The Power of Encouragements

We spent a day (well, half actually) at my brother-in-law's place recently. Surprised to know that my two elder nieces woke up at noon during their school holiday. I myself woke up around 10am only when I was their age... Ooooops.

The second niece Miss H was playing on the piano. She played well but not quite confident though. I decided to sit beside her and gave her some encouragements instead. I helped her with the tempo and praised her when she did well.


Amazingly, she played better after that, more confident I mean. My wife watched from behind and told me the changes after we'd left. That's what encouragements and praises can do to a child's self-confidence.

Miss R is 4 years old and is in the process of learning on how to write A, B, C. All the adults were chatting, paying little attention to this young cutie pie. Lacking attention, she was unable to focus and a bit reluctant in doing the practices. I sat next to her and took some photos.

Upon realizing that her Uncle Josh is paying attention on her, she started to show me what she was doing.
"I want to write A, see it got three strokes, oneee, ttwwoooo, and threeeeee." She chanted while following the dotted lines of the strokes.
I smiled and said, "Hey, that's beautiful! You'd already wrote four 'A's, let see how many 'A's can you write."

"I can write a lot!" she claimed and continued to write her beautiful 'A's.
"One, twooo, threeee, fouurrrr..........twenty eightt... twenty nineee....... " We counted the 'A's together.
"Yeaayy... another one to go to reach thirty!" I said excitedly.
She was encouraged, and wrote forty 'A's in the end. Contended.

I gave her a big clap. she smiled proudly.

Wow, raising a child and nurture their self-confident is not an easy job. Full attention by the parents are definitely required. A little encouragement does push people to walk extra miles. That's the Power of Encouragements.

p/s. The power of Encouragements applies to adults too.