As a child growing up on the warm shores of Trinidad & Tobago, I remember wanting to play with my dolls more than I wanted to sit down and work on my essay writing skills and yet, my mother was adamant that ‘Knowledge Is Power’ and that it was also the key to making a better life for the families that my siblings and I would one day have.

My mother had it right

I thought she was just being a killjoy and disregarded her words as often as I felt like I could get away with it. Eventually, I grew up and when I had my first child I realized that the words that she spoke to me, all those years ago, were golden.

The more that you know- the more that you educate yourself, the better off your decision-making skills will be.

My mother was always a strong proponent of education – she was a drill sergeant when we were growing up and I thought, at the time that she was being overly dramatic but that motherhood thing (it teaches you stuff), opens your eyes and sometimes you get to see that your own parents weren’t totally crazy. My mother encouraged all of her children – 5 in total, to be avid readers.

That reading and understanding a story was the first step to reading and understanding a math problem, or a scientific question or even to understanding a social studies issue. Over time, we all got it and I am proud to say that all of my siblings – especially myself, we all love to read and it is very much apparent when we speak and in the quality of the grades that we brought home (and for those of us still in university) and are still bringing home.

This is where it Changed for Me!

My eldest son (he’s 7 going on 25) was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and it was a blow to his father and myself. We knew that he was smart (you can’t talk to him and not pick that up) but we also realized that he wasn’t quite like other children. His father and I are both self-professed nerds and we began to put that to use – we researched and, you guessed it, we read.

And in the course of all the research that we did, we realized that he just might have #ADHD. After a round of assessments and tests, it was official and I had a direction to point my energies in. I began to be more structured with him, read more with him, explained the questions that he asked at my level rather than his own – trust me, he understood and slowly I began to see a change in his academic performance.

I gave you all of this information just to prove a very simple point – If I didn’t have those words of wisdom that my mother imparted to me all those years ago, and if I wasn’t willing to read and educate myself even more to become more knowledgeable on what my son was going through, I wouldn’t now be able to stand at this juncture and say what I have. Knowledge is power people – Let’s become more Powerful!