with­out criti­sism. As adults we need to realise we dont have the answers. Only they know whats best for them — odd and all as that may seem. This does not mean we do not guide them on the basics truths. Stop try­ing to con­trol them — it only dri­ves them away. Remem­ber our chil­dren are only on loan to us — we do not own them. They are on their own jour­ney. Accept they will make what looks like poor deci­sions. Help them to learn from them. Stop being crit­i­cal and judg­men­tal.
As adults we need to deal with our own issues — for me this is by far the most impor­tant thing. We all have unre­solved issues which we project onto our chil­dren — our stuff — not theirs. We work hard try­ing to con­vince them that our way is best. Its sim­ply not. A lot of the time its our unful­filled ambi­tions, dreams that we want our chil­dren to achieve in order to make us feel good about our­selves. Get out their and sort out your own stuff and leave your chil­dren alone — on their own path with their own dreams. Ireland

Ripeka says

I have lovely kids, young teenager boys who stand close to us or when no one is look­ing, come for a hug. They have their moments, push the bound­aries, and at times jump clear over the fence but com­ments I receive from adults (includ­ing the shop keeper who I don’t know) is, they are respect­ful, polite and kind. Impor­tant life lessons for them:

1) We all make mis­takes, it is part of life.
2) When you do make a mis­take, own up, face up, and put
it right — (so come along we are vis­it­ing that home
and you are going to scrub that fence)
3) If you make a mis­take there is a con­se­quence.
3) No mat­ter what you do, we love you, come home.
4) This year you will be the best at one thing. What do
you choose.
5) If you die, sit down and wait, your grand­fa­ther (or
your angel) will come. If I die first I will come
col­lect you. (Love tran­scends every­thing, sur­prised
if I couldn’t make it).
6) A fam­ily tra­di­tion of sat­ur­day night din­ner, nor­mally
3 to 5pm (to fit the social life of the kids). They
can invite their friends, we invite extended fam­ily
and our fam­ily. There is lots of laugh­ter, food,
con­ver­sa­tion and warmth.
7) Another fam­ily tradition.…I love you.…normally
fol­lowed by…love you too…(but don’t say it in
front of the boys, ok)

Thank you for the invitation…

Orlando says

Grow­ing up in Hawaii as a young Hawai­ian male, there are a cou­ple of things in mind that has help shape my thoughts and actions today. Both my par­ents are very love­ing and care­ing par­ents. They have always been there for me when times were tough. They would never leave me no mat­ter the sit­u­a­tion. They would always lis­ten and then speak. They would make me laugh. I always felt safe and secure around them. Their love and affec­tion has never stopped, even till this very day. It is a great feel­ing to be loved unconditionally.

lise Teien says

As a small child from the age of 4 I sat at the beach in the sand. I had a flat stone across my legs and a bird­feather in my hand. I had also found a stone with a lit­tle dip in it, and I had filled it with salt­wa­ter from the sea. I painted my dreams on the stone, I painted hope on the stone. I wrote small let­ters to who­ever would read it.
I had a great time .
I my mind, now at the age of 53 I can still see a clear pic­ture of myself, feel what I felt at that time. The joy of cre­at­ing some­thing.
What did I do, I left imprints on the stone. So one day when another per­son picked up my his­to­ry­s­tone the pic­ture would come alive again, the let­ter would be read.
Did I know then what I did, no not at all. But still I think that some­place inside me I knew what I was doing.
Today I still paint. I teach vedic art. I use the 17 prin­si­ple to cre­ate a pic­ture with a mes­sage to whom it might con­cern.
I think its impor­tant to keep alive the sim­ple things we can do with chil­dren at all age and adults who still have their child alive within and to awake that child.

Georgia Daugherty says

I have read all the com­ments and have very lit­tle to
add. How­ever, I feel that a child that is raised in
a pos­i­tive and nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment will suc­ceed in
what­ever he/she chooses as a goal. Par­ents today are
very busy try­ing to make a liv­ing, but they should set
aside 10 or more mins. to lis­ten and com­mu­ni­cate with
their chil­dren being together as a group and also one
to one. Make each child spe­cial. To me pray­ing as a
fam­ily is very spe­cial. Also teach each child how to
med­i­tate and use visu­al­iza­tion. Georgia

drs. John-Dirk Hellingman says

Dear Sir,
First thank you for the great lessons and inspi­ra­tion So Far.
Chil­dren, how to avoid chil­dren to fall into an unnat­ural atti­tude and sen­si­bil­ity?
Why do we ask that ques­tion. Have we for­got­ten our own child­hood so quickly.
Is it because we always want to be in con­trol, spe­cial with our chil­dren by which we loose that sen­si­tive con­tact with our own childhood.

And what to do when the child doesn’t do what we want.
We cor­rect, edu­cate and schape its out­look, emo­tions and thoughts so that it meets our terms and wishes.
Well educated!!

Instead of lis­ten­ing what the child really needs, com­mu­ni­cates and want­ing to share its feel­ings and emo­tions with us.
Then we make con­tact and in that very con­tact, from there rises rela­tion­ship and can trust, hon­esty and chal­lenge grow.

Chil­dren need an envi­ron­ment that is safe.
Safe emo­tional, Safe phys­i­cal, Safe men­tal and Safe spir­i­tual. The child needs that. It is and should not be a privilege.

How can a child meet soci­ety
By soci­ety meet­ing the chil­dren
Maths, Lan­guages, Arith­mac, Log­i­cal think­ing
Danc­ing lessons from 8–10 up till 14–16 years of age to be inte­grate with that period that is called puberty, deal­ing with why I feel like this and what to do If I donot want this or that and how to share all that with oth­ers and yet to be true to myself.
Lessens in behav­iour and eti­quettes
Next to sports, yoga, body lan­guage and lessons in stand­ing, walk­ing, mov­ing, the­ater and drama
Meet­ings with nature and under­stand­ing what it is to be in a nat­ural sur­round­ing.
All this asks for other cur­ric­ula, school­plans and teach­ers that have a deep under­stand­ing of their major
and extreem impor­tant jobs cul­ti­vat­ing a dif­fer­ent soci­ety than they have come from.

How to start?

Start look­ing your child in the eyes for a moment and end that look with a smile. You start mak­ing a difference

arulampalam says

it is very impor­tant to help the chil­dren as they are the future gen­er­a­tion. After I red all these ideas and comments,I don’t know what else to say. you are doing an excel­lent job. Thank you verymuch.

Donna Wheatcroft says

Chil­dren just want to be lis­tened to, and most impor­tantly, to feel that they have been heard. They need to be encour­aged to become who they are meant to be. They not only want, but they need bound­aries. They need to hear what we want them to do instead of what we don’t want. They need exam­ples more than they need crit­ics. To this end I have taken up the teach­ing of The Virtues Project to teach­ers and par­ents. Virtues are the basic ele­ments of our char­ac­ter and val­ued by all cul­tures. Within the 5 domains of human poten­tial the Virtues Project helps us directly in our social, emo­tion­nal and spir­i­tual endeav­ours, and enhances our phys­i­cal well-being and intel­lect. We flu­o­r­ish in an atmos­phere that is safe and car­ing where cre­ativty can thrive.

