Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http www praisingyourchild

Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ Story Behind Kyle Hilton And His Belief System Here’s an incredible true story. It’s just one of my testimonials that helped me to realize the awesome power behind the influences of a child’s mind over his belief system. I knew that there were some incredible powers behind this universe but I didn’t always know what they were called or exactly how to use them. It was however, when I began to learn how the power of the subconscious mind worked that I actually saw first hand how words of encouragement could leave a lasting impression – upon the mind. This story is so dear to me because it took place first in the mind and thoughts of my 5 year old son. The story is a bit long and goes into detail. I feel you must learn the whole story to fully understand everything that took place in Kyle’s mind. 1 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ My name is Thomas A. Hilton, Jr. and I’m Kyle’s father. I grew up in Jackson, Ms and after I got married in 1982, my wife (Tammy) and I had our son (Kyle) in June of 1986. Now, as every parent will tell you about their own child, he was the most beautiful baby we’d ever seen. It didn’t take long for us to see he was going to be very talented. When he was less than 2 years old, he would amaze me sitting in the floor putting together puzzles at lighting speeds. I was amazed at how he would pick up a piece of the puzzle and without looking at the piece, place it down in the correct place. He had worked out these puzzles hundreds of times and it became like a piece of cake to him. He was very talented and we were always telling him so. Not realizing at this time that it could have been the best thing we could have done – telling him that he was talented. In 1992, we moved to Memphis, TN as a family only to move back home to Jackson, Ms a few years later. But, while we were in Memphis, we lived in a townhouse apartment. My wife and I both changed jobs and although we sold our home in Jackson, we were surprised that we were not allowed to buy a home in Memphis until we established ourselves first. This was a rule from the mortgage companies because my wife and I changed careers, not just jobs. This townhouse apartment was setup with a Kitchen and Living Room downstairs and the Bedrooms and Bathrooms were upstairs. The staircase was one of these were you walked up about 5 or 6 steps to a landing, turned and walked up 3 or so steps, then turned again and more steps led you to top. The closet next to the stairs was actually the space that was created by the construction of this staircase. It was a large walk-in close that the ceiling began to taper down in the back. He was our first born, and later we realized that he was going to be our only son. While we were living in this apartment, Kyle began taking an interest in drawing. We had already bought him coloring books, crayons and (at that time) VHS movies of his favorite cartoons. Kyle was no different from any other boy or girl his age that began to play with paper and crayons. He would scribble on the paper and he would draw things. At first, he would tell us what the cartoon characters or animals he drew, so we would know what they were. He then began to start drawing his toys. These were toys that we had bought for him and most of them were characters of the animated cartoon characters in his movies. He watched them everyday and I knew that those cartoon characters were more than just images on the screen for him. After all, when he would watch ninja turtles he saw individual turtle characters and he knew each one individually. 2 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ When I saw them, I saw 4 cartoon characters that looked alike. “NO, DADDY”… he would say… That’s Michael Angelo, and that’s Donatello, etc… He would begin to name them all. And when he drew a picture of one, he drew a picture of them all individually. Here’s where the story starts to take off. Since downstairs was where Kyle spent most of his day, watching the television and playing with his toys… that’s were we kept most of his daily toys. We would keep them in this closet next to the stairs. We would constantly pull out this small plastic Tyco table and chair for him and set it up in front of the television. As his artwork began to take shape, we no longer had to ask him who they were. We could recognize them ourselves. He was still only 5 years old. We began praising him on all of his artwork. We started calling him an ARTIST. This small plastic table and chair was one of those that the top is slanted downward like a drawing or drafting table. It was perfect for an ARTIST. Then we noticed something. He would go into the closet and sit and draw before we even had a chance to drag it out into the room. So, we pushed all the toys to the back of the closet and allowed him to place the table closer to the door, up against the wall, directly under the light. He would sit there with the closet door open, light on, television sound coming from the living room and he would PRETEND that it was his ART STUDIO. After all, he was an ARTIST, because he had heard his mother and me, called him that many times. During this time I was reading some self-help books that I was buying to help me with my business. I had always enjoyed reading books by Zig Ziglar and then I noticed a book that Zig wrote called “Raising Positive Kids In A Negative World”. As I read that book, it gave me some insight as to how to raise my son in a positive way and we were already on track. Then I read where Zig Ziglar suggested that we praise our son other than just to him. In other words, we should allow him to overhear us praising him to others. Like when you are in the kitchen talking