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Understanding grows from personal experience that enables a person to see and feel in ways so varied and so full of changeable meanings that one’s self-awareness is the determining factor.
When the initiative is left up to the individual, he will select the ground upon which he feels his greatest security.
Any exclamation of surprise or praise might be interpreted by him as the direction he must take. It might close off any other areas of exploration that might be far more important for him.
He needed to develop strength to cope with his world, but that strength had to come from within him and he had to experience personally his ability to cope with his world as it was. Any meaningful changes for Dibs would have to come from within him. We could not hope to make over his external world.
Here was a child very capable of great intellectual achievement, whose abilities were dominated by his emotional disturbance.
A child gets his feelings of security from predictable and consistent and realistic limitations. I had hoped to help Dibs differentiate between his feelings and his actions.
I might miss completely the essence of this child’s total personality if I jumped to any premature conclusions.
the therapeutic value of this kind of psychotherapy is based upon the child’s experiencing himself as a capable, responsible person in a relationship that tries to communicate to him two basic truths: that no one ever really knows as much about any human being’s inner world as does the individual himself; and that responsible freedom grows and develops from inside the person. The child must first learn self-respect and a sense of dignity that grows out of his increasing self-understanding before he can learn to respect the personalities and rights and differences of others.
as all children, to learn by experience that no part of his world is static and controllable.
with the realization that things outside ourselves change — and many times we have little control over those elements, but if we learn to utilize our inner resources, we carry our security around with us.
Sometimes it is very difficult to keep firmly in mind the fact that the parents, too, have reasons for what they do — have reasons, locked in the depths of their personalities, for their inability to love, to understand, to give of themselves to their children.
There is always an accumulation of experiences intertwined with highly personal emotions, goals, values, that motivate the person and that determine his reaction.
He had been utilizing quite fully his intelligence. It was the lack of balance in his total development that created the problem. Or, perhaps, quite unconsciously, they chose to see Dibs as a mental defective rather than as an intensified personification of their own emotional and social inadequacy.
If you understand why you do and feel certain ways, many people believe, then you can change your ways. I’ve often thought though, that with such understandings, the greatest changes are usually in the external behavior and gradually this brings about changes of motivation and feelings. I think it takes much longer to achieve this kind of change.
Probably only a very small percentage of our individual learning experiences are verbally communicated to others.
According to all the existing learning theories, he should not have been able to have achieved any of these skills without having first mastered verbal language and without having had appropriate background experiences.
all the doors of acceptance that had been closed and locked against him, depriving him of the love, respect, and understanding he needed so desperately.
When a child is forced to prove himself as capable, results are often disastrous. A child needs love, acceptance, and understanding. He is devastated when confronted with rejection, doubts, and never-ending testing.
So many times a child is not accepted for therapy if the parents refuse to participate and get help for themselves.
The defensiveness of a threatened person can be insurmountable.
What advantage is there in high intellectual achievement if it cannot be used constructively for the good of the individual and the good of others?
Such superior intelligence creates serious problems of personal and social adjustments. It is necessary to meet all the child’s basic needs and to provide appropriate, balanced outlets for the superior intelligence.
“But it is so beautiful it fills me with brightness and beauty.”
Perhaps there is more understanding and beauty in life when the glaring sunlight is softened by the patterns of shadows. Perhaps there is more depth in a relationship that has weathered some storms.
We are all personalities that grow and develop as a result of all our experiences, relationships, thoughts, and emotions. We are the sum total of all the parts
the important things are what we remember after we have forgotten everything else.
What are the purposes of examinations anyhow? Are they to increase our educational attainment? Or are they instruments used to bring suffering and humiliation and deep hurt to a person who is trying so hard to succeed?
There are things far more important in this world than a show of authority and power, more important than revenge and punishment and hurt. As educators, you must unlock the door of ignorance and prejudice and meanness.