Brenda Mac says

I truly believe that our own self-esteem, how we view our­selves and oth­ers is some­thing that is miss­ing in fam­ily, school life and our communities.

I have been using a Char­ac­ter Edu­ca­tion pro­gram with my daugh­ter Sarah and it is empow­er­ing her to rec­og­nize the “good” inside her­self and the “good” inside oth­ers. This pro­gram is called The Virtues Project. Every sacred text, every reli­gion and cul­ture was stud­ied around the world and the com­mon thread run­ning through all were the virtues. Com­mon ground for all human­ity, the virtues are what define us as being a “good per­son” no mat­ter where you live in the world, no mat­ter what reli­gion you prac­tice or if you prac­tice no religion.

A Cana­dian based grass­roots pro­gram with five sim­ple strate­gies now in over 90 coun­tries in the world in fam­i­lies, schools, com­mu­ni­ties, gov­ern­ments, pris­ons, hos­pi­tals, uni­ver­si­ties, etc.

Just as every child is born a genius they are also born with virtues inside of them. Every child has the poten­tial to be assertive, car­ing, respon­si­ble, coura­geous, pur­pose­ful, reli­able, respect­ful, etc but it usu­ally takes a par­ent, teach­ers and oth­ers to see these virtues inside of them before the chil­dren believe that they have these virtues in them and take own­er­ship of them.

By rec­og­niz­ing and telling our chil­dren when they are being respon­si­ble, or using their self-discipline or being tact­ful we can empower them to believe in them­selves. They need to under­stand that they “can” do any­thing they wish, “be” any­thing they wish, we all have the power within.

By real­iz­ing “teach­able moments” are just that, teach­able moments. It is nor­mal to make mis­takes. It is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that when we make mis­takes it is a golden oppor­tu­nity to learn and keep it a pos­i­tive experience.

By real­iz­ing the impor­tance and ben­e­fits of hav­ing “clear bound­aries or rules” set by our par­ents and schools to keep our chil­dren safe and also set­ting the stage for learning.

By “hon­or­ing the spirit” enjoy­ing spe­cial moments with our fam­i­lies, with the arts, dance, movie night, what­ever you deem as “spe­cial” and just rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of doing things together.

By learn­ing the “art of com­pan­ion­ing” our chil­dren and fam­i­lies to allow us to empty our cup when we feel the need with­out judge­ment or per­se­cu­tion or res­cu­ing, so sim­ple, so effective.

This pro­gram has the tools http://www.virtuesproject.com

Burt you have so much com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing that we need to change the world so we can live bet­ter lives. Your pur­pose­ful­ness and deter­mi­na­tion are astound­ing and I am grate­ful for all your tire­less efforts.

All the best,
Brenda

Ed says

I have read all these responces with a huge smile on my face.

Con­gradu­la­tions to so many of you that have such huge suc­cess , and con­gradu­la­tions to those of you who have been or are strug­gling with major issues and refuse to give up.

I guess I have been for­tu­nate in my life; I was born to older par­ents, both in their 40’s at the time, Mom a grade school teacher, and Dad although he only fin­ished 8th grade, one of the wis­est peo­ple I will ever know.

They always looked for any tal­ents that I exhib­ited and made sure I was able to per­sue them as far as I wanted.

When Sandy and I had chil­dren we did our best to do the same.
When they would ask ques­tions we would do our best to answer them, and if we couldn’t, we made sure that we took the time to show the kids where and how to find the infor­ma­tion and hope­fully answers to those questions.I always tryed to impress on them that there was no such thing as a stu­pid ques­tion, and in many instances there was more then one right answer.

I have to say we have wit­nessed one of our chil­dren turn adver­sity into tri­umph sev­eral times, and in ret­ro­spect have asked him if he had not gone thru the hard times, if he would be as effec­tive as he is, The answer has been both times, no.If approached in the cor­rect state of mind, adver­sity builds character.

We now have 2 adult chil­dren and a 2 yr old grand­child. I always won­dered why my Mother told me she would attempt to teach me till the day she died. I now know the answer.

Sandy and I are still involved it all 3 of their lives, and we are still advis­ing as best we can for a given any given sit­u­a­tion if asked and again if we don’t have an answer, at times we still research the answers both together or sep­a­rately com­par­ing the info we get.

If your child exhibits a tal­ent or pas­sion for some­thing, as long as its legal sup­port it. Look for ways to accen­tu­ate it; make sug­ges­tions, don’t force your beliefs or opinions.

I would say best gift I acquired in my life was an over­whelm­ing sense of curios­ity. Ask­ing the hard ques­tions has got­ten me a lot of flack, but only served to dou­bled my resolve to find answers.Some ques­tions are ongo­ing after 40 yrs but I still con­sider poten­tials, and as I said before, that some­things have more then one right answer.

Real­ity fol­lows atten­tion, like attracts like, but with­out the abil­ity to main­tain focus, the uni­verse returns the very same ran­dom­ness that the mind pro­duces flit­ting from one thing to another. Cul­ti­vate as best you can focus and the abil­ity to con­cen­trate in your chil­dren. Med­i­ta­tion is a good place to start as it is the prac­tice of main­tain­ing the focus of attention.

Bless­ings,

Ed

Lorraine says

Thank God for Burt!
Yes there are plenty of us out here who were search­ing for some­thing I found what I was search­ing for (I’m 67 now)when I was 50 I found heal­ing and have prac­tised it since then I nur­tured my chil­dren in the way of heal­ing and they in turn are nur­tur­ing their chil­dren in the same way along with the other “encour­ag­ing stuff” along the way. I read what ever I could lay may hands on to enlighten and awaken my soul to the higher planes. What an amaz­ing jour­ney life is when you Let go Let GOD. Thanks.

Kenneth says

Dear mr Gold­man, All humans ever born are “open”.
Dur­ing the begin­ning of life, already as fetus, the are pre­con­di­tioned by the envi­ron­ment in which they live.
In this way all is clipped away as a lit­tle bush in the gar­den and grow­ing to become a beau­ti­full hedge siutable to the expec­ta­tions of the sur­round­ing world. Although one for­gets that the roots of this life are far more invis­i­bly spread under the sur­face caus­ing many difi­cul­ties in the vis­i­ble part.
Kenneth.

