ESL Blogs

1. Don't judge people on the way they look

 As we were kids, my mother always told us not to trust people's appearance. And to help us to understand what she was meaning, she told us the story of an old man she knew who looked and lived as a tramp but in whose house his family found millions after his death.

2. Never wast food

My mother was quite strict and when my 5 brothers and sisters and I were sitting around the table for the meal, we had some rules to follow. one of them was to empty our plate as it was forbidden to throw food away.

3. Don't try to change people, it's an impossible task.

If you try to change people you are losing your time, they will change for a while but, soon or later, their natural temper will come back.

4. Show interest in other

My mother was very open to other and she always explained us that indifference was the worst feeling in the world. With time, i fully understood what she meant.

5. Be ambitious for your futur and work hard to succeed

Many times, she gave us the exemple of people who didn't want to study because they prefered to spend time having fun, and, once older, they didn't have a good job and had to work hard for their living while the ones who had studied could spend more time having fun.

6. Never stop learning.

As a teacher, my mother gave us the love for books, our house was full of them and as far as I remember, amoung other little toys, we always had books for Christmas and we all had a subscription to the library of the village.

7. Open yourself to other cultures.

We ( I have a twin) were barely 6 years old that mom was taking us to the theater to see documentaries about other countries, and our television was mostly turned on the ARTE channel.

8. Don't forget your duties

One of her slogan was :  ' you have rights, but never forget about your duties'! Nowadays, it seems that, more and more people know about their rights but forget about the rules that are important to live in our society.

9. Create your own path

She was often talking about people who follow other without thinking on their own.. She used to tell us that we should not behave as sheeps who goes with the flock but instead, we had to have our own ideas and follow our own way.

10. Don't be afraid of the unknow.

My twin sister and I were only 7 years old when my mother sent us one whole month on the other side of the country, in a flemish family to learn dutch. It was heartbreaking for us but we did it a few years in a raw and we survived !

After reading back all those points my mother instilled in us, I am surprise to see that I do not recall anything about love. As I wrote up here, she was a teacher but, thought i know that she loved us dearly, she raised us more like a troup in the army, with more duties than rights.

I have the feeling she succeeded in making of my brothers, sisters and I, educated and well behaved people, but on the other hand, I think that, to feel more loved and to talk more about it would have been more benefits for each of us.

My mother died of a cancer when she was 45, maybe, up to that time, she was probably too busy with her job and her big family to show us some love. It's a huge regret I have now but it taught me something important, it is that, I shouldn't do the same mistake with my children and i don't :)