Thank you, farmergirl, lynn P, and treehouse for your thoughtful replies.
Farmergirl, I strongly encouraged ("forced" is too strong a word) my daughter to fill out the NHS application. I kept in mind what you said, and I reminded her that she was an academic leader in her classes, even if it is not an official appointed or elected position. She had never thought of it that way (and neither had I), and she seemed to like that. I reminded her that recently an essay she wrote on "what I would do to change my school for the better" was chosen as the best in her grade--again, an academic high point, but not what she thought of as leadership. So she felt better about herself after this conversation, and she did fill out the NHS form. She was supposed to submit it today, and I hope she did.
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Originally Posted by lynn P.
I think children learn how to solve problems when they know they can come to their parents and be open. But we also don't want to constantly rescue children, turning into 'helicopter parents'. If we always solve their problems for them, they'll never learn the skills themselves.
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Good point, Lynn. It is a balance between helping them and letting them do it themselves, and the balance shifts as they get older--a bit more responsibility each year. Hopefully!
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Originally Posted by treehosue
When I was 4, I stopped walking. I crawled everywhere and said my legs didn't work. My parents had to take me to the doctor, and when the doctor said I was fine, I had to walk out of there.
This was shortly after I had started being SA by a family "friend".
T was saying how I was CLEARLY trying to say "something is wrong, somebody help me", but living in an abusive home, I was too scared to speak up. Crawling was all my 4 y/o self could come up with.
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Treehouse, thank you for sharing this story. It does seem really clear that your crawling was an attempt to communicate, and actually a very smart thing to do. Did anyone understand the "message", you were trying to send? Now I look back in this same era for me and I see a behavior I engaged in--pulling out my hair, one strand at a time. I remember my mother would comb my hair over my bald spots so I would look presentable to go to school. Again, it was a signal and message that something was wrong. But no one understood the message. My mother took me to the doctor to see about my bald spots and what was causing them. My family didn't realize that I was pulling out the hair myself, and I never would have told them, because I would have been in big trouble (or so I would have thought back then). I was always scared of this particular doctor, so no way was she going to get anything out of me, especially while my mother was sitting right there with me in the exam room. I think the doc did realize I was pulling out the hair myself. As the family lore goes, she told my mother I was suffering from "nerves" and needed a calmer, less stressful environment at home. Like, yeah, it would have been great if my mom took that to heart and quit beating me and the other stuff too, which I won't mention. But instead, my 3 older siblings came to me and said that they had been told by my mom they had to treat me nice and be calm and gentle with me, because this was what was causing my hair to fall out. They were mad at me that I had somehow "blamed" them for all of this and gotten them in trouble with my parents. And I never did this at all--it was something my mother told them and I had no part in it. They called me a baby and a liar. I remember then feeling that no one "got" it or understood what was happening, what more could I do? I kind of gave up after that.