Posted by Racer on January 27, 2004, at 19:43:31
In reply to Re: Racer Report: re Being Proactive » Racer, posted by noa on January 27, 2004, at 18:52:36
Thanks, sweetie, for the encouragement and support. Send your future kids to me for riding lessons, especially the girls, and they'll come back the better for it. (Wow, I guess I am feeling better, since I managed to say I was good at something.) I see it in my cousin's kids, too. At Christmas, my cousin or his wife would say "no" to their 3 year old, and he'd ignore them. It was hard to hold myself back, but I did. The proper response to "no" is for the kid to stop whatever he's doing, right? Well, there's a proper response for the adult, too: if the kid ignores you, you Make It So. Usually, adults are bigger than toddlers, so the adult can physically remove the child from the problem. What happens to the kid's psyche when this sort of thing happens, you ask? In Racer's School of Psycho-Theories, the kid learns to feel secure, because he learns that there are boundaries, and someone will ensure that he stays inside them. These days, though, too many parents think in terms of 'teaching children to make their own decisions' -- in other words, treating children as if they were nothing more than short adults. That's denying children their true identity of being immature, potential adults. Much better to be honest with everyone involved and let the kids know that there's more to maturity than height.
There, nice little rant, just for you. If you give me a few minutes to prepare, I can give you a further analysis of how that thought process relates to adults who were given too much autonomy as children...
Seriously, thanks for your post. It means a lot to me when someone gives me a specific example when making complimentary comments about me. It means that you've not only decided you like me enough, or value me enough, to want to make me feel good, feel worthy, but that you also respect me enough to take the trouble of finding something specific to compliment me on. That's a thread I'm still teasing out today, because my therapist said something that brought it up. I was telling her about an abusive doctor I was stuck with a few years ago -- when I first came to these boards, so you might remember, but machts nichts -- and she gave me some reassurance. She didn't say, "Oh, don't be silly, of course we don't think you're hopeless." She said, "If we thought you were hopeless, you'd only be seen every eight weeks for therapy. The fact that you have a weekly therapy appointment, and that the doctor is continuing to try new drugs in order to find the right combination for you, proves that we think there's hope for you." Now I'm stretching at that thought, and trying to straighten it out in my mind, see how it fits, if it keeps my mind warm, etc. You've just managed to improve my condition even more by reinforcing the thought that there are tangible benefits to my being in the world.
Thank you. I hope I help you as much as you help me.
poster:Racer
thread:306167
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/2000/20031122/msgs/306205.html