on the phone to someone else and he is in the living room within ears range. You should praise him to the person on the phone and allow him to over hear you. 3 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ This must have done something powerful as well. (Later I discovered what it was) See in psychology, you can make something into an anchor in your life simply by repetition and it becomes embedded in your mind. When he heard us call him an ARTIST to others as well as calling him that to his face… It started burning that image in himself. He wasn’t only a young 5 year old boy…. He was an ARTIST. Every cell in his body began to believe it. So I told him that all ARTISTS would sign their name on their artwork so everyone would know who the ARTIST was. Now understand that he was only 5 years old at the time and his signature wasn’t as impressive just yet. He would draw a picture and bring it to us to put on our refrigerator door. That door was cluttered. He then began hanging some of his artwork in the closet above his table. Occasionally we would remind him to sign his name on the artwork. Now you can imagine that here was this 5 year old boy attempting to sign his name although he hadn’t really learned to do it yet. The pictures soon became a backdrop to this overly large attempt at signing his name with a crayon. The signature took up the entire page. He and I laid down in front of the television on the floor. We were going to have a contest. I also loved to draw when I was a boy and really never pursued it much. So on a whim, I wanted to draw with him. We took one of his movie covers and we setout to draw a picture of Popeye (the sailor man). Well we were drawing at the same time and I didn’t realize that he was watching me all that closely… see he was drawing with a crayon and I chose to use a pencil. He also noticed that my technique was different than his. This was the first time I had ever drawn anything in front of him and it would become my last because… The next day, I noticed that he was trying to copy my technique which was more sketching than drawing. I didn’t want him to change his technique because he was actually drawing pictures pretty well at the time. Everyday, Kyle kept drawing over and over, knowing he was an ARTIST, drawing in his very own ART STUDIO (the closet). He would always bring his artwork to me for my approval. Sometimes it was after he signed it and sometimes it was before he signed them and I would have to remind him to sign it. 4 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ This one particular time… he brought me a picture he drew of Pinocchio. You know the cartoon character made of wood that wanted to be a human boy… and every time he would tell a lie, his nose kept growing and growing. Well, he drew it from the cover of his movie. I noticed that something was different. He had drawn this one with a pencil not a crayon. He also hadn’t signed it yet. As I stared at this most recent drawing, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Our son was an ARTIST. Now, I believed it with every cell in my body. I immediately praised him on this picture and smiled then asked him if I could have it. Well, I guess this must have been the first one I had really ever acted as if I wanted to keep it and take pride in owning it. Neither he nor I mentioned the first word about signing it and since I knew his signature would cover up the entire drawing… I didn’t mention it and he didn’t say anything about it. This drawing was amazing… I kept it within a folder and that folder was inside this notebook that I used for work. Everywhere I went, that notebook was always within arms reach of me. Kyle knew this. He would always come up to me and ask to see that picture. I would smile, proudly reach over to my notebook and pull it out. He would hand it back to me and I would look at it as a proud father would and then put it back in that folder. I can only assume that all of this working together must have sent out the right vibration of energy into the world. Because as far as Kyle was concern….everything in his life from that point on just kept getting better and better. When he went into the first grade, his teachers would see him drawing and even in elementary school he was being stood out for his artwork. He was assisting his teachers in decorating their classroom doors at different holidays and he was taking pride in it. Now… moving along and jumping ahead a few years. We had already moved back to Jackson, Ms. I had a new business and his mother was working in the same company along with me and several others. We had extra room in the office building so we made sure that Kyle had his own office. It was actually an extra office where we kept an extra desk. We placed a small television in that office along with a play station game and some drawing paper. He was around 10 years old at this time. His mother would go pick him up after school and bring him back to the office for the rest of the day. He would stay in the office, playing and drawing. Then we would go home as a family at the end of the day. 5 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ Now… moving along a bit more. Kyle is now 14 years old, his artwork and talent is just getting better and better. I had always talked to him about his art and he was still drawing cartoons and now since he was into comic books he was drawing all his comic book heroes. These were more detailed and amazing drawings. I told him that I used to draw portraits and full size figure drawings of baseball players. That was my interest growing up and so that’s what I was drawing. Remember, I had never picked up drawing again since that one time when he was 5 years old. From 5 years old until this particular time in Kyle’s life… he had no formal art instruction. He had developed