Story telling at Gramedia Matraman

Wow.... it's raining today but I have to wake up pretty early this morning to have a story telling program at Gramedia Matraman around 09.00.

Around 07.00, I went to Gramedia Matraman with Mr. Agustinus. He said he will pick me up at 07.30 but he came too early this morning, so we went at 07.00. Thank God I've done my make up too.

The idea of this story telling program is to give children a basic idea about reading a story with parents and to make children love books and of course love reading it!

Nowadays, parents are too busy with their own stuff, thus they don't even have time to read a bed time story for their children. Some of them also said that they don't like to read, so they don't want to read for their children. So, because money can buy anything (they said), they will buy an expensive reading machine for their children so that children can learn to read with that machine. Quite good, but still it is not the same if we're doing it with human instead of machine.

What would happen to children if parents keep doing this to them? I can not blame children if they don't like to read, because the reading habit is not on their list when they're growing up.

It is different in America or Japan. One of my friend from America said that reading a bed time story is a common thing in America, it is a time to be with children after having a tiring day and to have the bonding between them. Children can learn new vocabulary from books and learn to love reading books. In Japan, reading also become a habit in life, so you can find people reading books every where, even in the train, in bus, it looks like reading is your life.


Check out children's face when I'm doing the storytelling. They were so excited about the story and when I gave them questions at the end of the story, they can remember all things I said! Isn't it amazing??

So, I really hope that parents who read this will change their mind about reading a story to their children.

Want to have a bright child? Start from yourself, do what you need to do, NOW!

Mom, Dad, I'm not bonsai

Do you know bonsai, a small tree that lives in a small pot? I think most of you know this kind of tree.

But, do you know that bonsai actually is a big tree, but with Japanese way of culturing it, putting it in a small pot, this big tree could not grow up into a big tree.

In Japanese words, bonsai means an ordinary talents. The opposite of bonsai is tensai, which means many talents, genius.

Nowadays, I saw that children about 1-4 years old could not do simple jobs around the house that is actually easy because without knowing it, parents make their children into a bonsai. Parents always do all things for their children, thinking that "children could not do it", or "it takes time if they do it by themselves", or "if I allow them to do it, they will mess up and I have to clean up the rest."

For example, let children open the door, let children put the garbage into the trash can, let children put the dishes in the kitchen, let children put the dirty clothes into basket, let the children clean up the floor, etc...

So, instead of giving a chance for children to try, parents always interfere the process by giving a shortcut for children, "Let me do it for you." So, this tensai children soon will become bonsai.

I hope, as a parents, you could give a chance for children to try these simple things around the house so that you can train them to have a strong spirit and when they can do it, they will be proud of themselves, thus creating a good self confidence.