A True Story - My Son and S.E.A.®
Our younger son has always been an ok student, not much motivated to be top, but not at the bottom either. He never seemed to care about the grades, and in fact at a young age would say to me, “Oh Mom, you know I’m not the grade.” Wise words for an 8 year old. I couldn’t seem to find a way to motivate him. He just plugged along in school. He wrote a 62 page book when he was little, all about robots and planets. He was too young to know about punctuation but he wrote voraciously - until he went to school.
All through school he was pretty self-contained, didn’t ask for help, didn’t involve us in school projects, even when we begged. This was all completely different from his older sibling and frankly we sighed. Because he was an easy child, we missed things, and it was the same way with his teachers. We would always hear “he’s such a nice kid” and “he’s so good in class, never a problem”.
We had pushed the first, and he had demanded a lot of interaction. Five years later, we had an easy child that refused any help. What had worked to motivate one, didn’t work on the other. Finally, we backed off and let him have his way which was to do it himself, his way, even if it meant lower grades. His grades were ok, but we knew he could do better.
Now, he is an exceptionally even tempered person, always smiling, gentle and non-judgmental. I would tell people he was my hero because he seemed so wise beyond his years and he still is. He had never been sent to the office, never been a problem for a teacher, never had an issue with other students beyond mild scrapes that he handled himself.
For this child, school seemed to be an ok experience, but not a big deal. He didn’t do sports, didn’t get involved in clubs. He stayed to himself, could be with friends or not. He didn’t angst over groups or being in or out and his friends were across many groups though he seemed to collect the odd-man-outs. He didn’t succumb to peer pressure, didn’t care about labels or brands. He picked up strays and made sure they were included. He is in all ways, a good soul, but again, he didn’t seem to really connect with school, went through the motions but nothing seemed to jazz him, and we tried!
In most ways, he might seem like he was stoned because he had the gentle ‘peace man’ attitude of a hippie without the desire to drug. His brother would call him the most stoned straight kid he had ever seen. I would worry, and then I would relax. He was exactly who he was, but.
Turns out he was struggling more than he ever admitted.
He graduated from High School, took the ACTs and didn’t do very well. I encouraged him to retake them and he shook his head and took a semester off but quickly got bored. He decided to enroll in Community College and we thought the smaller classes would be a good choice for him and no pressure. The night before the entrance tests he was in a panic, but said nothing. He took the tests and didn’t test well, but he never has. “I’m not the test Mom”. Ok, I would say, “but the test is all they know”. It didn’t seem to matter.
We misunderstood him. We thought he didn’t care about the test, but he had been hiding how hard he was studying. All he knew was that no matter how hard he studied, it got worse. No matter how hard he studied, he would go in and be blank. But still, he wasn’t saying anything, wouldn’t let us help him. “I’m fine, I can do it myself.” How do you help someone that won’t let you?
He wanted to be a writer. He spent hours telling me wonderful stories, and couldn’t get the words onto paper. He wanted to be an Anthropologist, a Cryptozoologist, a Psychologist, and then one evening, he can see it all gone.
He’s at the Commuity College, first semester. He can’t study. Midterms are looming and one evening he comes downstairs. His hair is wild. His normal even temperament is gone and in its place is a wild man. His eyes are spinning and wide open, his mouth dry, he can’t stop pacing.
“I never should have done this! What was I thinking? I barely got through High School. This is just like High School, I can’t do it. I never could” and suddenly out tumbles years of frustration and struggle. “I freeze, I block, I know I know it. Mom I can’t do it. I want to. I just can’t. I don’t know where it goes, but it doesn’t stay in my head. I keep flipping pages and I can’t even see the words.”
He was in a high anxiety state, and I know exactly what is going on inside him. He has lost his integrative pathways due to emotional stress! My son has lost his brain function due to a survival strategy kicking in to 'save him' from school and its running counter to his desires.
He agrees finally, to a session, and I lay him on the kitchen counter because everything is at my office! But the time is now! I just keep tracking the stress and because he is so upset, it is all available without much need for him to find the state! With muscle monitoring, it’s a series of ‘questions’ asked to the internal self about the areas of stress, and the body responds with an indicator change. The session is lead by the somato-emotional self and all the information is available.
He calmed, we released the stress and the moment of overwhelm that lay in his past.
The next day I texted him at school. “How is it going?”
