kids

Kids Reading Problems

Author’s Experience as a Child – Kids Reading Problems

Help for the Struggling Reader

Today I wanted to address something that I definitely think is important. I wanted to just put this out there because I believe a lot of other children are suffering from exactly what I suffered from when I was young and they may not know how to address it or know what to do with it.

It may discourage them from moving forward in any other capacity. I know, for a long time, it held me back and I didn’t even know that it was holding me back until I got over it.

I want to just let you in on something. It came up because the question was asked, “At what age was it that you fell in love with books and what age was it that you fell in love with reading?”

I think that’s a common question when it comes to interviewing an author or talking to an author. You automatically assume that this person has always been in love with books.

Growing up, my younger sister, who is two years younger than me, she absolutely loved books, she was a fanatic. I, on the other hand, didn’t.

I loved subjects like math — she loved reading and spelling. I could barely spell and it always made me embarrassed and ashamed. It made me feel like I wasn’t going to get anywhere in that department.

When it came to school, I was one of those kids that, when I got to English class and reading, where I knew we were going to read out loud, I would act like I was sick, I would act like I was sleepy, and I would put my head down on the desk.

Obviously, I was not really learning a lot in those classes because of my embarrassment to read out loud. The thing about it is, my mother wasn’t a reader, she never really instilled reading into us because she wasn’t a reader. My sister just loved to do it on her own.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t read, I actually could read, but when it came to reading out loud, forget about it. It seemed like I absolutely couldn’t read because my nerves were through the roof.

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of other kids like that in the school system, where I go and volunteer, that there’s a lot of kids that absolutely won’t read — they’re too embarrassed. Sometimes when they do read, they can barely pronounce or say the simplest words.

At first, I was thinking that man, these kids just can’t read. But, it may be a matter like it was with me when it comes to reading out loud or in public where you freeze up. 

I didn’t get over this until I was 25 years old. I can’t believe I went my entire life living like this — pretty much in fear. I always prided myself in not being fearful of things, but I was absolutely terrified to read out loud.

It wasn’t until one day, a friend of mine from California, a young lady that really helped me to overcome this. She asked me did I want to do Bible study? Would I do Bible studies with her? We were going to do it, I think every day by phone because I had just become saved recently. I was terrified to say yes, but I didn’t want to say no to her at the same time because I was really zealous about the Word and I wanted to move forward. So, I said yes.

I got this Bible from a pastor friend of mine that was pretty tough, it wasn’t an easy Bible. But, when I called, she said, “Ok, you read first,” and I kind of froze up because I didn’t want to read. I got to stuttering and telling her, and she encouraged me and she continued to encourage me. She didn’t laugh, she didn’t snicker, she was perfectly calm and acted like nothing was wrong.

It really took me to make myself vulnerable, first of all, and to be comfortable enough with her in order to move past that. As the time went past, I started to love to read out loud. Now, as a minister, I read out loud all the time, I’m always reading out loud.

But, I’m reflecting on this, because it kind of just went away, because someone, who took the time, to not criticize me, to not overly critique me, but just really listen and understand, and act like nothing was wrong.

It gave me the confidence and built me up in order for me to overcome that.

Part of me being an author now is not just because of that event, but it has something to do with me overcoming that. Part of it was because when I first had the idea, when I felt like the Lord gave me the ideas to do this, I tried to pass it off to my sister.

I tried to pass it off to people because I didn’t have the confidence in myself. When nobody else would do it, I ended up having to prove to myself that I can do it.

Since then I’ve written three children’s books that I’ve got manuscripts for and I’m almost done with my second novel, and I just had a great idea this morning for another one.

But, my point is, there’s a lot of kids out there that suffer from this. And the bullying culture that we have makes it almost impossible for them to get over it because the minute that they mess up, the minute that they say the wrong thing, people laugh at them.

It’s not only from the kids, but from the expression that the teacher gives, the expression that the parent gives, the expression from people around, anybody around.

I’m always reminded of the young lady who helped me. I have much respect for her, I will always have much respect for her, that’s why I love her because she took the time to just be normal and act like nothing was wrong.

She encouraged me when I needed encouraging, and built me up when I needed building up. That’s more of what we need when it comes to working with these kids, these reluctant readers, these children that don’t believe in themselves.

It’s a lack of belief in themselves, and once they get the confidence they can achieve anything.

That’s like everything — once you get the confidence, once you start to believe you can do something, you’ll do it.

I wanted to do this video today, because there’s a parent out there that has a child that’s just like I was. There are teachers who have students just like I was. You have a grandkid, a niece, a nephew, you know somebody, that’s like that and they could do a lot if they only believed in themselves and if they only had someone to encourage them and build them up.

