Building Self-Esteem In Children. A Mentoring Program For Parents And Education Professionals To Build Self-esteem And Self-reliance In Children And Promote Strong Caring Relationships Between Adults And Children.
Too many children’s stories are chosen because they sound good to adults. But children get bored with them. Look at stories that have travelled through time and are as popular with today’s children as they were generations ago.
Winnie the Pooh, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and my favourite The Faraway Tree series.
Read these again. What makes them so magical, how do you feel when you read them, which words and sentences, ideas and pictures stick in your mind?
In other words, what works, and what doesn’t?
Ask the children in your life what works for them, what they love about the books they have, what they don’t like, what scares them, what makes them feel good, makes them laugh, which parts make them tingle.
Children are largely ignored when it comes to choosing what books are suitable for young people. It’s a curious oversight.
Tips on Writing for Children:
• When you write a story, have the courage to read it aloud to children. In schools, your children, friends children. If they don’t like it, they’ll tell you, and they will probably say why. Don’t argue them down. They like what they like, and they don’t like what they don’t like, and you’re not going to change their minds.
• Listen to the advice. What you like, they may not. If they say it would be really cool for the big old armchair in the corner to come to life and swallow Grandma while she’s doing her knitting, find a creative way for it to happen.
• Find something in your pocket. Doesn’t matter what it is. Look at the world from the perspective of that item. A day in the life of a sweet wrapper, a pen, a dollar coin.
• As practice write a letter to yourself as a child, from your perspective now. Then write another letter, this time as a child writing to yourself as an adult. What would each of you want to know?
• Do not judge yourself. Writing is a life long process, and for as long as you write the seed of self-doubt will be just below the surface. Keep it there, don’t let it sprout and grow because if you do, the writing can just dry up.
• That voice in your head that says you cant write, wont be any good, don’t know how, will never get published blah blah is just a voice in your head. It isn’t the truth, it’s just the past coming for a visit.
• Source yourself in positive people, those who like what you do or believe in who you are. They are the ones to listen to, not that negative voice in your head. Negativity never gained anyone, anything, ever, never will.
• Celebrate your successes. Be fully expressed when you get a win, however small.
• Take a photo every day of something in the garden, the country, in the house, at work, under the bed, at the bottom of the wardrobe. Write 700 words about it. See what comes up. These exercises wont give you a best seller (they might), but they will give you at least a germ of an idea to work with.
• Never give up. Be persistent. If writing is your dream, your passion, then recognise that by doing it you already have a life you love. That’s not magic, that’s simply you fulfilling your own dream.
• Never give up
• Never give up
• Never give up
• Never give up …
If you’re about to give up, read the above, re-visit your childhood and dare to take another sneak peek at what was under your bed …
Building Self-Esteem In Children. A Mentoring Program For Parents And Education Professionals To Build Self-esteem And Self-reliance In Children And Promote Strong Caring Relationships Between Adults And Children.
No comments:
Post a Comment