“Fine, why?” came his response.
“Last night?” I wrote back.
“Oh. You know I’m looking at the book and it’s no big deal. I think I’ll be fine.”
When there is no stress, it makes sense. When the brain in synchronized, all is well. We can read, write, think. We are no longer sleepy, fuzzy, confused. We are no longer agitated. We are no longer congested. Strategies can take the path of allergic symptoms as well as fatigue.
He came home with a 92% on his Psychology test. He had never gotten an A in school. He beamed as he looked at it.
We did another short session when some more anxiety came up, again just before a test. He came home with a 96% on his Anthropology test.
His writing teacher asked him why he was in her class because his writing was so good. He said he told her he didn’t test well. On his self evaluation he put that he wanted to be a writer despite what his high school teachers had told him, and she said “I want to talk to those teachers because you are a natural born writer.” I can’t count how many times he looked at that note during the evening. He was so proud of himself.
His beliefs about himself and the future he could see for himself changed right then. His first semester at College he received straight As. He has continued to receive merits throughout College and will be transferring to the University in 2011.
See, that potential was always inside him. He didn’t suddenly get smarter. He had always worked hard, maybe harder than the other kids, but because he couldn’t demonstrate it, he never got the positive encouragement from those teachers, except as being easy to deal with in class. He was quiet, never a problem student, didn’t act out. He had learned how to survive school but he had missed how to really learn.
He could talk circles around you with theories and concepts, but not in class, and he couldn’t get it down on paper. He blocked.
What had happened to this bright, intelligent, gentle child that had entered school eagerly?
The teacher in the 1st grade had scared him. She taught over his head, didn't allow questions, and did not adequately explain instructions. And, she over emphasized discipline. This wasn't a bad teacher. She was a mismatch for my son, as well as 4 other little boys that year.
He still calls her the mean one but at the time I missed it for most of the year! When I look back on it, his primary focus was on the time out board! He came home each day and would say “no one got in trouble”. His brain, during a very important stage of development, was hardwiring the message that the most important thing was not to get in trouble in the classroom-not for anyone to get in trouble. By the end of the year he was testing a year younger than he had at the beginning of the year! Why was this considered the CHILD'S problem and not the teacher's?
Now mind you, when he was removed from her room, his testing went up to 2nd grade 9th month within six weeks of summer break, once he was safe and realized he didn't have to go back. But the damage was done, and any time he stepped into a situation that his internal system deemed "dangerous" and involving academic pressure, he shut down but he never told us.
See, it was never that he wasn’t smart enough. It was that his survival mechanisms overrode his will, and that is what happens to all of us given certain situations.
He went through school with the message not to get in trouble and disappear to survive. He was successful. So successful he fooled even us. What are we really teaching our children? What are they really learning? What behaviors are we really reinforcing? How are they interpreting what we say, do and instruct?
He didn’t need special treatment. He just needed to feel safe. And the more sensitive our children are, the more imperative it is that we create safe schools for academic achievement. The child’s brain is a natural learning system, set up to do exactly that, and if it isn’t, then you know there is stress hidden in the circuitry, no matter the age. I have adults tell me the horror story of the teacher that scared them, and they remember it in vivid detail, the rest of their lives. My grandmother died at ninety six years of age, and she could still tell me about her elementary teacher that terrified her and how it affected her approach to life ever after.
Wherever the emotional charge is, there occurs rerouting and that rerouting causes stress. Unfortunately my son’s story is not unique. What does 'safe' mean? It means consistency, clarity and stability in the classroom for optimal learning. Safe to explore, to ask questions, to move, to integrate the learning and let information grow in an organic pattern of interaction. Do we have that in our schools today? Not for the most part. Can we imagine it for the future? That is my sincerest desire.
All through school he was pretty self-contained, didn’t ask for help, didn’t involve us in school projects, even when we begged. This was all completely different from his older sibling and frankly we sighed. Because he was an easy child, we missed things, and it was the same way with his teachers. We would always hear “he’s such a nice kid” and “he’s so good in class, never a problem”.
We had pushed the first, and he had demanded a lot of interaction. Five years later, we had an easy child that refused any help. What had worked to motivate one, didn’t work on the other. Finally, we backed off and let him have his way which was to do it himself, his way, even if it meant lower grades. His grades were ok, but we knew he could do better.
