My daughter dreads spelling words. She’s 7 years old and is in Primary 1. Each time her teacher gives her a list of words to memorise, she will complain that it is difficult, she cannot remember, forgets easily, don’t know etc. Last nite, she was learning the words again and came crying to me, in fear, because she was afraid of not being able to spell the words in class.

“Why are you crying?” I asked her.

“Daddy, I cannot remember the words, they are so difficult to remember!” she replied.

As she was sobbing, I asked her to repeat the HoOponopono words after me. After repeating about a dozen times, she cooled down.

“Now, you cannot remember, right?” I asked her.

“Yes”

“Let’s call out this thing called <Cannot Remember>, OK, Little Cannot Remember, come out of Mindy’s body.” I said.

My daughter looked at me with disbelief!

“You have quite a few nasty friends inside you. They are called Little Cannot Remember, Little Difficult, Little Forget Easily and Little Don’t Know. These 4 friends are causing you some BIG problems and they are stopping you from learning spelling. Do you want them to stay with you?”

“No” she said meekly.

“But I cannot see them…how to get them out?

“Yes you can get them out. You need not see them because they are invisible. Just tell them to come out and stand beside you. Don’t bother about them.”

Then she started to call them out, pretending they are real…

“Now that they are outside, repeat after me, loudly.”

“I can remember!”

“I can easily remember!”

“Words are easy to remember for me!”

“I learn things easily and I know many things.”

“I will never forget the words!”

“I am highly intelligent, I am great!”

So, my daughter repeated these sentences after me a few times, and soon she was smiling. I asked her where her invisible friends were and she said they ran to the toilet and got flushed into the bowl.

She went to the study room and started memorising the words and came to me for a test. She scored 2 out of 10 words.

“You see? You are improving! Go practise again.” I encouraged her.

She came 5 10 minutes later, and scored 5 out of 10.

“Great! You are learning fast. practise again and the next time you will get full marks.”

Well, she scored full marks on her 3rd attempt.

“Why couldn’t I remember just now daddy?”She asked.

I used a coin to explained that there are 2 sides to everything, just like a coin, good, bad, black, white, yin, yang etc We are bound to have problems, and the other side is the solution, because if there were no solutions, there wouldn’t be a problem! Patience, practice and understanding the cause of the problems. By understand the cause of the problems, we can fix the problem, and in her case it was the fear! Removing the fear enabled her to learn happily without obstacles. Most importantly, the parent must not show impatience and anxiety that the child is having difficulties. It is normal to face problems. Didn’t we face the same problems when we were young? How did our parents taught us? How did we react to their teaching methods? I was brought up under the cane, and I believe many parents were too.

There is no such thing as a lousy soldier, only an incompetent general. There are no stupid children, only incompetent parents and teachers who don’t know how to teach!

It’s time to reflect upon ourselves. We need to be aware of our own attitude when teaching our children. Let’s be more forgiving, patient and give our children lots of LOVE & encouragement.

Thank you! I Love You!

Eddie Lim

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