"What beautiful music!" I shout loudly as my 9-year-old son practices playing the violin. He's used to this praise; I give rewards like that most days. But every once in a while, I skip it, and when I do, I can see the disappointment on his face when he's finished.

Am I a bad mom? Conventional wisdom says that consistency is key to parenting since it enables your child to predict how you'll react, leading to good behavior. And it's true that children need some level of predictability in their lives, particularly when it comes to discipline.

But research suggests that inconsistent gifts and praise can have a greater effect on motivation. While we all like to live in a predictable world, we often respond more strongly to unpredictable rewards.

In one experiment, my colleagues and I told participants they'd be paid if they could drink about one-and-a-half quarts of water in two minutes or less. In one condition, we offered people a $2 fixed reward. In another, there was an uncertain reward of either $2 or $1. The certain reward was a better deal, yet many more people successfully met the challenge when assigned an uncertain reward. Resolving the uncertainty—whether they would win $1 or $2—was significantly more motivating than winning $2 for sure.

Here is one of the reasons why uncertainty is motivating. What scientists call "intermittent (间歇性) reinforcement" —rewarding behavior on some but not all occasions—makes it morearduous to know when rewards will show up. If you very often, but don't always, praise your child for completing their chores, they'll keep up the good behavior in the hope of receiving praise the next time.

So don't assume that if kids are always praised for finishing their homework, they'll be more likely to do it. Do praise young people for a job well done, just not every time. And pick rewards out of a hat when they complete chores—the surprise prize might keep everyone motivated to get things done.

In 2018, Portugal and China signed an agreement on cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), making Portugal the first country in Western Europe to participate in the initiative.

Such stories continue to emerge. Since President Xi proposed the initiative in 2013, China's "circle of friends" has continued to expand. By the end of October 2019, China had concluded cooperation agreements with 137 countries and 30 international organizations.

As a Chinese saying goes, "To know whether a policy is good or not, you should see if it makes people frown or smile."

In Uzbekistan, Chinese personnel worked closely with the locals, building an over 19-kilometer tunnel in just 900 days. The tunnel, which is the longest in Central Asia, allows Uzbeks living in remote areas to travel through mountains and ranges in just 15 minutes.

Thanks to the BRI, fishermen who catch crayfish along the banks of the Nile in Egypt can now see their crayfish on Chinese people's dining tables. The high demand from China also puts more money in their pockets. For them, the initiative is a path to wealth. In Serbia, Chinese companies helped revive a near-bankrupt steel plant, securing jobs and stable incomes for 5, 000 workers.

Joint construction with participating countries allows Belt and Road countries to align their development strategies, thus releasing the development potential of these countries and bringing real benefits to their peoples.

Against the backdrop of profound changes, development is the master key to solving problems. The reason why the BRI has attracted so many participants is that it matches with the desire of countries, especially developing ones, to seek development.

Belt and Road construction is successful because it focuses on economic development, promotes openness and cooperation, and aims to achieve mutual benefits and win-win results.

Two Georgian twins, separated at birth when they were sold to different adoptive families, have been reunited and have TikTok to thank for bringing them back together.

The astonishing story began 10 years ago when one of the twins, Amy Khvitia, sat watching Georgia's Got Talent in her godmother's house near the Black Sea. A young girl, who looked exactly like her, climbed up on stage and began to dance in front of the reality show's judges. Another seven years went by when Ano Sartania, the young girl that had danced on television, was sent a TikTok video of a young woman with blue hair getting her eyebrow pierced. Determined, Ano took to a WhatsApp university group with her plea. asking for help finding the woman with the blue hair. Against all odds, someone in the group knew Amy and the pair was connected through Facebook. Amy and Ano agreed to meet in-person at a local train station.

"It was awkward, it was awesome, it was everything," Ano told The Sun of that first meeting, adding, "It was weird for me like I was looking in a mirror." As they grew to know each other more, the two women began to list the similarities they shared and admit to being a bit unsettled by it all. Both were born in the same hospital, but their birth certificates said they were born a couple of weeks apart. Wanting answers, they turned to their families to ask some hard questions and soon had an explanation — both families admitted to adopting the girls as newborns.

It turns out both of their mothers had been unable to have children and were told they could pay to adopt unwanted babies at the hospital. DNA tests ‘eventually confirmed that that Amy and Ano were twins. However, they wanted to know why their biological parents have given them up and if they had been sold for profit. The twins have since been reunited with their birth mother, Aza, who claimed she fell into a coma after delivering her identical daughters and when she woke up hospital staff told her that her babies were dead.

"While Ano and Amy's story contains a lot of coincidence on their path to reunion, their adoption circumstances aren't that unique in Georgia — as many as 100,000 Georgian babies have been put up for illegal adoption since the 1950s on the black baby market," says Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze, who has been working to reunite families.