I wanted to leave that with you today. I hope this video reaches somebody, touches somebody, and helps somebody, because it’s hard living in fear of something as simple as reading aloud and it’ll hold you back in school big time.

It’ll hold you back from achieving a lot. It’ll hold you back from a lot of knowledge because not only will you not read in front of people, but you’ll tend to not read even when you’re by yourself.

I hope that helps.

Take care, take charge, and God bless,

T.W. Bright

 

 

Raising Godly Kids – What About Homeschooling?

Raising Godly Kids – What About Homeschooling?

Before I start, I want to point out that I don’t feel that homeschooling is the only option for raising godly kids. I have seen many parents and children thrive in a public school environment and for some families this is the best option. I have also known many public school teachers who are truly doing their best to teach and help children in positive ways that those children wouldn’t otherwise encounter. So, I want to state that I feel parents need to make the best decision for themselves and their children.

I’m sitting here with my sisters and I was talking to someone, a young lady around thirteen years old. This young lady has been in church her entire life, but she’s really unclear about a lot of things. We were talking, how do you produce that? How is that being produced in the churches nowadays?

I see so many adults that grow up and they’re just “religious-minded”. They can go to church and the church is a permanent fixture in their life that they do “religiously”, but outside of church they have very little direction and they have very little understanding on what the Word of God says, very little understanding of everything.

One of the things that came up is the fact of school and both of my sisters homeschool. It has become a lifestyle practice to intermingle our faith with our schoolwork, and with everyday things. I’m sure you can hear the kids in the background now because they’re a part of this and so they’re hearing this as well.

But, this has become a lifestyle — more than just a ritual or something to do on a Sunday, or a Tuesday, or a Saturday, or whatever day that anyone worships on.

I think that a lot of things that cause unsureness in a lot of kids that attend school, is that if you had to measure time on weights, they’re in school 5 days a week, 8 hours a day — where as, you’re going to church, maybe, 2-3 times a week for a couple hours. And the church time that they have on a weekly basis wouldn’t even equal up to one day at school.

So, the school influence is going to weigh heavier in their life and in their lifestyles than the church message if they’re only getting it those couple of days a week.

The big thing is, what they’re getting at school is lifestyle differences about different religions, different moral things, so they’re getting that more than their getting the true faith and the true Word. I think that’s where the discourse comes in, I think that’s where the confusion comes in for kids. It’s just outweighed in their household, outweighed in their lifestyles.

I’ve found that very true. And one of the things, it’s not that we’re trying to say “hey, increase the church hours,” because that’s not what the whole thing here is. But the main focus is to make Christ a permanent fixture in their lives.

Oftentimes, what you see is that if you get into that routine of going on a certain day that that day becomes the day, that your kids even, program to perform on. We weren’t called to be performers, that’s what we call in the hood or in the world as being fake or fronting.

What we see today is we see a lot of fronting, we see a lot of “Sunday-believers”, or “Saturday-believers”, or just “religious” people and that’s not what this is calling for. So, when I look at them and doing this from a homeschool standpoint, I see that the children are learning to connect with God on every aspect.

And so school is void from that because you can’t even mention God at school, you can’t pray at school. As a children’s book writer, every time you go to publish a book they’re always going to say that you can’t even mention God in it. That’s what the children are being programmed to and that would explain a lot of it.

We find this all across the board. When you go to college, that’s when the “anti” God comes, you’re teaching about evolution, and you’re looked at as being crazy for thinking like this. Because the young lady was talking about agnostic vs atheist because she has a friend that is and she doesn’t know how to deal with that as a young Christian girl.

Pretty much, the church has failed getting in front of these kinds of issues and I think that ties back into that she doesn’t even know if it’s right or wrong. The question was “was it even right or wrong to be agnostic or atheist” and there’s a clear idea that there was a breakdown of communication and a breakdown of faith in her life somewhere for her not to be able to stand strong and stand up for what she believes because she doesn’t even know what she believes.

That’s why my thought was “where’s she getting the unbelief from?” and I had to think, if she isn’t raised like that and her home isn’t like that, then she’s getting the unbelief from some outside sources.

And then the question is also, how do you, even when you send your kids to school, because a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to homeschool, how do you still implement that faith? And I believe it’s by you being a living example.

You have to be a living example, you can’t just go to church on those three days a week. You have to be a living example. “Bible Study” has to be a lifestyle in your lives, the Word has to come alive in your life because the children will follow you no matter how old they are they’re going to follow their parents, even if they have outside influences of school.

Because a lot of people say, “I can’t homeschool, what can I do?”, and it’s that you have to live that Word that you want your kids to know, to have that faith, you have to live it yourself.

