"The Book of Awesome" and "The 1000 Awesome Things" Blog

Lately I am into blogging, it is amazing how you feel connected to people that you have never met before through their writtings. My sister came across this blog and thought that I might like it and it turned out to be a great blog. The author of the blog, Neil Pasricha, decided to write 1000 (simple) things that make him happy each day. Sometimes,we go through life without realizing that happiness can be contained in that fraction of a moment or in a small little thing. "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

Here is a portion of the blog that I really love.

February 16, 2010...12:01 am



#568 Your mom’s love

My mom was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950.

Growing up the youngest of eight kids in a small house off the downtown core, she was quiet, shy, and always the baby. Her three older brothers received the bulk of the family’s praise, attention, and money for education, while the girls were taught to sweep floors, work the stove, and scrub the work clothes clean.


My mom used to sit on her front porch and memorize all the license plates of cars that drove by. She’d guess the numbers from a distance, silently congratulating herself when she got one right. Quiet nights in the corner of the clattery kitchen, she’d study math under dim lights and curious gazes.
In 1963, she wrote the government’s standard National Exam with every other 13-year-old in the country. And she aced it.

Suddenly a fat scholarship dropped on her and she was whisked off to a preppy English boarding school in the countryside. The next few years were full of reciting The Lord’s Prayer, memorizing Shakespeare passages, and eating soft-boiled eggs in the corner of the school cafeteria.

After hitting the books hard away from friends and family, she graduated and started correspondence classes from an accounting institution in England, eventually earning her letters and moving to London and start auditing the books of big companies. It was there she met my dad while he was visiting from Canada and it was there that they got married before moving to a small, dusty suburb an hour east of Toronto.
She got a job at General Motors, saw her first dentist, ate her first hamburger, and signed up for a subscription to Reader’s Digest. When I was growing up she’d tell me her coworkers always asked what she was doing there. “Let me get this straight,” they’d begin. “You lived in Nairobi. You lived in London. How’d you end up in this small town?

But it was in that small town she had my sister and me and it was in that small town she showered us with love every day since we were born. Although I never knew my grandparents my mom filled the void with unending praise and patience.

She took me to the library Saturday mornings and helped me slowly finger-read Hardy Boys books. She signed my sister and I up for camps and let us quit if we came home crying. When I routinely got pegged first playing dodgeball at Boy Scouts or broke my glasses playing soccer, she was always there, ready with a hug, and an “It’s okay, Neil, it’s okay… it’s okay.

For about six months last year I was getting three or four hours of sleep a night balancing my day job, updating 1000 Awesome Things, and writing The Book of Awesome. On top of that, I was walking with a heavy heart and heavy mind, but more on that later. Every few weeks over those six months my mom took the commuter train to my downtown apartment with a big canvas bag and loaded up my freezer with homemade food.

And before she left she’d reach up to give me a big hug and say “Don’t forget to take a break.”
Below are three emails she sent me over the past year.

———- Forwarded message ———-


Hey Neil :
I hope you found someone to enjoy 24 with.
I hope you feel in a good place. We are fine & you always know where & how to find us.
We will talk some time …probably sounds like towards the end of the week. That is fine. Keep in touch whichever way is easy for you. Reading your blog always brings a smile to my face & I feel like I am talking to you.
Love You.


Mom
———- Forwarded message ———-


Look forward to reading your Blog tomorrow. I could picture me in your blog today : waving at people from my rocking chair. Dad has got the hang of your Blog & he has joined the Fan club too.


Love You : mom


———- Forwarded message ———-


Your Website has become like my daily dose of Vitamin C. Upon awakening, I do my Yoga practice for an hour. After that, I am usually ready for my brekkie. Thereafter, I can’t wait to run upstairs with my cup of tea to read up on 1000 Awesomethings.
This week has been great each & every day. Not to mention the fact that I feel like I had a small conversation with you.


Thank you so much for this opportunity.


Love : Your Mother
–


So this one goes out to the moms of the world. This one goes out to the people who raised you. I know I wouldn’t have made it without that love and support and I’m sure some of you are in the same place. So moms, thank you for teaching us to read, thanks for cheering our dreams, and thanks for helping us grow up to become a little more.
AWESOME!

The reason why I like this portion of the blog is beacause it is also related to our topic of reading and the importance of being supportive to our kids. Each parent will have their own great ways of raising a child and each child is truly unique in his/her own way. However, the joy toward reading and books can always be a good start to an amazing journey.
If you like to know more, here is "The book of AWESOME".  

And again, here is the link to Your Baby Can Read

I think it is a great idea to remember a great moment each day. Since it is Jayden's blog, I will try to write one great moment of each post.

Our Today Moment(OTM): The "Difference" Moment
I normally let him watch "cars, buses, trucks" from the his room's window. He enjoys it very much. Today, while watching those "cars, trucks, buses", he pointed outside with his fingure and started cracking up. Then I saw a red and green taxi, with its advertisement on the roof. I assumed Jayden thought that it was a funny car and cracked up. Sometimes you live your busy life, not noticing a difference because you tend to take things for granted, but your child, loving cars, buses, trucks, will notice a different car. Then I stood there, acknowleging that moment: a moment of my child discovering something different and I did not. Somehow this moment makes me happy.

How Jayden Can Read???

We got such great comments through facebook and emails about Jayden's progress.  We also got so many questions on how to raise a child to read like Jayden. I believe that there are 3 key components to help a child grow to his/her potential. Those three are: (1) Great foundation. (2) Great attitude and (3) Great Materials. I will go into more detials in future posts.