Johnny says

Maybe we can do it with hypno . It is a good way to bring the chil­dren to the level that brings them in con­tact with the inner­self. There is the Ultra height that brings them there easely.
Greet­ings Johnny

Pat Tinoco says

Hi Burt, Well, first of all I think open­ing up new thoughts on a past form­ing of sys­tems has finally arrived. We live in a world that absolutely rejects change. Patri­arch and Matri­archy were about unques­tion­able obe­di­ence and the no talk rule. Now, to get our children’s minds out of frozen state is a big step towards free­ing them. How? To undo split-mind devel­op­ment is teach­ing them WHOLENESS. The ideas and con­cepts taught to them at a vul­ner­a­ble stage in devel­op­ment sets them up for empow­er­ment or being over­whelmed. They are trapped into believ­ing they are defec­tive and flawed because they don’t seem to mea­sure up. FALSITY of course. Oppor­tu­nity to address per­cep­tions and beliefs devel­oped early in life. BALANCE requires con­nect­ing both sides of the school sys­tem know­ing a’s or d’s are a mis-perception about self. To believe a’s know every­thing, always right and d’s are dumb know­ing noth­ing and never right is a set-up in per­cep­tion. A’s in bal­ance are wrong and make mis­takes and d’s in bal­ance are right and have times they don’t make mis­takes. Approval of self, to trust one­self and love one­self know­ing I can and will make mis­takes but they don ‘t define me. I ask for help know­ing every­one can and will make mis­takes and I am loved and accepted because I was born not because I am a human doing (mem­o­riz­ing machine) but a feel­ing human being hav­ing a liv­ing life expe­ri­ence. The mil­i­tary ideas brought into home and school has stunted human emo­tion devel­op­ment. False beliefs of who we are cre­ates pro­jec­tion and a world of self destruc­tion. FEAR changed to LOVE which the sys­tems only base on appear­ance rather than on con­tent and sub­stance can enter the arena of the us and them men­tal­ity and end divi­sive­ness. Mis­takes are teach­ing tools not PUNISHMENT tools. We can become inspir­ing to each other when we free our­selves and see TRUTH in our real­ity. Hope this is some help. Thanks, Pat

Carol Ann says

Where can I read the par­ents com­ments and replies?

My daugh­ter is 28 and my son is 18.

As a sin­gle par­ent I have always made it a point to never have to say no for a, inter­est, belief, aspi­ra­tion, or cre­ative group they enjoyed.

I am blessed by them.

lilfarie76 says

All I can say at this point is thank you for let­ting me know that we are not the only par­ents out there that know there is noth­ing wrong with our child just because he does not fit into the “nor­mal solider” stu­dent role. I have been try­ing to get the school to under­stand that he is not ADHD which he was tested for and came back neg­a­tive, but the teacher refuses to believe it because he is unlike the rest of the stu­dents. I am always search­ing for things that I can do to help him make school a bit eas­ier and fail over and over again. So I am in need of help to make his life bet­ter. His self esteem at 5 years old is already declin­ing and it hurts ter­ri­bly to sit back and watch this hap­pen to my son. He was so excited to go to school, but now there are days that we have to fight with him to get him to school.

There are a few things that we encour­age at home. He loves to take all his toy ani­mals and blocks and other toys and makes zoos. He will spend hours ( if you let him) tak­ing all their toys and build­ing won­der­ful things. I encour­age him and praise him for his cre­ativ­ity . He is so smart and is con­stantly ask­ing ques­tions and I praise him for that as well. He have noticed the more we get our boys into the coun­try and into nature the more cre­ative and happy and well behaved they are. We dream of the day that we can move out of the crowed grow­ing prob­lem neigh­bor­hood that we live in to the coun­try where they will be free to play with out the sur­round­ing bad influ­ences that we have to shel­ter them from now.

Thank you again for such a won­der­ful place to go to and learn from!

Bless­ings of Love, Hap­pi­ness, and Patience
Lilfarie

Hayley says

As a child I was always ques­tion­ing every­thing in my life. I was free spirit lov­ing nature and the world with great hap­pi­ness. I grew up through a restricted lin­ear edu­ca­tion, which as Burt out­lined in his video decreased my self-value, as the way I pre­ferred to learn things was not being adhered too. Nev­er­the­less I per­se­vered through the edu­ca­tion sys­tem believ­ing on day I would be able to con­tinue onto a secure job. I have observed through­out my senior years the unmo­ti­vated highly tal­ented individual’s drop­ping out of sub­jects, which required more thought and time. The edu­ca­tion we were receiv­ing was under stim­u­lat­ing and degrad­ing to us as young adults. Quite sim­ply we had no imme­di­ate appli­ca­tion of cal­cu­lus for which we could under­stand and develop our under­stand­ing. We were never given the oppor­tu­nity let alone it was never sug­gested. More impor­tantly once we heard that com­put­ers were able to do thou­sands of cal­cu­la­tions per sec­ond we were dis­traught at the out­comes for which our soci­ety was being formed into. Although the knowl­edge attained is highly valu­able for those indi­vid­u­als wish­ing to pur­sue a career in engi­neer­ing or math­e­mat­ics, the way that it is taught is under stim­u­lat­ing and stag­nant. It is not only math­e­mat­ics that has lagged behind but almost all other sub­jects which demand a sin­gle method of answer­ing the ‘cor­rect question’.

The true irony presents itself. For the infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties of thought pro­vide an infi­nite amount of pos­si­bil­i­ties and solu­tions to ques­tions. But it is the stu­dents whom are only exposed to one appar­ent think­ing process and idea, which is finite and ‘cor­rect’. By lim­it­ing stu­dents poten­tial to think out side the box, the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is mould­ing the student’s thoughts, ideas and under­stand­ing of the world. They are forc­ing these ide­olo­gies into the con­scious mind as the be all and end all and heav­ily scru­ti­nise those stu­dents whom present another cre­ative solu­tion to the prob­lem. This injus­tice is preva­lent across many sub­jects and as a result many stu­dents aren’t able to progress into higher lev­els of under­stand­ing and think­ing processes. Quite sim­ply young adults are restricted and it is not only in school but also in their pri­vate lives. These restric­tions are hor­ren­dous as they cause rebel­lion or ‘faz­ing out’ as no adult or often any teacher is able to lis­ten to the cries of help. I’m not say­ing adults do not wish to lis­ten but the truth is often that dur­ing this point in an ado­les­cents life, that the par­ent– child rela­tion­ship isn’t as strong.

That is why the marks across many sub­jects are aver­ag­ing to about 30–40% across the state. Ear­lier through­out pri­mary and early in sec­ondary edu­ca­tion results in the 80–90 were attain­able to the few 10% but as the years pro­gressed the 10% dropped to 2% and lately this 2% has been ques­tion­able at my cur­rent high school. Don’t get me wrong we are not a ‘dumb’ gen­er­a­tion, in fact we have an immea­sur­able amount of poten­tial as all human being do. But it is the edu­ca­tion sys­tem that is dis­cour­ag­ing our ego from being wrong and instill­ing a sense of fear. This in affect is labelling us weak, fail­ures, hence low­er­ing our sense of self-esteem and erad­i­cat­ing our under­stand­ing and belief in our­selves. For how can a per­son grow in all the facets of mind if he has no belief?