You have to be the light, you have to be the example and the minute you start deviating from those things your kids notice.

My mom use to say “Do as I say, not as I do!” and I grew up doing everything she did, so I think that’s important.

And when it comes to “religious people” and when you see that breakdown in their kids, being hellions out in the world, it’s a lot of times, because the parents are living double-standards.

I don’t think that’s in every case, but double-standards will kill us. And one thing that I feel, if you’re a young mother or a young father, and you’re wondering “where are these things coming from?”, you have to understand that everything around you, and everything around your children are suggesting “anti” Christ — the music, the TV shows.

If you let your kids watch Nickelodeon and Disney, they’re talking about boyfriends and wanting to kiss and all those different things — those things are teaching your kids the opposite of what you’re trying to instill in them.

All of the music that the kids are listening to, with me working at school, these kids are singing songs from people who are 30-40 years old! Beyonce and J-Z are in their 40’s and they know “So Crazy in Love” and all these different songs. And they’re doing Chris Brown moves — Chris Brown is an adult that can make his own decisions about what he wants and with women, and these young boys are singing that.

You have to look at the track record. You also gotta look, conversations can be so simple. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to open up a conversation with the little girl. But, how often do people genuinely ask kids questions? They tell the kid to stay in the kid’s place.

“If you’re not asking my opinion, how can I be open to asking questions, even about my faith? Is it really my faith or is it my parents faith?”

So, if you don’t ask them certain questions or you don’t allow time to talk with them then they won’t ever really have their own faith, they’ll have examples of what their mom did or their grandma did. God can be very powerful in their life, they can stay up all night and pray and you’ll never know why they could be sleeping for school.

These are subtle attacks that you won’t know unless your parents explain it to you.

And that’s one of the things we had to tell her was that there’s no right or wrong answer here, don’t just try to give me the answer that I want to hear. I want to know how you feel, I want to know what your feelings are on these subjects.

This is not just performance, I want to know what’s your take on this. And when she told me the take, I didn’t scold her for it. I just explained to her, if you believe this way, then this is what you believe. This is what the scriptures say about that. If you believe this way, this is what the scriptures say about that.

This is coming from a healthy understanding of “yes, we’ve gotta start talking to them,” and getting the idea of how they believe and not just assuming.

To go back to the music and the things that we put in front of our kids, I feel we also have to take a look at, yes, a lot has changed as far as the music industry, but a lot has really stayed the same. And if you think about when we were teenagers, there was a lot of music that was around back then we probably shouldn’t have listened to — and where did it get us?

It got us to be doing things contrary to what we should have been doing.

I remember SWV had that song “Weak”, “I get so weak in the knees,” — all the kids were singing that.

All of the kids were singing that and shouldn’t have been singing that, we were in junior high!

And now as I’m older and I really break down that song in the way it was really talking about, there were so many sexual innuendoes.

We were bringing on all of that over us, singing it over and over.

So, the music has not really changed too much, but it has gotten worse. You have to understand, the same thing that is coming over your kids is the same thing that was trying to come over you.

And quit trying to be like, “Aw, just let them do it,” because where did that get you?

When you do have things like that, you gotta realized that certain things that we say out of our mouth are either blessings or curses. You’re either going to bless them by what you say and what you do, or your going to curse them.

I don’t know why people don’t believe that it’s the same thing for themselves. If I sing this music over me, I’m inviting the same problems. That’s why we associate so well with music, we can find one about any way that we’re feeling. So, if I’m sad — I’m going to turn on some sad music, if I’m happy — I’m going to turn on some happy music.

That’s why God said that songs come out of the spirit, because the spirit that’s behind these songs you won’t find out until it’s overtaken you, and you’ll be like, “man, this music is crazy, why am I feeling like this?”.

It shouldn’t be like gospel music with a hip-hop rap beat. There has to be a separation, if you’re going to be holy for Christ. You can’t be double-minded, you can’t be having double-standards, for you or your kids.

We’ve always had this conversation because music has always been such a huge part of all of our lives. That’s the universal language, music is, so that’s one of the biggest things that’s going on as far as influence in our children today. And the music has gotten so much worse and so much more explicit, and we’ve gotta do our part.

But, I wanted to talk about this because there’s definitely a breakdown in today’s “Christian” or today’s “believer” compared to what we see that the scriptures say that it should be.

In talking with one of the kids, who’s 4 years old and he picked up from the talk “Nickelodeon”, so you see just in conversation you have to be very careful about what you say around your kids!

TW Bright

 

 

 

Diversity and Experience with Kids at Cumberland Elementary School

TW Bright’s Experience with Diversity and Kids at Cumberland Elementary

Hey today, I want to share with you something that is really cool. I’m actually going to take you a different page, but before I do, I want to give you a quick story behind it.

