Affirmation From a Simple Ball of Wool

A newspaper advice column recently featured an interesting letter from a parent. It said: “We have a sixteen-year-old daughter who does not drink, smoke, use drugs, or stay out late. She isn’t pregnant and she is a straight-A student. Please tell us – where did we go right?”

Teenagers today are all trying to discover who they are. A teenage boy spent two years trying to find himself. One day he got a haircut, and there he was!

Seriously, our children are very likely to live up to – or down to – what they perceive their parents or teachers believe and perceive of them. And that does not only apply to kids. No matter how much we may try denying it, many of us still tend to shape ourselves in the image others have of us.

So few parents take the time to realize they are the Coach and the Team Leader of their family. The same leadership skills that are taught as a matter of course in team sports or business are too often sadly lacking in the home.

A great Coach or Team Leader has a knack of making the members of his team believe they are much better than they thought they were. He or she forces the individuals under their guidance to have a good opinion of themselves.

Great parents let their kids know they believe in them. They help them get more out of themselves. And strangely – once a person truly realizes how good he or she really is – they frequently never settle for giving anything less than their very best from then on.

I recently heard of a heart-warming story about something called a Web of Love. Using nothing more than a simple ball of wool, a high school teacher transformed her classroom into a haven of love, encouragement and support for her students.

The teacher asked her students to sit on the floor in a circle in the center of the classroom. She handed the boy seated nearest her a large ball of wool and told him to throw it to someone opposite him in the circle, while holding tightly to the loose end.

The girl, who caught the ball, now held on to it and listened carefully as the boy who threw it shared out loud something he particularly liked about her. Then, keeping hold of the thread of wool, the girl tossed the ball across to another girl in the circle and told her something she really liked about her.

So the ball of wool went, thrown from student to student across and around the circle until everyone had both given and received words of affirmation and encouragement from their classmates. That simple ball of wool had become a wonderful web of love, respect, warmth, encouragement and good feelings.

Just before the bell went for the end of the class, the teacher took a pair of scissors and cut through the web. Each student took away a piece of the wool they were holding, as a reminder of this unique experience, as well as of the powerful words of encouragement they had shared with and heard from each other.

To the teacher’s amazement, nearly all the students arrived at school the next day, wearing their treasured piece of wool around their wrists. For weeks afterward, they continued to wear their pieces of wool as a reminder of their incredible experience and the new bonds of warmth and friendship that had been forged that day.

Since then, it has become a tradition at that school for the students to ask their class teacher to end the first term with the woolen Web of Love. It proves just how much words of encouragement and affirmation mean to us all.

But we don’t have to be students at that school to offer encouragement and affirmation to the people we love or come into contact with every day. By simply wanting to, we can create opportunities to hearten others and boost their confidence in themselves.

As long as the words are said with sincerity, very few people would not appreciate hearing words of genuine appreciation and praise. And each time you do it and encourage others to do the same, you help weave a wonderful, invisible web of love that can transform lives and forge new friendships that can last a lifetime.