One more thing, I remem­ber Burt men­tion­ing this key ingre­di­ent for which our belief and under­stand­ing in our self can be trans­fig­ured “cre­ativ­ity”. Cre­ativ­ity to all the facets of life is the KEY. As an art stu­dent myself I would not be able to under­stand the world with­out cre­ativ­ity. It is quite pre­cisely our inter­nal being or ‘soul’ freely express­ing its deep inner knowl­edge and under­stand­ing with­out the scrutiny of being wrong. For art is any­thing. It is exis­tence. It is never wrong. And is cur­rently gain­ing higher accord in the world, as it freely accept­ing all forms, ideas and bridg­ing con­nec­tions across all nations. Per­haps the solu­tion to many of our prob­lems is through­out art. Freud believed that the sub­con­scious mind com­mu­ni­cated to our con­scious selves through dreams. It is not only dreams but also auto­mated writ­ing and pure cre­ativ­ity in whichever form which invari­ably increases our under­stand­ing and growth in our selves as a whole being. It is this under­stand­ing of our­selves in which we strive for as human beings. Young chil­dren must be given the chance to develop this under­stand­ing and pos­i­tive self-belief for the younger they are the more prone and sub­ject they are too haz­ardous influ­ences of life. I sur­vived the regime but I am dis­gusted at the cor­rup­tion of my fel­low pears. Let’s stop this cor­rup­tion and act NOW. With this newly acquired knowl­edge, it is time to instil this pos­i­tive pro­pa­ganda and change the struc­ture of soci­ety for good.

Annie D says

In my fifti­eth year I look back and am grate­ful for my parent’s love. I always knew I was loved. That seems pretty sim­ple but it’s essen­sial for well­be­ing. As more and more chil­dren are born more ‘aware’ we can­not pre­tend any­thing. We can’t hide any­thing from them. We must be gen­uine even if we make mistakes.

My dad ALWAYS (my entire life) told me I could do any­thing! The legacy he gave me was won­der­ful — there are no lim­its! Today I am a ‘healer’ and I don’t restrict what I can do by a lim­it­ing mind­set — thanks to my dad.

As par­ents we need to learn to be ‘observers’ rather than ‘reac­tors’. I learned this with my adult dis­abled daugh­ter. It gives every­one some space to become calm again if pos­si­ble. When they yell at us and we yell back, this only exac­e­bates the prob­lem. (I was doing that for many, many years until I caught on.) We can­not become observers if we’re under the influ­ence of drugs or alco­hol. To help our chil­dren we must FIRST help our­selves to become more spir­i­tual, more tol­er­ant, more lov­ing, com­pas­sion­ate and under­stand­ing. It’s not about ‘fix­ing’ them it’s always about ‘fix­ing’ our­selves first. We can’t make any­one do any­thing. We can only work on our­selves. We can cer­tainly help them once we have more bal­ance in our own lives.

As for school­ing: I think Pink Floyd showed us what was wrong so well in “The Wall”. School­ing needs to be ‘fun’. I’ve known for a long time that once we get past pri­mary school that the fun is mostly gone. Even as we get older we have a sys­tem of Tafe Col­leges here in Aus­tralia which now cater solely for the work­force. There are no longer any ‘fun’ or ‘hobby’ classes. It’s all so deadly seri­ous. Fun and laugh­ter are an absolute necessity.

Thank you for tak­ing a stand — as we all take a stand things will improve. It’s hard for us older ones to learn how to visu­alise and think pos­i­tively. We may not see it in our life­time but we pave the way for a bet­ter world.

HealingMindN says

Kids know fakes. They can see right through to actual inten­tion and sin­cer­ity of adults around them. Kids are intu­itive of heart knowl­edge, so they emu­late heart knowledge.

“Do as I say, don’t do as I do” doesn’t cut it with kids. As opposed to lin­ear think­ing adults, kids are a life-positive, non-linear think­ing breed, so they have end­less imag­i­na­tion and unlim­ited pos­si­bil­i­ties as stan­dards — until they are raised in a lin­ear think­ing culture.

As a result of their fol­low­ing heart knowl­edge, kids emu­late their role mod­els. If it means being as fake as their par­ents, then that’s what they’ll do — as they secretly wor­ship so me heavy death metal group.

Good par­ents start with good peo­ple who are sin­cere to each other, keep each other healthy, happy, and sat­is­fied, and show love and respect for each other as well as for the spir­i­tual author­ity of the One Uni­ver­sal Mind; this heart knowl­edge sets the best exam­ple for kids.

loren Frost says

I am 60 years old and have just stum­bled on to the fact that there is a great shift coming..I started reading,and have found in my read­ing that this has been going on for many years.. the end of the myan calan­der is in decem­ber of 2011 and that is when the shift will be promi­nent in our lives, the indigo chil­dren will show us the way there so we won’t be over­welmed when it happens..some peo­ple fear that year as the end of the world, but it is the begin­ning of the Christ Con­cious­ness …the chil­dren of today should be incour­aged to learn as much as pos­si­ble about this shift. most peo­ple don’t believe in it.. think it is just plain stu­pid.. how­ever less then 100 years ago we had no cars now look at the world. we are pass­ing the tech age into the new con­cious­ness age where the souls of man already know all that there is, and we will move in the next gen­er­a­tion toward that goal to be one with the source…our cre­ator whom we are our­selves man­i­fested by the cre­ators thoughts…have a great mind.. my favorite say­ing is the mind is like a para­chute .. it is use­less unless it is open.. so lets encour­age our young to open their minds and not to just fol­low the main.. use your minds go inside or go without..

MustardSeed says

This dis­cus­sion is an essen­tial and nec­es­sary work as we pre­pare for and cul­ti­vate this new age of spir­i­tual per­cep­tion for human­ity. The ideas below have taken form through years of contemplation.

1) Role play­ing in groups, as part of a char­ac­ter devel­op­ment activity/program.
2) Demon­strate and pro­mote ser­vice to/with oth­ers, first-hand, in a myr­iad of con­texts, as a way of life.
3) Encour­age and engage in extended fam­ily and/or inter-generational activ­i­ties.
4) Allow and pro­mote play as a cre­ative oppor­tu­nity (search on “power of play”).
5) Pro­vide learn­ing and activ­ity resource cen­ters, where chil­dren and oth­ers can see and take part in diverse activ­i­ties along­side help­ful pos­i­tive prac­ti­tion­ers.
6) Prac­tice free thought explo­rations with­out judg­ments as to cor­rect­ness, appro­pri­ate­ness or prac­ti­cal­ity, much as prop­erly coached brain­storm­ing exer­cises.
7) Actively and rou­tinely demon­strate and encour­age out­ward acts of shar­ing and kindness.

Thank you for this.

