Growing up I used to write a lot. Mostly short stories. All through elementary school I was always writing stories on my own and loved when we were asigned essays or papers to write in class...especially when we were given more free reign over the topics or the style of stories.
Well, around the age of 13 i stopped writing stories. I always assumed it was just something that happened naturally and didn't really think about the why of it.
My mother just told me some stories that I had forgotten about my middle school years. Middle school was a bad time for me. I was a poor dorky kid going to a really expensive school with lots of pampered rich kids. Needless to say, I got made fun of a lot and really disliked my time there. I went from being a straight A student, to a C and D student, and it wasn't the material.
Anyway, my mother was telling me some specific stories from my time there that I had forgot. Apparently I had one English teacher that just gave me really horrible grades all year. On stuff that my mother thought I didn't deserve such bad grades on. For instance, one paper was a creative writing asignment and we were allowed to write on whatever we wanted. I wrote a science fiction story. Dealing with an alternate dimension...or something along those lines. My mother doesn't remember the particulars, and I don't remember it at all. The teacher gave me a horrible grade, writing things like "this is really weird" as her reasoning for a bad grade. On a creative writing asignment!
From what my mother says, this teacher really killed my self esteem in regards to writing and it was around this time I stopped writing on my own.
Maybe it wasn't the teachers fault that I stopped writing, maybe it just happened. I don't know. But its interesting(and infuriating i guess) how much affect people can have on us growing up. And how one person I don't even remember may have really had a negative impact on me. I guess it works both ways. If you have the right people around you might not even realize how good they are for you.
Don't know that I have any particular point in all this. Just wanted to get it all out.
Posted by Boon (Member # 4646) on :
YES! I do my best to keep this in mind as I deal with my children and now as a Girl Scout Leader. I'll never know how something I say or do will impact the children, so I have to be careful all the time. Be myself, but take care in my words and actions.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I know how that goes. Adults would try to cry my desire to write often, like teachers destroying my little books. Fortunetly, I still want to write anyway. But what annoys me is people trying to talk me out of things I really want to do.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
My belief is that it is extremely important to understand the particular value in individual people and in the things those people choose to do - especially if you are someone they care about, but sometimes even if they don't even know you. I think it's often not hard to snuff out a flame.
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
I think a lot of potential is lost, too, just from parents or other adults who are too narrow to share the interests of the kids they're around. I've seen so many times that parents would be really dismissive of all the very things that make their kid so particularly cool and interesting.
I suppose that's always a danger, no matter what. I can just see me getting a kid who loves Mozart and thinks popular music is just great. In fact, I remember trying really hard to figure out what my nieces saw in their boy-band favorites and failing dismally. Now they like country music. <sigh>
Good thing God loves and appreciates everything about everyone, even the bad parts. That's what all children deserve. We are standing in for God when we raise or teach children, and unfortunately, we don't always do Him justice.