Dear Katie:

My first question to you was: “What exactly did your teachers in pre-school and grammar school say or do to you that caused you to feel ‘shy, anxious, and very sad’?”-

– your answer: “I don’t remember my preschool teachers talking to me much (maybe they did and I don’t remember or maybe they just didn’t), but my mom told me that they would say something is wrong with me.. I think teachers would call my parents and say ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with her but something is wrong, maybe she has autism.’… As for grammar schools, I also don’t remember my teachers talking to me much.. I remember I had a few mean (teachers) who would yell at me instead of helping me.. I think that when teachers yelled at me for not paying attention, it hurt me… I wanted to pay attention but I just couldn’t.”

My second question to you was: What is it that your mother said and did to you during your first decade of life that caused you to feel shy, anxious and very sad?-

– Your answer: “My mom didn’t really say anything specifically to make me that way… my mom wasn’t really aware of when I was mistreated.. my mom should’ve defended me to the teachers that would yell at me.. and told my teachers that it’s not okay for them to yell at me”.

My input today:

1. You don’t remember anything at all that teachers told you but you do remember that your mother told you that your teachers said that something is wrong with you (“my mom told me that they would say something is wrong”), you figured that your teachers said to your mother/ parents something like this: “I don’t know what’s wrong with her but something is wrong, maybe she has autism”-

– it is very unlikely that teachers, especially special education teacher/ professionals would use such a word as “wrong”, as in “something is wrong (with a child/ student)” or “I don’t know what’s wrong with her but something is wrong“- it is very unprofessional to use the adjective wrong when discussing a student, especially given the fact that you were at pre-school in the 2000s, in very modern times. I think that a teacher using the word “wrong” to describe a student to her parents can be fired and the school sued for using this word.

Also, it is not likely that a teacher told your mother: “maybe she has autism”, to be guessing this way. It is not professional.

2. You do remember that your mother said to you: “my mom told me that they would say something is wrong with me”- they didn’t say that, she said that. If she didn’t mean to hurt you, then she was very inattentive and callous about what she said to her very young child. And if she was so callous that time, I don’t know how many more things she told you that were extremely insensitive and callous.

3. You wrote: “My mom didn’t really say anything specifically to make me that way”, meaning you are not aware that when a mother tells her child: something is wrong with you, it is going to make the child anxious and very hurt.

4. Teachers yelled at you and they shouldn’t have, and neither one of your parents stood up for you. As a matter of fact, not only did your mother not stand up for you and “should’ve defended me to the teachers”, she offended you by telling you that something is wrong with you!

* I suggest that you talk to your therapist about this very point that I brought up here, using your words.

If you feel comfortable to share what else did your mother say to you that may be offensive, suggesting to you in other circumstances that there is something wrong with you, please do.

anita