Ernesto Jacinto says

These are the fac­tors I have noticed that affect children:

1. Pro­vide a sense of self assur­ance. Mis­treat­ing, shout­ing at them, show­ing no respect for them affects their own self con­cept and there­fore their ego iamge.
2. Cre­ate an envi­ron­ment where they can grow their abil­i­ties. Chal­lenge them to make their own toys (assem­ble them) or use what they have to have fun. Pro­vide stim­uli with incen­tive.
3. Focus imag­i­na­tion and visu­al­iza­tion edu­ca­tion. Truly incor­po­rate into the edu­ca­tional sys­tem.
4. Enhance intu­ition. Same con­cept, inte­grate into edu­ca­tional sys­tem.
5. Expand their sense of own­er­ship to include that the planet itself is their respon­si­bil­ity to keep it alive. It is an alive entity and shoud there­fore get the same cate and pet­ting as any alive organism.

That’s it for today. Thanks for shar­ing and I just can not wait to see how all of this ends up.

Carina Hoijer says

Hav­ing worked as a teacher of art ear­lier I think a good, safe, happy feel­ing and fun envi­ron­ment is really help­ful. Let­ting pupils be active, try­ing things and prac­tice a cou­ple of times and allow­ing them to improve results so they know they can improve them self and deve­l­ope is important.

Being and feel­ing safe is impor­tant. Beauty, har­mony, respect for your­self and oth­ers and pos­si­bil­i­ties to be cre­ative and deve­l­ope and to do so in your good time.

I think we all can do much more than we are told and you need to try and prac­tice and things hap­pen. Peo­ple all ages can do so much more. They have energy to use on devel­op­ing and learn­ing and to dare to do things.

It is about dar­ing to try. Dar­ing to think that you can. Allow­ing your­self to try and to real­ize it takes time some­times. To actu­ally prac­tice and you can do it. It is ok to do mis­takes to lose or not be per­fect you try and try again.

Just to do dif­fer­ent labs, prac­tices and hav­ing fun worm­ing up so to speak and develop not expect­ing a result directly per­haps but to look and se things and your­self deve­l­ope and you deve­l­ope and grow.

I believe con­fi­dence and self esteem and respect for your own and oth­ers devel­op­ment and growth is key.

To allow your­self to be dif­fer­ent for starters and oth­ers too.

To allow genius to grow to allow your­self to develop. There are so many ways of try­ing and hav­ing fun too. And go back and look again, at what­ever it is you are doing art or some­thing else. Use some­thing new some­thing old and try try try. Have can you now if you are good at some­thing if you don not try and allow to try many times not just once.

To be able to se the un inspected and use it. To plan sure but also to use inter­est­ing things you didn’t plan in your art etc. for instance.

The port­fo­lio is also a good way of work­ing col­lect­ing ana­lyz­ing show­ing your work reflect­ing etc some­times your work is a lot bet­ter than you real­ized you must take some time and look properly.

I cer­tainly think all small kids are very wise and clever and then peo­ple tell them stuff like you cant do that or calm your­self. We all do it per­haps when we are tired tell oth­ers to calm down etc. Any­way par­ents and teach­ers do that way to much they should learn to use that energy the chil­dren have for bet­ter things like cre­ativ­ity sports other good things grow­ing things a gar­den or tak­ing care of ani­mals pets hav­ing pen pals etc.

Teach­ers edu­ca­tion works well for teach­ers teach­ing small kids. Some­thing is some­times lost at school and col­lege some­times though. The fun and curios­ity for the pupils and the stu­dents must con­tinue and the safe good place still has to be there.

I used to let my pupils choose top­ics to work with and that made them more eager and happy at school. We used to have shows and exhi­bi­tions etc and do real work more pub­lic things that also trig­gered sparks and energy was flowing.

I think some amer­i­can school have a good atti­tude they should use it more though I am think­ing team work every­body is impor­tant and have fun and if some­one do some­thing good you get inspired and hope to be just as good etc.

New films for young peo­ple are bet­ter now days I think they are more about being good and cre­ative and happy and kind
in a very nice way. I am think­ing like dance films and oth­ers. Like films about doing shows etc. There are some nice films abouth ani­mals and pets also etc. Hav­ing films
at home about things you do find pos­i­tive and per­haps would like to hap­pen for your­self and for the young ones is impor­tant. Cut down on angry and bad energy in look­ing at what films you choose and music. etc

Try to have har­mony at home at school etc and focus on good energy doing fun and good things.

To let kids find a hobby or a sport or music, dance, art, drama, the­atre, writ­ing, hav­ing pets, friends to play with or chat­ting etc thats ways to develop.

To grow and to get that con­fi­dence we have and must some­times find and build up and prac­tice and try many times over and over. To se our self and to se the chil­dren as suc­cess­ful is impor­tant. There is all ways some­thing good and you can all ways improve your­self and work on things it is all ways time for that. xxxxx

Love and feel­ing safe is part of this for small chil­dren and older ones too. When peo­ple feel safe and happy they do good things if that is not so then neg­a­tivism fol­lows so a happy allow­ing and lov­ing atmos­phere is very impor­tant. xxxxxxx

To learn to talk give and take crit­i­cism is impor­tant to to deve­l­ope your lan­guage to do so is impor­tant and to learn is not you per­son­ally it is what you have done this time or haven’t done that is being judged so the fact is you can work on it what ever it is and try again. xxxxx

Allow­ing many tries is impor­tant at school but also dead­lines some­times booth are impor­tant depend­ing and some­times kids have to be allowed to develop faster or more slow its not wrong or wright its just that we are dif­fer­ent thats all. xxxx

Good food more veg­gies and enough sleep is important.

Super greens for ex and other really good healthy prod­ucts can make a very big difference.

Drink­ing enough good water. Hav­ing a good envi­ron­ment for eat­ing at school a nice place calm etc and clean safe toi­lets as well. Beau­ti­ful gar­dens and places to play and paint and sing and dance play the­atre and sports and enjoy nature etc is good. Being with ani­mals pets etc is good.

Mak­ing young peo­ple under­stand they can try dif­fer­ent things and they can prac­tice to learn new things is impor­tant. Try­ing dif­fer­ent meth­ods too is good.

Young peo­ple can learn to set up goals. Chil­dren can allow them self to think now and then what they should like to improve and what they should like for them self as well. Also learn­ing that pos­i­tive think­ing and affir­ma­tion can help too and learn­ing think­ing like going in to the bub­ble for calm and peace is good for chil­dren also.

Carina Hoi­jer.

Isa C says

Dear Burt:

Thank you so much for bring­ing this infor­ma­tion on the Genius Dip to light!

