School Problems

[Guest guest]

I recently remembered a few of my own experiences, including one teacher who

brought my mother in because I had to have cheated by copying, and was lying

when I said it was my own work; no one in the fourth grade could ever

understand those words or write that well. Fortunately, my mother had had me

tested (I

tested at high school senior level in reading), and she had also helped me

with the paper by pulling the books off the shelves that I couldn't reach, and

had watched me write it. Despite being vindicated, I learned then to not ever

let myself appear too intelligent, and the damage is still with me -- I have

never felt like a success at anything, although I've usually done well.

It surprises me that I was so unaware I was at how much my body affected

me...I didn't take many notes, and the ones I took, I took in outline form (with

few details); at the time, I thought that was because I didn't need to -- now,

I think that was mental justification for my physical difficulties. My parents

never accepted that something was actually wrong -- I had the family loose

joints, and they hadn't bothered anyone (fully ignoring all the difficulties my

mother, her mother and aunt went through -- because they were women,

perhaps?). They kept forcing me to try sport after sport, for instance, and

called me a

quitter when I couldn't overcome my ankles collapsed trying to ice-skate or

when I kept throwing my shoulder out pitching baseball. I even had a car

accident that I know now was caused by EDS -- my ankle buckled as I was trying

to

shift the MG and I ran into a low brick wall, with my parents watching ( " Why did

you do that? " " I don't know! " ) . It never became a crisis to them, because

I managed to keep my grades high enough despite warring with my body...but...

These days, now that I don't have the endurance to match any ambition, I

wonder how far I would have gone, if someone had just taken a serious look at

me.

Genius can't amount to much when it spends so much effort trying to be normal.

Why am I bringing this up...well, on the off chance someone else might learn

from it -- my father hasn't, and I hope someone will...

[Guest guest]

Mark,

Your story of the problems in school really demonstrates the problem we have

as humans being able to sort out the good and bad input. When someone tells

us we are stupid, it tends to have more weight than when we hear that we are

good - even when we KNOW we aren't stupid, the words wear away at our own

beliefs of self-worth. Even as adults, when we can really look at our

childhood objectively and acknowledge that the problem was the teacher and

not us, it still doesn't fix the damage done to our psyche and our souls.

-Barb