Heather had an "encounter" with her homeroom teacher yesterday that was not pleasant. In a nutshell, the lockers that are usually left open because they jam were being closed by the 6th graders who thought that locking the 7th graders out of the lockers would be funny. When Heather needed to recall her locker combo after having not used it for weeks and weeks, she couldn't. What followed was a lecture from the homeroom teacher about how every 7th grader should be able to memorize a three-didget locker combination and that it was highly unusual that she could not do this. Heather felt horrible, a friend helped her open her locker, and later that night she shed some tears.
Skipping the part where I send email to the teacher, teacher emails back (good grief why is this woman teaching if she doesn't like kids) and my reply back to her...Heather and I turned this encounter into a learning experience. We likened it as follows...
Heather interacts with this woman for approximately 3 minutes of the day which leaves approximately 6 hours of school. During all those other hours, Heather has fabulous teachers who have been kind, caring, understanding and complimentary. Her English teacher is helping her learn to write; her science teacher has ADHD kids of his own and lets his class get up and stretch now and then because he has compassion; her math teacher is kind and patient, and her social studies teacher sings songs like Proud Mary during class to energize the kids. Heather had let that 3-minute interaction with her homeroom teacher occupy and control her thoughts later that night when she could have changed her focus and concentrated on the rest of the hours and hours of positive interaction she has during the day.
I explained to her that throughout her whole life, she will be complimented, admired, flattered, loved, and adored, but there will be some random negative experience that will plague her and cause her to doubt herself. She will have to fight to see the truth and ignore the discouraging thoughts. She will have the choice to dwell on that 3-minute interaction, or turn and focus on the other 6 hours. I told her that many adults still struggle with negative experiences they had at one time, and that they choose to ignore all of the marvelous things about themselves in favor of believing the negative. It is so sad, and it sucks the happy right out of us. I told her that this was such a great experience to have and learn from now so that she can grow up focusing on the positive.
How about you? Do you dwell on that 3 minutes? I catch myself doing it all the time. They weren't kidding when they said your kids will teach you as much as you teach them. I'm a believer. Using this experience to help teach my daughter helped me reflect on how important it is to turn my focus away from the negative messages and look toward the positive ones.
And just in case you're wondering, Miss Teacher got a piece of this mama's mind (with Heather's permission, of course).