I am the mother of a seven year old boy. I had been dream­ing of the day that I would become a par­ent for many years and as early as 1993 attended an all-day sem­i­nar for par­ents and teach­ers of gifted chil­dren in my home town. I sim­ply believed then as I do now that all chil­dren are indeed gifted. I deter­mined that I would cre­ate a new path for myself once I became a par­ent — not one pre­scribed by any­one else, although I read very widely, but I was seek­ing to pur­sue a more intu­itive approach to par­ent­ing. The moment I knew that I was preg­nant I started com­mu­ni­cat­ing with my child and telling him/her (because I delib­er­ately had no attach­ment to hav­ing a child of a par­tic­u­lar sex) how beau­ti­ful, won­der­ful and tal­ented he/she is and how blessed I felt to be his/her mother. I was in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with my child in utero even read­ing out aloud to him on a daily basis. I lis­tened to beau­ti­ful music, read inspir­ing lit­er­a­ture and watched only uplift­ing movies, if I watched movies at all. I found that I had a lot of energy and was extremely cre­ative. Every day I med­i­tated and was inten­tional about the health, beauty, won­der and intel­li­gence of my child. A few weeks before his birth I had a dream about him — he was in my arms and could pos­si­bly have been two months old. He was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with me and I sug­gested to him in a teas­ing way “You think you can do any­thing your Father can, don’t you?” and he gave me a wry smile and quipped “Yes!” Later in that dream he posed a rid­dle to my father and to my brother (both of whom were later to become his god­par­ents) — He showed them the heav­ens and asked them this ques­tion, “When is 11 divis­i­ble by 12?” and told them that there was a pro­fane (obvi­ous) as well as an occult (hid­den) answer — my son was in fact telling me through this dream his birth date! He was born on the 11th of Decem­ber! So, we were really in communication!

From birth until now, I have been con­vinced of his genius capac­ity and he has demon­strated it in many ways. I have been very care­ful not to talk about it except to close fam­ily, but have been hun­gry to do so at the same time as I felt that what I was expe­ri­enc­ing was not par­tic­u­larly unique and that there were numer­ous par­ents who were hav­ing sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences to my own. I thought about home school­ing him and how I could bring a Wal­dorf school sys­tem to my coun­try — I still have this in mind. I have done every­thing to place him in an envi­ron­ment where he is the cre­ator rather than merely an observer. Obser­va­tion is impor­tant how­ever the free­dom to express and cre­ate is vital. His lan­guage devel­oped very early. From about 3 weeks old he started com­mu­ni­cat­ing with me in his own words and I would always respond to him. I talked with him, sang to him and read to him con­stantly and by 6 months he said his first rec­og­niz­able word — not Mummy, but ‘car’. By age 2 he was draw­ing and colour­ing cars in pro­file which looked like some racy designs cre­ated by a teenager! He would build Legos inces­santly — first build­ing the pieces ‘as intended’ usu­ally intu­itively rather than fol­low­ing the instruc­tions and after a short while cre­at­ing his own designs. By age 4 he was build­ing kits designed for kids twice or three times his age! At age two he was build­ing jig­saw puz­zles with 100 pieces — I believe my par­ents got over-inspired and gave him a 300-piece puz­zle to work on — he, grandma and I even­tu­ally com­pleted that one together, how­ever he wanted to do it on his own and I came home from work one evening to find the box com­pletely destroyed — the image oblit­er­ated for­ever. For­tu­nately though, every piece was saved. Three years later hav­ing never pulled it out again or hav­ing the box as a ref­er­ence, I watched in awe as my five-year old son assem­bled the puz­zle ‘blind’ — I thought then “My God, there are so many tiny pieces and there is no pic­ture, how will he do this?” He did not stop until he had done it — it took just over 3 hours, but I was sim­ply amazed at his deter­mi­na­tion to take this on and not stop until he had suc­cess­fully com­pleted it.

He has revealed his psy­chic abil­i­ties from very early too and I encour­age this (from he was really tiny I started a prac­tice of speak­ing to him while he was sleep­ing, usu­ally after he’d been asleep for an hour; I would call him by name, iden­tify who I was and tell him how won­der­ful and gifted he is list­ing all the many aspects of his gift­ed­ness. This became a weekly prac­tice) I encour­age him to talk about his dreams and to cre­ate his own sto­ries and try very hard to elim­i­nate the “shoulds” and “sup­posed tos” in my own lan­guage (it is remark­able how dif­fi­cult it is to shake what we were steeped in as kids!)

While I do pro­vide struc­ture to his day — a rhythm with meals, home­work and bed­times etc. — I allow a lot of flex­i­bil­ity with respect to how he spends his play time. I restrict TV some­what by sug­gest­ing that he might actu­ally find one of his books or build­ing a new design in Lego more inter­est­ing and fun and he usu­ally agrees with me on this. He reads books which are not illus­trated and will fin­ish them in a flash and get great plea­sure out of them as “he makes his own pic­tures” We still enjoy going to movies together and have seen some par­tic­u­larly good ones recently like “Hor­ton Hears a Who” which really opens up think­ing… and most recently “Speed Racer” with which he was enthralled because of the car designs –the details of which he noticed and could recall were quite amaz­ing to me. I encour­age him with cre­ative writ­ing, usu­ally for school as well as research projects, art and music. He has been resist­ing the idea of going to music classes although I real­ize that he has musi­cal tal­ent as he is able to recall movie scores etc. and tell me specif­i­cally at which point in the movie the song was played although we had only ever seen the film once and it might have been many months later that we heard the tune again on the radio!

We have ‘idea’ con­ver­sa­tions when we drive to school. Talk­ing about prob­lems in the world and the envi­ron­ment and what we might do to address them. It is really fas­ci­nat­ing to hear the many ideas he has for solv­ing these problems.

I am per­son­ally look­ing for resources to sup­port my son’s explo­ration and his intu­itive learn­ing as I have watched the edu­ca­tion sys­tem strip away so many of his nat­ural capa­bil­i­ties. Cer­tain toys and TV pro­grams will do this too. From my own expe­ri­ence, allow­ing my child to cre­ate — draw, paint and write and act out sto­ries — has done him a world of good. I also tell him con­stantly that he can be, do, have any­thing he wants if he really desires it and believes it! I have also learned to be a bet­ter lis­tener and this more than any­thing else has helped me to be more intu­itive in my approach.

I am now speak­ing with other par­ents at his school about how we can work with the school to intro­duce a music pro­gram as part of the cur­ricu­lum as well as weekly drama classes. I really would like to see a pro­gram sim­i­lar to the Wal­dorf sys­tem of edu­ca­tion oper­at­ing here.

Burt, I know I have been long-winded. Yes, you did touch a nerve! :- ) I look for­ward to being part of the com­mu­nity as we share our expe­ri­ences, thoughts and ideas.

Bless­ings to you,

Isa

Divinelight50 says

I like your expres­sion of shar­ing a group environment.We all need to share that to bring about all our cre­ativ­ity and every­thing that we need to sur­vive in the new world.We are becom­ing a new world.Choosing our gov­ern­ment who try to con­trol us with pol­i­tics is not the way.We need to improve our way of help­ing nature and send­ing pos­i­tive thoughts is one way.We need to take back our power that was given to us by God which he sent to us by Mes­saish like Christ,Budah,Taoh and Moses and all the other peo­ple that tried to teach us the Way.Peace can only be brought to us by God and his Word and Spirit.We need to get in touch with our Spirit and com­mu­ni­cate with him.We had all this but lost this through being pro­grammed by mankind.