this amazing talent from deep within and I was learning exactly how it was all coming about. Remember, every cell in his body knew he was an ARTIST and time and time again, that image he held of himself was confirmed and re-affirmed each time someone else took notice of his talent and told him that he was good. That image was being burned into his mind deeper and deeper as if it were a car digging itself deeper and deeper into a rut while stuck in the mud. The amazing thing to remember at this point is that once you’ve burned such a rut into your mind… no one can come and take that away from you. Once it’s burned in that deep… it’s there for good. Later in life – I learned about the universal law known as “The Law of Attraction”. This is how the Law of Attraction works. You have to be able to send out the vibration and energy waves in one direction without anything standing in the way. Energy flows where resistance is Not. The Law of Attraction will attract back to you the same energy waves you are sending out. Send out nothing but the outcome you want and don’t let anything allow you to doubt it and you get back more of the same. More experiences, more people, more opportunities, more of everything that will re-affirm that you are what you think you are. In Kyle’s life… he was an ARTIST… and that’s all he knew. Everyday, it was given back to him and he was absorbing it up. At 14 years old he came home from school with a pencil portrait of George W. Bush. They were talking about the presidential debate at the time and for what ever reason, Kyle took the time to draw a pencil portrait of George W. Bush from a pamphlet that his teacher was handing out to all the kids. That’s when he started looking for other faces in magazines and books he owned so he could start drawing pencil portraits of them. 6 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ His portraits were so amazing… that as a proud father I wanted to show him off even more. I helped him build a website where we would upload his artwork and it wasn’t long before he was drawing pencil portraits for friends at school, friends at church, and then he started getting orders from people in other countries that were attracted to him over the internet. This was amazing. Soon, he was asked to be interviewed on our local television station as a young teenager getting so much international attention for his artwork. He was allowed to display his artwork in a small art gallery and our largest local newspaper did a story and interviewed him over the phone on that particular occasion. One of our other local television news personalities also called a year later (after saving the write-ups) and asked if she could spotlight him in her “Terrific Teen Segment”. That’s where they pick out teenagers that can be spotlighted in the news in a more positive light rather than always showing teenagers in negative situations. Things had been flowing into Kyle’s life effortlessly… due to the Law of Attraction. Everything was simply being attracted into his life. I had been studying more about the powers of the subconscious mind and psychology in general by this time but still haven’t heard the terminology of the Law of Attraction. Although it was working right in front of my eyes. Kyle continued in school, still getting recognition of being an ARTIST one right after the other… from his teachers, friends, people in other countries, his principle. That’s right, his high school principal even asked him personally to draw a pencil portrait of the State’s Superintendant of Education and asked Kyle to present it to him personally at a school board meeting. This was a rather sneaky way to also get Kyle to attend the board meeting so they could present him with an award of excellence in Art. After Kyle graduated high school, he was even given a chance to attend the Pratt Institute of Art in New York, in a summer program on a full paid scholarship. (Oh… Kyle finally started to officially take classes that taught some technical aspects of art during high school for the first time – although he was so far advanced for his age). Kyle spent a few months in that summer art program in New York and loved it. He went on to enroll and attend Southern University of Mississippi in Hattiesburg that same fall. We were hoping that he would get a paid scholarship but they had cut out all scholarships in that department during that particular year. So we made sure he was still able to start this road to USM his first year out of high school. It only proved to be yet another season of unexpected and amazing results provided to him through the principles of The Law of Attraction. 7 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ He noticed that USM had a cartoonist in their school paper “The Student Printz” and he applied to be apart of the paper staff as an additional cartoonist. This brought him some more notoriety from his peers and from the staff at USM. Soon he was known as a student that wasn’t just drawing cartoons but was drawing social cartoons that reflected the life of a student. Staff members started reading more out of his cartoons and had actually started making some changes to how parts of the school were being operated, all based on his perspective of what he was seeing from the eyes of a student. He was getting pointed out during class by professors after cartoons were printed in the school paper and they didn’t even realize he was in their classes. He would go everywhere on campus and there would be his cartoons hanging on doors of professors, in the administrative offices and even in dorm rooms of students he hadn’t even met yet. When one conflict came about on campus and the head of the school wouldn’t allow the college band to miss classes in order to travel with the football team to one of the most important