Since there are a lot questions about what materials I use so that Jayden can read at the age of 16 months, my first recommendation  is Your Baby Can Read products by Dr Titzer. Jayden's grandma discovered this product through infomercial one day, and insisted us to buy it. After reviewing the products and seeing that there are so many other babies who can read at such a young age and its importance in developing the child's ability to read, the love to read and the benefits of these to his/her life, I was impressed and went ahead and purchased the products. Now, the original cost of it is $200, but you can buy it for cheaper at amazon ($149 or so), just click on this link Your Baby Can Read and see for yourself. Also, you will see a lot of reviews about this products.

There are always pros and cons to anything you buy.

For Pro: It works. I started to show Jayden these DVDs when he was around 9 months old. We used to have our parents help out with taking care of the kid, but  about 9 months, we had no help and I needed to occupy Jayden for about 30 minutes a day so that I manage to take care of some personal stuff. I am against kids watching TV, so I had to find a better educated way for Jayden to entertain. I put him on his exersaucer and put the Your Baby Can Read DVD in front of  him. Each DVD is about 30 minutes so it works perfectly for me. He immediately enjoyed the DVDs and still enjoy them until today. I only play the DVD once/day, not twice as the program suggested. And even with that, Jayden now starts reading. So if you want your child to read, please try it. I would suggest to buy the whole early reading system (DVDs, books, flashcards, etc) because it is better to interact with your child in other ways than just letting him/her watching the DVDs). Jayden really likes to pull the sliding cards and enjoys seeing the pictures with the words.

For Con: I know that a lot of people worry about his method of teaching, and "label" it as "site language", which means that the child just memorizes the words, but not really know how to read it phonetically. Then worry about the fact that the kid can't learn phonics by the time they go to pre-school or so. It is not really true. Even Dr Titzer himself agrees that the baby will learn to memorize the words first (how do you teach them phonetically at this age??), this method is called "whole word learning method" but then they will learn to see the pattern of the word  themselves. And in the DVD, there is a portion to teach the kid phonetically. He will show certain similar words to show pattern such as "hat", "cat", or "smilling", "eating". In his new series "Your Child Can Read" for kid from age 3 and up, you can see his methods focus on both phonics and whold word learning methods.

For my understanding, most kids know how to read the "whole word" before they go to school to learn how to read phonetically. With lots of choices of books in the library and bookstores (and most of them have same simple words), your kids will learn the whole words in one way or the other. After discussing with a few moms who have very bright kids who can read before preschool, they told me not to worry about this at all, because their kids can read very well later with phonics.

Now, I believe in a good balance. So Your Baby Can Read  DVDs are not the only one I use. There are a few more products that you can check out. One of them is LeapFrog - Letter Factory : very good way of teaching kid with phonics. I also let Jayden watch the Pre-School Prep which teach kids alphabets, numbers, shapes, colors and words. So don't just rely on one product, but expose your child to multiple products to get the best of all worlds (not all at once but 30 mins or so of DVDs a day is enough). However, I have to say that the credit of Jayden can read go to Your Baby Can Read so there, try it out for yourself, and I hope that your child will have the same result like Jayden. It is in our best interest to give kids the best that we can. Reading early can help your kid enjoy reading, better reader do well in school and open doors for better future. (Plus, if you want them to be multi-lingual, you need to give them time, and earlier learning will provide us additional time to teach our kids other languages. Jayden can speak 3 languages now. Goodluck, enjoy and please let me know how your kids do.

Jayden Can Read

This has been a very good journey for us and we are very proud to announce that Jayden can read!!!

Jayden is a 16 months old, who is super active, with lots of energy and very social. His hobbies are: playing with his cars, balls, talking to people (he says "hi" to everyone he sees), running, climbing and READING BOOKS! He definitely loves to read books.

Many people who have met Jayden admire the fact that he can speak very early and clearly. At about 11 months, he started to talk some simple words like: flower, ball, car, pretty... (he say "pretty" to pretty girls/women :). And now, at 16 months, he can say most of the animals (tiger, rabbit, cow, frog, etc...) he can count from 1-8 (sometimes 9 and 10 but not there yet), recognizes some shapes like circle, square, and lots of other words. He can actually say 2 to 3 words at a time such as "how are you?" or "Buddy, sit"... (Buddy is his dog). Sometimes, he manages to say 4 sounds at a time such as " Buddy, sit down". He knows how to say "thank you" if you give him something he likes.

But most of all, we are so proud to say that: JAYDEN CAN READ! It started when he was about 12 months old. One day, I was trying to show him "A, B, C...". So I pointed at the letter "B" and said "B". He immediately pointed at the word "baby" and said "baby". I started to see him read some simple words like "toes" or "book". However, we were on a one month vacation and it was too busy for us to continue seeing his improvement. We got back from vacation a month ago, and we now able to watch Jayden more closely and realize that he can read a lot more words such as body parts: "mouth", "nose", "eyes", etc. or animals like "dog", "cat", "tiger", etc or other words such as "up", "baby", "book", etc.

Please check out the video below to see for yourself. It is extremely hard to videotape him becaus he knows each time we try to videotape him, he doesn't cooporate. However, we will try better next time. It is our first video of him reading and you would see that he would rather grab the note cards than try to read the words, but we promise to try again soon. Thank you and enjoy!