Rita says

Hi Maria!
Great work you´ve been doing with your son.
Try to find a good EFT (Emo­tionl Free­dom Tech­nique) prac­ti­tioner and try it on your son. It does a lot of good in so many things and it woll help him with his sel-esteem and con­fi­dence and it might as well help you. If you can´t find a prac­ti­tioner near you, you can go to “youtub” and learn a bit there.

All the best for you and your family.

Good bless you!

Rita

Patriciasweden says

My third daugh­ter Madeleine was born with a unique translo­ca­tion betwee an X chro­mo­some and the 4th one.

The doc­tors told us that she was “deep” men­tally retarded, so I fig­u­raded out that the next stept to wards a lower level was a dead retarded daughter.

Luck­ily I just felt sorry for that poor judge­ment and by observ­ing Madeleine´s way of react­ing to our three­lin­gual daily con­tact between her brother and sis­ter who just talked to her in Swe­didh as well as her father, while I always talked to my three chil­dren in Span­ish, Betweeen my ex.husband and I we used to talk Eng­lish but if the whole fam­ily was together we spoke just Swedish.

The inter­est­ing thing was that Madeleine under­stood all the three lan­guages much sooner than her own brother and sis­ter and that really pus­seled us all.

Of cpourese all the doc­tors used to write about me spe­cially that Í didn´t under­stand how sev­ered hand­i­cap Madeleine was and that´s why I wasd just totally wrong.

But one day after meet­ing Doman (one of the crae­tors of the Philladel­phia method) and the author of the great book “Teach your baby to read”, here in Stock­holm, I came back home and I laid down Madeleiene‘s lit­tle hand on mine and I told the old child “story” of the 5 fin­gers where each fin­ger has done some­thing with an egg.
Guees how sur­prise I was when I asked my 2 years old child who also suf­fered of Cerabral pulsy, which fin­ger had done someti­hin accord­ing to the story and she as dif­fi­cult as it was for her to move her hand over my own right hand to be able to show me the right fin­ger I was ask­ing for, she had mem­o­rized the hole story as deep men­tally retarded as her “clever” dooc­tors had described her.

From that day until today I keep on devel­op­ing that idea which after my Madeleiene‘s desa­pearence from this hard world keeps on grow­ing and has turn into Madeleienè´s cood­i­nad com­mu­ni­ca­tion system.

There is an Inno­va­tor who is going to incor­po­rate Madeleiene´s sys­tem into the Mobil Mar­ket, this tech­no­log­i­call divice isthe legacy from a lit­tle angel who was con­demed to live her short live in an Insti­tu­tion as we were told by the experts since they described her as a lit­tle pack­age from our fam­ily to all the peo­ple with com­mu­ni­ca­tion desorders.

So my advice to all the par­ents in the whole world…don´t ever lis­ten to the experts adivice…we par­ents know bet­ter.… Fol­low my advice and be con­stantly aware that there is a hid­den world of end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties open for all who seek.

Barbara says

Hi Burt,
I agree that there are many fac­tors work­ing against our childeren. I can remem­ber myself being con­fused as a child, hav­ing pre­mo­ni­tions of things to come. I used to tell my mother who was call­ing on the phone before caller I.D. with 100% accu­racy. My mother behaved as though she was afraid of me. A teacher at my church said it was from the devil, and I should try to stop it. The only one per­son who I could talk to about any­thing, with­out feel­ing afraid of there response, was my grand mother. She all­ways lis­tened and told me I wasn’t crazy. Had I had more incour­age­ment from oth­ers, I may have devel­oped it more. I felt like an out­cast, and stopped doing what I perceved as a bad thing. My daugh­ter told me recently that her son was telling her things at the age of 2. She said he doesn’t say much any more, at 7.
I believe we as par­ents have a duty to lis­ten as my grand­mother did to me, and enchourage them to fly.
Sin­cerely, Barbara

Maria Kielty says

My youngest son was birth dam­aged through a for­ceps deliv­ery and was late meet­ing all his mile­stones, but I knew that he was bright. Just before his 4th birth­day he could only say mum and was referred for speach ther­apy. How­ever, I took him to a homoeopath and for cra­nial osteopa­thy as I felt there was some emo­tional and phys­i­cal trauma. Fol­low­ing treat­ment there was a phe­nom­e­nal change and he was using over 300 words within a month and no longer required sup­port from the speach ther­a­pist. How­ever, he strug­gled at school and was slow to deliver what the school wanted aca­d­e­m­i­cally, but he was always artis­tic and cre­ative. I had him assessed by a friend/colleague who as an edu­ca­tor felt that chil­dren diag­nosed ADHD, Asperg­ers, ASD, Dyr­paxia and Dyslexia were being let down by the sys­tem. I never had my son labelled but I did have him assessed and most of his reflexes that should have inte­grated in utero and shortly after birth remained unin­te­grated, affect­ing bal­ance, con­fi­dence, man­ual dex­ter­ity and so on. We attended parent/child classes which revolved around fun games to get chil­dren cross­ing the mid­line and effec­tively rein­te­grate the reflexes and switch the chil­dren back on. Ses­sions fin­ished with tac­tile ther­apy, involv­ing many mas­sage move­ments which crossed over the body. All my son’s reflexes have been rein­te­grated but he has some resid­ual dif­fi­cul­ties, such as lack of self-esteem and con­fi­dence, which came about from bul­ly­ing at school. We changed his school and he is just com­ing to the end of his first year there and again a lot has improved, he is inte­grat­ing with his peers much bet­ter than before and is becom­ing more involved with his learn­ing. Nonethe­less, with schools dri­ven by out­comes such as test results, par­tic­u­larly for the core sub­jects in maths, eng­lish and sci­ence there remains less of an empha­sis on the cre­ative arts, which is very sad indeed. We will how­ever, con­tinue to encour­age him artis­ti­cally and musically.

Mary says

Burt, I think a lot of our trou­ble revolves around media — no not the vio­lence so much as the skewed ver­sion of real­ity. If, in the fifties, TV made women believe that a clean house was more impor­tant than spend­ing time with their chil­dren, then what­ever does today’s TV teach?

I think the best thing I gave my chil­dren, was me. I was for­tu­nate enough to have a hus­band will­ing to sup­port us so I could stay home with the kids. My house was gen­er­ally clut­tered, but we built dams in the creek. My dishes might have sat in the sink overnight, but we read won­der­ful books together. Other par­ents dropped their kids at scouts, I planned the meet­ings and was there. I felt a lit­tle guilty about the house but I fig­ured it would get done when it needed to, and it did. It was clean enough to be healthy and clut­tered enough to be happy.