games of that year (it must have been a conference game of sorts). Kyle was contacted by several students and asked to come up with a cartoon that might would influence the decision of the schools head official. That’s how much power the students thought Kyle’s talent had on the school. After all, earlier in the year, one of Kyle’s cartoons did create an awareness of a situation that led to a rule being changed the very next day… everyone knew it was a direct result from Kyle’s cartoon. So he drew a cartoon that following day that reflected the new rule and it was a hit as well. After all this amazing fame… Kyle remained and still remains to this day as one of the most humble kids I know. Kyle still attends USM and is in his 5th year. He’s been able to be apart of some amazing projects all because these things are drawn to him like a magnet. He is the head illustrator to a small graphic design firm in Hattiesburg. He’s illustrated two small children’s books written by a soldier that returned home from the Iraq war and wanted to publish the stories that he was writing his kids while he was away from them. They were published and Kyle made sure the illustrations reflected the love that father had for his own children. The stories were told and illustrated with the children’s names and likenesses in the storyline and characters in these amazing stories. He was given credit of the illustrations right there on the cover of the books. Kyle has even recently published his very own first children’s book and is planning to do more. He was asked to do a book reading of his new children’s book at the local bookstore in downtown Hattiesburg and loved it. 8 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ He loves kids and while he was asked to also draw some amazing (larger than life) portraits on the walls of this elementary school in downtown Hattiesburg he made some friends out of some younger kids that were amazed at Kyle’s talent. Today, he spends time in an after school project teaching some of these same kids how to draw. It’s his first project of teaching others and it’s done out of love because it doesn’t have to do with anything he’s doing at USM and he doesn’t get credit for it. It’s simply because he made life long friends with the teachers and the principal at that school as well as some young kids that will forever remember Kyle. The Power of the Mind along with the universal Law of Attraction works. I’m convinced that it doesn’t have an age limit and that it doesn’t matter if the thoughts burned into your image is of a positive nature or a negative nature, you will attract over your lifetime everything that resonates with those vibrations. It just requires you to know with every cell in your body, and without any doubts in your mind that who you are or what you truly want in life… (It’s best to know how to word what you want rather then always putting out thoughts as to what you don’t want) All things are already yours just waiting along side the road for you to travel down. Doors will begin opening for you immediately and they will never be shut in your face as long as you realize that the universal energy flows where resistance is NOT. It has the power to create talents you never knew you had if you’ll only believe. It will bring to you people that you never knew would be important to you – but the universe knows how to give you everything your heart desires if you’ll just let it. I have proof of every word of this story… if you want to see the pictures I’ve talked about from the Pinocchio drawing he did at 5 years old… to the pencil portraits and more. I’ve included them in a second file about Kyle and his talents. You can download the file on the Praising Your Child website. He’s still drawing cartoons for the USM paper even with his very busy schedule. He’s only 22 years old and has accomplished more than some people twice his age. As his father, I can’t wait to see EVERYTHING the Universe has to offer him, and it will because nothing can change that image he holds of himself as an ARTIST, because over the years that image of himself has been dug so deep, nothing can change it now. My advice to you is to hold that picture in your mind until it starts to dig a rut and soon the same thoughts of others will also help you to make that image a reality in your own life. 9 Praising Your Child Can Make A Difference http://www.praisingyourchild.com _______________________________________________________________________ Thanks for giving this proud father one more chance to brag on his son. This file was originally uploaded to the http://lawofattraction.meetup.com/798/ website as proof and a testimonial as to how the Law of Attraction works based on the science behind (vibration energy attracts to it – the same like energy). It’s also proof behind the Praising Your Child website that everything, including the words of praise and encouragement makes a huge difference in their life. If you allow more positive things to gain access to their minds during early development, then more positive things will be drawn into their lives. However, if you don’t monitor what goes into their minds. It might just be negative circumstances that will eventually attract more and more of the same. Please take the time to encourage your child. You can offset some of their sub-conscious programming by making sure they have a majority of positive words and positive encouragement situations surrounding their lives. A lot of people think that praising their children will spoil them but I think it will save their lives. Thomas A. Hilton, Jr. thomas@tahiltonproperties.com Home phone: 601-925-5271 P.S. – Please feel free to send this file to anyone that you feel would be encouraged by it. Here’s a more recent picture of Kyle. A self-confident young man now living his dream. 10