It is arguably the most overlooked ingredient in the recipe for student success. Encouraging words. Taking time to celebrate the little successes so that they will grow into bigger more frequent successes. Children can be such fragile little plants requiring just the amount of sunshine and water and time to grow. It is so easy in our sometimes overzealous and caring quest to create blossoming, beautiful and hopefully fully self sustaining living beings, to be inadvertently overzealous, huddling and worrying over every little thing rather than gently cheer leading, nurturing and guiding our children to the next step.

There are many tools for success you can teach a child but giving them the tools to believe in themselves and to persevere in reaching their goals even in the face of the constant criticism of others, will take them far in a world that is already full of negative feedback.

A psychologist told me today that for every negative thought that enters our world it takes ten positives to counteract it. The adult world is so full of negatives. The world needs adult children who can give out of the overabundance of positive love they have received from their parents, teachers, and others of influence in their childhood to be a life changing influence in the lives of so many peers who have not been so blessed.