Recently our two old­est chil­dren blessed us with grand­daugh­ters 9 weeks apart. I saw my son read to his wifes belly, and my daugh­ter dis­cuss menus with hers. I have no doubt that these lit­tle girls will grow up in an envi­ron­ment of love and support.

In short, the best thing I could give my chil­dren was the belief that they were more impor­tant than house­clean­ing, and that all they need is peo­ple who love them, a roof that doesn’t leak and a fur­nace that works — the rest is gravy.

I believe we live in a world that puts too much impor­tance on gravy.

Bless­ings,
Mary

Leila says

Hi every­one, I think — as Burt sug­gested in his video — that chil­dren aren’t lis­tened to enough. They are not taken seri­ously, espe­cially where their feel­ings are con­cerned. Nearly every­thing I remem­ber from my child­hood — prob­a­bly every­thing — comes from my feel­ings and thoughts and if great care had been taken by the adults around me to nur­ture a sense of belief in my feel­ings and thoughts; an abil­ity to lis­ten to and to make deci­sions fol­low­ing on from my feel­ings and thoughts, then I feel sure I would not have had the dif­fi­cul­ties I have had in find­ing my true path. I am still work­ing on lis­ten­ing to and believ­ing in myself and I try to help the chil­dren I meet to do the same.

barbara says

I HAVE FROM TIME TO TIME BEEN ABLE TO REMEMBER
THAT I HAVE CHOSEN TO PLAY IN THIS TIME.

THESE MOMENTS HUMBLE ME AND ALSO MAKE ME LAUGH AT MY ATTACHMENT TO WHAT I THINK IS ME.

I KNOW THAT MANY OTHERS ARE REMEMBERING THAT WE AGREED AT ANOTHER TIME THE CURTAIN WOULD OPEN AND A NEW AMAZING (I THINK, KIND & JOYFUL) PLAY WILL BE PRESENTED BY
THE CHILDREN OF THE UNIVERSE.

AS I FEEL MY MEMORY RETURNING I AM.…. POWERING UP AND IT IS SO MUCH FUN!

kofi says

hi burt.the genius dip was a fan­tas­tic document.alongside that report i would also wish to rec­om­mend the pio­neer­ing book on emo­tional intel­li­gence which dri­ves home yor point that par­ents havve much more than a respon­si­bil­ity infact they are induty bound.kofi

stuart Hague says

Hi Burt,

It has to be a very pos­i­tive exer­cise you are ini­ti­at­ing, albeit you are most likely appeal­ing to the proven 98% who are vic­tims of the genius dip and there­fore most likely would not have the expe­ri­ences and related wis­dom you are ask­ing for.

How­ever, out of the many replies you will undoubt­edly get, I am sure there will be many usable nuggets.

I am no genius, a def­i­nite 98%er! How­ever, I do suc­cess­fully get along with my fel­low man and have never had to resort to vio­lence once in my 58 years. In this day and age that’s say­ing something!

My own expe­ri­ences how­ever are soundly based in a lov­ing fam­ily envi­ron­ment. My par­ents, uncles and aun­ties were a shin­ing exam­ple of the best things in human­ity. Although they all had tough and dif­fi­cult times, the essence of love and car­ing was always there. It is not hard to under­stand that this is some­thing which rubs off very easily.

In this envi­ron­ment there was no aggres­sion, there was no need for it. A bit of com­pet­i­tive­ness, but not enough to make one bit­ter, sad or give you a feel­ing of inad­e­quacy. We were nur­tured to feel loved and there­fore were able to give out love to all in turn.

How­ever, there was always a feel­ing in the back of ones mind that life on earth was not all that there was!. I don’t know where this came from, but hav­ing a feel­ing of hav­ing an ‘extra buddy’ was a great help at dif­fi­cult times.

I sup­pose your quest actu­ally raises the ques­tion ‘in which capac­ity are you look­ing for genius devel­op­ment. Men­tal, Spir­i­tual or both?’

I rather feel that hav­ing a Spir­i­tual genius for a Pres­i­dent or Prime Min­is­ter would cer­tainly shake things up a bit!

Venita says

Firstly thanks Burt for open­ing this venue — I do believe we have to invest in our kids and grand­chil­dren — but our hec­tic lives cre­ate huge pot­holes in the time we give to them.
I for one think we should use the inter­net to cre­ate a site were our chil­dren can be encour­aged to develop the law of attrac­tion and vibra­tion, les­son of pos­i­tive self image is shared, venues to com­mu­ni­cate with like minded chil­dren from around the world, and major input from peo­ple around the world who does know how to develop the minds of our younger gen­er­a­tions — i think some­thing like a youth mem­ber­ship site with adult cre­ative input.
We as par­ents do have this respon­si­bil­ity, and we as par­ents are the ones that must take it to another level.

Venita

Joyce ONeill says

I gave my 4 chil­dren one on one time as well as group ‘fam­ily’ time. I encour­aged them to think for them­selves. Rather than crit­i­cize them, I helped them see for them­selves what they had done wrong and WHY it was wrong. I fos­tered empa­thy. I insisted that they play out­doors and make up games. No sit­ting with the video games all the time. I helped them to widen their hori­zons by research­ing their home­work, or some­thing they saw on tv, etc. My hus­band and I tried to always encour­age them and we stood by them no mat­ter what. They stood by each other as well. I had 4 chil­dren that got along together and still do. They are now grown and two have chil­dren of their own. Encour­age imag­i­na­tion, empa­thy with oth­ers and cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing. Don’t do things FOR them-rather do things WITH them. Above all, spend time with them. They deserve it and you will see the results.

Dinesh chandra says

I am already teachung my child med­i­ta­tion ‚cre­at­ing con­fi­dence and also to throw neg­a­tive thoughts.My child is is try­ing think positively.He feel mrn­tally relaxed and phys­i­cally have more energy.

Amy Bush Bradley says

I agree with you, Burt. Focus­ing on what we ulti­mately want will yield the results we desire.

In our fam­ily, allow­ing the chil­dren their own space and deci­sion mak­ing has been a help in them being able to dis­cern infor­ma­tion and fol­low their own intu­ition. For chil­dren to be in touch with their own guid­ance is paramount.

As a mother who feels pas­sion­ate about par­ents and chil­dren I can say this: the best gift I’ve given my chil­dren is to work on myself. That is, to focus on my rela­tion­ship with myself so I am oper­at­ing from a whole, lov­ing place. Our chil­dren need us to model who we really are.

To get to this place of know­ing our own truth is a per­sonal jour­ney and each one is unique. I serve as a trans­for­ma­tional par­ent­ing coach for any­one desir­ing assis­tance along the way ). We have free & paid resources avail­able begin­ning June 2008: http://www.transformationalparenting.com

Thanks, Burt, for what you are doing… I truly believe we have the power to greatly affect the whole through focus­ing on par­ents and children.

Warmly,
Amy Bush Bradley

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