Always Be in your KID's Side...

I have always been so scared my entire adult life. Scared to interact with people, scared to express my opinions. Scared to speak in front of a crowd. Scared to tell the answers out loud when teacher is asking a question, scared of making friends, scared of relationships, scared of falling in love, scared of getting married, scared of being disrespected, etc.

                                   

According to my parents, I wasn't always like that. When I was small, I was very cheerful, outspoken, enthusiastic and not at all afraid.

So what went wrong? I questioned myself. I decided look back on my past to see if I can find answers.

When I was a child, I had kind parents. They supported me, nourished me, gave me education, helped me and loved me. The one aspect in my life that I have much bitter memories about, is my school life. I was a bright kid. Performed well in academic activities. This brought to me a lot of love and positive attention towards me from my teachers, along with some negative attention as well.

When I was 8, my class teacher was a woman who had a lot of issues most of them caused probably by her troubled daughter. Her daughter who was much elder than us and also was a student of the same school was juvenile and clearly troubled in some way and eventually will elope with a guy. The reason for her taking this out on me however, I will never understand. She would constantly punish me for silly reasons. Make my parents come to the school so that she can complain about me to them. Make myself go to the principal’s office and bring the cane they have there, which was a scary long weapon at that age. Normal practice was to make the class monitor to bring the cane but no she decided that it too had to be done by myself so that the punishment will be scarier and I’ll be shivering with fear when I reached the classroom. This sadist behavior continued for month until one time my parents decided that they have had enough.

I was supposed to bring a piece of cloth for a sewing exercise and for some reason I forgot it and came to school. I immediately analyzed the situation and due to the fear of the cane, made a plan. I had a friend who had brought extra cloth and I traded on of them in exchange for a beautiful feather I had which she wanted. All went smoothly and I had a piece of cloth for the activity until the teacher discovered our deal. She was furious and punished me as usual and immediately made my parents come to school and told everyone that I stole a piece of cloth from a classmate.  My parents being the kind and nice people knew that I am not a thief and realized that the story didn’t make any sense. They asked me for what actually happened and I told them every bit of it. They went to the principal’s office demanded to change my class and I went to another class where I had a different and kind teacher and I started to excel in my studies.

A few years later when I was still a child, I had a few teachers travelling in my school bus. For a school work I had to make a mini broom and had to put it in a bag and bring it with me. Due to the heavy crowd in the bus, my broom somehow touched a teacher. And I cannot stress TOUCHED enough because that’s exactly what happened. A brand new handmade and completely clean mini broom / dust wiper touched the hand of the teacher. This made the teacher lose her mind and start shouting at me saying “This girl hit me with a broom! How dare her!” and this scolding continued to go on for an unwanted long time. I’m a quiet and nice girl who is respected by everyone and being scolded like this in front of my friends completely crushed me. It was devastating. I wanted to cry out as loud as I could with the bursting sadness and embarrassment, but had to control to avoid further insult.

These were just two instances of such mistreatment at school and I clearly and very precisely remember every detail of these incidents even though I barely remember anything else from this age which explains the degree of devastation. Instead of teaching me to be fearless, my teachers made me be afraid of embarrassment. To this day I carry that burden with me and I constantly worry about being humiliated. They took out their personal issues and found pleasure in punishing someone whom they thought were not going to turn out the way their children have.

In a lot of countries the bullies are fellow students but in many Asian countries unfortunately, teachers are bullying the kids. When your child comes to you and tells about an issue at school, take your time to sit down with them and get every detail out of them. Do not blindly trust the judgment of a teacher and ignore the side of your child’s story. Listen to them. Help them. Nobody in the world can care about your child then you. They are your treasures. They are beautiful little clay that will turn into the shape of mold you put them in. Most of this molding is done at school. So always pay attention to what is happening there.