I’m proud of you

Powerful words … I’m proud of you! Especially when it comes from your parents or your teachers. And so impactful – especially if you are not used to hear them that often.

I have been a brilliant child when I was little. Straight As everywhere in primary school. Secondary school got a little harder but I was still doing well. But the more advanced it got, the more boring the teaching styles, the more not adapted to my style of learning …. I tuned out. I had a few subjects that I was brilliant in because the way of teaching was good for me – hands on, practical, related to life. Others .. not so much.
But the problem was that I was not stupid. So I was able to mask my struggles. Nobody noticed. I was the calm, shy child, never causing problems … but nobody knew that I never read a book whole in literature class. I found ways around it without anyone noticing. I was able to write analysis on books that I never read, nobody ever noticed – neither my teachers, nor my parents. They couldn’t. Without any effort I was still an acceptable student – not great, but not that bad either .. well except for in maths!
So I got my A levels from a well regarded school in Germany.

The university pitfall – for so many of us

From then on everything went downhill. I started studying this, stopped it, started studying that, stopped it … I can’t even remember how many things I started and never even was able to hold on for half a year. I felt defeated, ashamed of myself, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why can’t you just sit in those stupid lectures and read your books and write your exams? It can’t be that hard. Everybody does it. But God, how boring were those lessons!!!

I was so ashamed of myself that I started lying to my parents about university. I was subscribed to study law. I did … for half a year, kind of, well I sat there … let’s say I was present physically. I really, really tried to write a 4 page case study on a person that knocked a vase over by accident. But please … A person knocked over a vase … definition of what is a person. A person is blablabla. Knocked over. What’s the definition of knocking over … a vase .. what is a vase, A vase is an object. And object is …. blablabla. Like 2 pages of definitions for a simple person to knock over a vase by accident. So my mind went into .. what if somebody killed someone intentionally? Will you write a book?
Like what the hell? I didn’t last long … and in any other field of study I didn’t last long either….

Career orientation gone wrong

My school made one mistake, but a crucial one … when time came and we were about to leave school, we had those workshops on what kind of job would fit me after school. So we went through tests etc. and by the end we would get a list of jobs that would fit us – our qualifications and our interests.
My list looked very varied (surprise!). It considered jobs that needed 7 years of studying as well as “gardener or sculpturer”. When I showed my list to the counselor, he basically tried to lead me into all the university degrees.

Whereas my brain went to .. well, why do you insist on those, what about gardening?
I mean, I make every plant die at home, it’s not like I have a talent for it, but I love nature, so why not gardening?
And he would just wave his hand tell me that I’m “too smart for this”. Aha … well, I don’t see the relationship between IQ and gardening, but you are the counselor.
They made the mistake to push everyone into the study sector, just because we were about to have the A levels and what else would you need the A levels for if not for studying. And I was young and believed him. So my quest for the right uni degree began … not for the right job that fits me and that was the mistake that cost me years of my life and self confidence, self worth and everything that comes with it.

This is where my life started

Anyhow, one day a friend of mine told me there is a school looking for students to teach in the afternoons, you should apply. I didn’t really feel like wanting to teach. I didn’t particularly like school and I had no ambition to go back to one … but well, as student you need money so I agreed to go to the interview.

So I met with the director of the school for a position on teaching English.
I think I must have been the worst interviewee on the planet as I would lay down all the reasons as to why you should NOT hire me.
“Look, I have never seen a child in my life … I have no qualification .. I have no clue what I’m doing, and in the end it was my friend who sent me here, so, but hey …”.
I guess she liked my honesty .. and my English speaking skills in the end so she decided to give me 2 classes and see what happens.

And that was it! I started to teach those children who struggled in school in small groups. I had the fun of my life. These kids were awesome, if you just get a chance to look behind the curtain and work with their strengths. Everything I hated about school, I would turn it around and find solutions … ADHD .. empathy, problem solving skills, creative skills, connection … it didn’t take long for the director to add more and more classes and by the end of the year I found myself with the entire English department under my wing, because of the way I was able to connect and boost “my kids”.

The “hardest” kids other teachers couldn’t deal with, would be my favourites. If I was able to connect with them, they would be the most amazing kids for me. So much fun, so dedicated …
The next year, the director came to me and added that they want me to teach preschoolers. Never seen one in my life, no clue how to do that, so … not a good idea.
“Oh you can do it, I’ll show you for a week and then you take over. I got obsessed with teaching. Whatever I could learn about it, I would learn, whatever material I could buy to help my students, I would buy. My whole salary would go into teaching things. I was hooked and my success with the kids prooved that I was on the right path. This was it!

Nobody knew I was teaching

There was a problem though … nobody knew I was teaching. I pretended all this time that I was still sitting in uni following the law lectures, because I was so ashamed of myself. Now add to the shame the guilt of lying, at the same time the joy of teaching.
Obviously there came a time where my parents found out that I was not at uni.
They came to my appartment to talk to me and I thought, that’s it, they will kill me.
After all, who paid for all this … not me.
I remember my father walking in the room and I mentally prepared to die. He saw my shelves full of books on teaching, lesson plans, teaching materials … he looked at it for a while, then turned around and said …. I’m proud of you!

Ha? – I’m proud of you! I knew this study stuff is not for you.I always wished for you to go into something social, it fits you. I didn’t want you to study law. But when you told me you wanted to go into family law I thought well, but still …
But I needed you to find your own way and make mistakes to see that, And you did. Look at all this! This is amazing! This is you!

The way they handled this whole story made me more at ease to share what’s going on in my life as opposed to before I was all closed down.
They could have leashed out on me easily and with every right so, but they didn’t. They were supportive all the way which opened more doors than as if they had done what they had the right to do.

How we respond to behaviour is how our relationships will form in the future

It is always HOW we RESPOND to a situation with a child that will determine how the kid will do in the future, not the action itself. We all make mistakes, huge mistakes, huge huge mistakes … and that’s exactly what they are .. mistakes, nothing more – if you learn from them. But WHAT you learn from them, depends a lot on the consequences of your mistake AND how people responded to it, especially with neurodivergent children. Because we got beaten over the head so often for mistakes and even not mistakes just because we do things differently.

Sometimes as teachers or parents we have to overcome our own ego, we have to think more in the future and how our reactions may harm our relationship with our students.
We have to understand that our students have to find their own way. And it may not always be what we imagine for them. We often think we know better because we are grown ups.
But if there is one thing I learned with my ADHD … this is MY brain, nobody can tell me how it works. I have to figure things out on my own. Not even another person with ADHD can tell me. Because we all have different degrees and impacts of ADHD.
I appreciate your support though and want you close to me if things go wrong. I need your tolerance and patience – but I need to be me and I need my freedom and the right to figure things out on my own… and to have the right to make my own mistakes and learn from them.

And validation for this is important for us. Give us validation for how we are and how we do things instead of not understand, or else we will seek the validation from somewhere else and often not in a good way.

So tell your students, even if they screwed up … Hey I’m proud of you because I see you did a lot of effort.
I’m proud of you for having tried to figure things out. I’m proud of you because you found your way. I’m proud of you how you handled this situation … There are so many reasons to be proud of. Dont be afraid to say it.

Find our strong points, let go of the weak. Make us stronger where we are able to be strong and the weak points will follow. Because when I’m strong I will have the motivation to even try to work on the weak. I can not work on the weak points if I’m even beaten up for my strong points.