Today’s post is gonna be quite unusual as it is not about my art or illustration. I’m going to write about an experiment my wife and I did to show our children the importance of using positive words and having a positive thinking. This experiment also shows the horrible and shocking effect when one uses negative words or have negative thinking. Having said that, please pardon my writing as it’s not what I do best or even good at, but focus on the objective of this experiment.
As per the title of this post, We call this experiment ‘The Good Orange and The Bad Orange’. Basically what we did was simple. We chose 2 identical oranges with similar texture, size and shape (make sure both do not have any spots on them). Place them into a separate clear container with one labelled as ‘The good Orange’ and the other as ‘The Bad Orange’. After all the preparation, we can now begin with the experiment. We start ‘talking’ to the 2 oranges separately.
All we did were to talk all the positive words, like “you’re such a sweet orange”, “you’re such a beautiful orange”, “you behaved so well today”, “we’re so proud of you”, etc. any good positive words or praises that you can think of. Likewise, for ‘The Bad Orange’, we talked all the negative and bad words like ” you’re a loser”, “you’re so ugly”, “why you always behave so badly”,etc. We did this once a day (usually at night before we went to bed) and recorded the process via photo taking. It would also be good if you can get your children to do the talking together so that they can have a sense of involvement and most importantly have a ‘first-hand’ feel of this experiment.
Day 1 to Day 4 of the process.
Day 5 to Day 10. Basically there is not much changes to the both oranges at this stage. But from Day 20 onward, the result and outcome can be quite shocking!
At Day 22, we start to see ‘The Bad Orange’ started to turn bad while ‘The Good Orange’ remain unchanged.
From here on, ‘The Bad Orange’ got worsen each day while ‘The Good Orange’ pretty much stays the same.
At Day 36, ‘The Bad Orange’ has turned ‘completely bad’ while the ‘The Good Orange’ still remain more or less the same. At this point of time, we believe we have met the objective of this experiment and could now end it.
The result and outcome of this experiment is so shocking that it makes us reflect on words or the choice of words we used towards people, especially our children, can sometimes be really hurtful and harmful. As a parent myself, I understand how children can sometime misbehave that could really drives you crazy. However, we as parent must always learn to know the different between ‘misbehave’ from ‘unintentional mistakes’. Like some parent, I’m also guilty of scolding them harshly when I sometime mistaken their ‘unintentional mistakes’ as ‘misbehave’. So from now on, I will try my best to stay as calm as I could to understand what really happened before talking to them.
Sometimes parents frequently tell their children that they’re not living up to their potential, thinking that the use of ‘reserve psychology’ will make them work harder. Too often I hear parents say in a teasing tone like :”I’m sure you can’t do this, prove me wrong” or “I don’t think you can make it, show me if you can”, hoping that this might encourage them to do it. I believe in the long run this will have the opposite effect. This is one of the thing that I constantly remind myself not to do or say to my children. A simple direct encouragement is far more effective here as how our children feel about themselves is more important than how others feel about them.
Continually point out the flaws in our children is also one of the common mistake that parents do. Constant criticism like “you just so lazy”, “did you even try” or ” you’re always so untidy” would eventually turn them to ‘The Bad Orange’ like this experiment. Instead, we could always find the little good things from their flaws and motivate them to be better next time.
I would also like to highlight that this post is not a post about parenting tips as I’m far from expert on parenting. The main objective is as per what I mentioned at the beginning of the post, to show the importance of positive words and how negative words can affect the orange. Like every parents, we hope to be a better person each day to lead by example for our children. So this post also serve as a record and reminder to always speak positively to our children as well as to others. Spread LOVE not hate:)
Keeve Neo - The Illustrator 