Last year I had the greatest opportunity to volunteer at one of the most awesomest schools I’ve ever been to, Cumberland Elementary School. For you all who are a part of Cumberland, I give you a shout out and I tell you, I love you guys — you guys are awesome.

When I go to this school, I started seeing kids from all different nationalities, and I’m not just talking about African-American and black. I’m talking about kids from China, from Guam, from Ethiopia, kids who speak Swahili, kids that speak all different kinds of languages, everywhere.

And I’m like, what’s this? First of all, I was actually transporting the kids, and some of the kids I was transporting couldn’t understand me. So, I’m a person who likes challenges and I was excited that I was able to do that, so I asked, could I volunteer?

I was cleared to volunteer and when I went to volunteer, one of the most awesome things happened. I saw this picture when I went into one of the classrooms, Ms. Rodriguez’s classroom, and it was this sea of different nationalities. It was probably only three different kids, three different languages that were represented in that one class at the time.

But, it was so awesome because I was thinking about at the kids and how they were able to see the world from a different light, from somewhere that not even I’ve ever seen it before.

We have kids with the Muslim hijab things, whatever they’re called to cover your head, you know, you just see people from different countries and they look different, they sound different, and they dress different. One of the things with a lot of the kids from the African nations is the boys wore pink and purple, and it was totally new to me living here in America.

I started to see that it’s really all about our perception – the way that we see things.

So, this was a great opportunity for me and I think it was a great opportunity for the children as well.

Just to see and just to know that these kids are going to be able to go anywhere and relate to anybody because of the experience they had as a little kid at school. They’re going to be able to accept people who are different than them. They’re going to be able to accept people who talk different than them and who smell different than them, because quite frankly, they’ve got some different smells too.

So, it was an awesome opportunity and it was one that I will never forget. I want to give a shout out to Ms. Rodriguez, one of the most awesomest third grade teachers, Ms. Walker, I love these two, Ms. Rusesky, the principal, and everyone else, there’s a ton of other teachers, and I can’t name them all. But, with this Vlog I wanted to share that, and I’m going to write a blog behind this as well because I think that this is something that needs to be shared.

You don’t find this every day. I don’t know if you’re political or not, if you’re on Trump’s side, if you’re on the other side, I don’t care about any of those sides.

I’m not looking at this as a political thing, I’m looking at this as something that absolutely is sharing love, caring for other people, caring for your neighbor.

Some of the things that I saw, because I had the opportunity to come back up there this year, (I just left the school), but it was such a blessing to my heart to be able to see some of the kids that I worked with last year.

There’s one kid, it was him and his brother that got on the bus, and these two kids they seemed so angry, like an angry spirit or demeanor to them, they didn’t trust people, they were mean, they used to spit, all of these different things.

As the time went past, I saw them gradually loosen up, get better, and started to trust people. And right then I said, this is such a blessing.

Because here it is, these kids are probably scared out of their minds, God knows what they’ve been through, but they’ve had the opportunity to come here to the United States of America and come to this little school called Cumberland Elementary, and their whole life is being changed from this very experience.

This year I was able to see the one gentleman as well, and he’s a totally different kid, (his brother isn’t at the school anymore), but it really blessed my heart.

He was one of the kids that, in the wintertime, we had to go and buy him clothes because he was coming with shorts on and he was out shivering.

And just to see the growth in him, and the happiness in him, it brings a lot of joy to my heart. So, this is an experience that I’ve been blessed with, I feel like I was blessed by God just to have this experience, and this is an experience that I will never let go, I will never forget, and this actually made me a better person and I am grateful for that.

I would encourage any of you to go do something like this.

I believe that you need to experience things new and experience things different because other than that we’d be stuck in our own minds and having our own understanding and ideas about things.

But, there’s a lot out there that can change your perspective, and I’m not even saying that I had the wrong perspective of illegal immigrants, or immigrants, or anything like that because I didn’t go into it with a perception at all or a perspective at all, but, I came out a better person by this.

Like I said, I want to shout out to Cumberland Elementary, you guys are great and I appreciate you and I appreciate all that you do for those kids.

I’m going to go and send you over to this other video that’s going to give you an understanding, to give you a snapshot of what they do at Cumberland, this little map that they made, this is the centerpiece in the hallway. It really just tells it all, it’s awesome.

Check out the video to see it!

Remember, guys, if you like my videos and my blog, wherever you see this at, make sure you subscribe to stay updated, like it, make some comments.

I like to hear what you guys think, so go ahead and comment, like this, and subscribe!

Take care, take charge, and God bless!

TW Bright

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