A Sip of Reality Each Day for Your Child

In fairytales, this sentence is always there at the end: “And they live happily forever.” But reality isn’t this. To grow in a stable way, your children need to learn from their emotions and the surrounding societal environments. Happiness and success in life require much more than what’s always been taught in schools.

Teach them to know themselves first. Teach them to accept negative feelings. It’s hard, but things will change, and better things will come. Only when we don’t run from ourselves, we can understand others also. And only then we can build positive relations. Teach them, bit by bit, how to grasp fate on their own.

You may ask, how should we teach? What about story telling or watching movies? Talk with your kids in that case. We can't go to sleep and wait for happiness to come on its own. Even when we’ve been working hard, there will be no heels of glass to lever our social status. We may not achieve what we deem ourselves worthy of. Life is not always fair.

We can’t fully prepare our children to take bold steps in the mature world. But we can help them find the right direction.

• Most of us are normal. We have the human aspects that are needed. Even those who seemed exceptional are normal people like us. Everyone does have a talent in some field.

• Don’t be afraid if you’re different. It’s just other people didn’t have the chance to understand you. Many of the most successful people were misunderstood, even be bullied, when they were young. If you find a way to take advantage of your differences, you’ll be better and stronger.

• Learn to accept negative feelings. Many grown-ups don’t know how, too. Fear, envy, sad, solitude… We all feel them sometimes. Fortunately, these emotional conditions come and go.
• Hard times teach us valuable lessons; failures help us grow. We learn more from hard experiences than from the easy ones.

• The best things in life are our creation. Very few satisfy with their lives. When you grow up to your full potential, you’re blessed to join the club of the lucky few. And we can help the kids do that with enormous amount of understandings and love.

• Life if uncomfortable, unpredictable, and much rewarding. When your life does down, this thinking helps us keep our beliefs strong. When it goes up, be gratitude.

When our kids are just about 2 years old, our focus is to protect them from virtually every pain. Then gradually they grow up, and we realize we just can’t do that.

Life is not a cozy beach of white sand and warm sunlight. There’s no reason to hide that reality from the kids. Step by step. Story by story. An advice here and there. Some thoughts from this “brain wash” process will stick to their little minds and help them grow with more confidence.

Contributed by Minh Hoang Vu, co-founder of Minh Phat Curtains & Blinds.