On Saturday, June 4th, the International School of Oradea organized the second edition of the NextGen conference. The purpose of this conference is to bring together people who have a common goal, that of improving the quality of education among children. And this year the main theme was how to have a confident child. This theme was suggested by most of the school’s parents and it represents a challenge for any parent, after all.

During the conference, there were 6 speakers and 2 special guests: Mr Horia Abrudan County School Inspector from the Bihor County School Inspectorate and Mr Iulian Cristache, President of the National Federation of Parents Associations.

The speakers of the conference were: Mihaela Tatu, moderator and speaker, Otilia Mantelers, psychologist, Hedi Hoka, psychologist, Ana Maria Ivan, coach and mother blogger, Robert Malone, instructor of the Shichida method in Oradea, Ebony Ellis, deputy director of the International School of Oradea.

The student-parent-teacher relationship should be like an equilateral triangle, said Mr Horia Abrudan, the Director of County School Inspectorate.

Below we present to you 10 ideas that we collected from the speakers’ presentations and that you can apply to your own family.

1. Love your children. And love means time, not money. Moral principles and values ​​are transmitted in the family. You can tell a child to read, but if you don’t read, he won’t. You can tell him to respect his teachers, but if you don’t respect your family, he won’t either. (Julian Costache)

2. Be careful how you speak to children so that your words stay in their minds and souls and generate action. Also, if children do not do what we ask of them, we should not question their ability to think, but perhaps we should think that it is our problem in making ourselves understood. Our request has to be repeated in many ways until we learn to understand each other. (Michaela Tatu)

3. We inevitably compare ourselves to others, but we need to see how it feels inside. And the child will do as he sees in the family. If the mother does not feel beautiful, the girl will not know how to feel beautiful either. If the father hesitates to grow professionally, his son will not succeed either. (Otilia Mantelers)

4. When children have conflicts with each other at school or at play, we as parents are ashamed of what the child has done. But instead of turning shame into anger and spilling it on the child, we better analyze ourselves. Let’s see what we feel and why we feel that way. Then, ideally, we should first listen to the child. It would be good to first understand what happened. We don’t have to do justice between the children, but we are there to understand them. (Otilia Mantelers)

5. When the baby comes into the world, it’s time to learn, not educate. (Hedi Hoka)

6. When the child has low self-esteem it would be good to look at how much emotional security I give him and how much physical security I show him that I have towards myself. How good do I feel about myself? We, the parents, receive exactly those children that we need to evolve. Children are like mirrors in our lives – they reflect the parts of us that we need to heal. Self-esteem travels from great-grandparents to grandparents, from grandparents to parents, and from parents to children. (Hedi Hoka)

7. How desirable the child feels to be in his family is an important aspect for self-esteem. Did you ever tell him the story of his birth? How long have you been waiting for it? What emotions did you have when you first saw it? (Ana Maria Ivan)

8. The way we show our love towards the child is the most important element in the child’s upbringing. And love also means rules, and discipline, not just making the child happy for the moment. The Shichida Method focuses on developing both hemispheres of the brain in children between 6 months and 6 years to fully discover and develop their native abilities. (Robert Malone)

9. Where would we be without boundary testers? There would be no more progress. So it is with our children. We need to give them encouragement to explore. (Ebony Ellis)

10. Children need tools. This is what education is all about – to give them the tools they need to become responsible, curious, empathetic and confident adults. They need to understand that it is good to work together with other people, to be curious, discover their strengths, ask questions and seek answers. (Ebony Ellis)

Through this event, we wanted to contribute to the creation of a stronger school-parent-student-community partnership. And the power of the community was given by the conference partners. The main partners were: Inter Broker de Asigurări, EBM Papst, Shichida România și Clinicile Dr. Leahu. We thank them for supporting education actively, not just declaratively.