Now, he is an exceptionally even tempered person, always smiling, gentle and non-judgmental. I would tell people he was my hero because he seemed so wise beyond his years and he still is. He had never been sent to the office, never been a problem for a teacher, never had an issue with other students beyond mild scrapes that he handled himself.
For this child, school seemed to be an ok experience, but not a big deal. He didn’t do sports, didn’t get involved in clubs. He stayed to himself, could be with friends or not. He didn’t angst over groups or being in or out and his friends were across many groups though he seemed to collect the odd-man-outs. He didn’t succumb to peer pressure, didn’t care about labels or brands. He picked up strays and made sure they were included. He is in all ways, a good soul, but again, he didn’t seem to really connect with school, went through the motions but nothing seemed to jazz him, and we tried!
In most ways, he might seem like he was stoned because he had the gentle ‘peace man’ attitude of a hippie without the desire to drug. His brother would call him the most stoned straight kid he had ever seen. I would worry, and then I would relax. He was exactly who he was, but.
Turns out he was struggling more than he ever admitted.
He graduated from High School, took the ACTs and didn’t do very well. I encouraged him to retake them and he shook his head and took a semester off but quickly got bored. He decided to enroll in Community College and we thought the smaller classes would be a good choice for him and no pressure. The night before the entrance tests he was in a panic, but said nothing. He took the tests and didn’t test well, but he never has. “I’m not the test Mom”. Ok, I would say, “but the test is all they know”. It didn’t seem to matter.
We misunderstood him. We thought he didn’t care about the test, but he had been hiding how hard he was studying. All he knew was that no matter how hard he studied, it got worse. No matter how hard he studied, he would go in and be blank. But still, he wasn’t saying anything, wouldn’t let us help him. “I’m fine, I can do it myself.” How do you help someone that won’t let you?
He wanted to be a writer. He spent hours telling me wonderful stories, and couldn’t get the words onto paper. He wanted to be an Anthropologist, a Cryptozoologist, a Psychologist, and then one evening, he can see it all gone.
He’s at the Commuity College, first semester. He can’t study. Midterms are looming and one evening he comes downstairs. His hair is wild. His normal even temperament is gone and in its place is a wild man. His eyes are spinning and wide open, his mouth dry, he can’t stop pacing.
“I never should have done this! What was I thinking? I barely got through High School. This is just like High School, I can’t do it. I never could” and suddenly out tumbles years of frustration and struggle. “I freeze, I block, I know I know it. Mom I can’t do it. I want to. I just can’t. I don’t know where it goes, but it doesn’t stay in my head. I keep flipping pages and I can’t even see the words.”
He was in a high anxiety state, and I know exactly what is going on inside him. He has lost his integrative pathways due to emotional stress! My son has lost his brain function due to a survival strategy kicking in to 'save him' from school and its running counter to his desires.
He agrees finally, to a session, and I lay him on the kitchen counter because everything is at my office! But the time is now! I just keep tracking the stress and because he is so upset, it is all available without much need for him to find the state! With muscle monitoring, it’s a series of ‘questions’ asked to the internal self about the areas of stress, and the body responds with an indicator change. The session is lead by the somato-emotional self and all the information is available.
He calmed, we released the stress and the moment of overwhelm that lay in his past.
The next day I texted him at school. “How is it going?”
“Fine, why?” came his response.
“Last night?” I wrote back.
“Oh. You know I’m looking at the book and it’s no big deal. I think I’ll be fine.”
When there is no stress, it makes sense. When the brain in synchronized, all is well. We can read, write, think. We are no longer sleepy, fuzzy, confused. We are no longer agitated. We are no longer congested. Strategies can take the path of allergic symptoms as well as fatigue.
He came home with a 92% on his Psychology test. He had never gotten an A in school. He beamed as he looked at it.
We did another short session when some more anxiety came up, again just before a test. He came home with a 96% on his Anthropology test.
His writing teacher asked him why he was in her class because his writing was so good. He said he told her he didn’t test well. On his self evaluation he put that he wanted to be a writer despite what his high school teachers had told him, and she said “I want to talk to those teachers because you are a natural born writer.” I can’t count how many times he looked at that note during the evening. He was so proud of himself.
His beliefs about himself and the future he could see for himself changed right then. His first semester at College he received straight As. He has continued to receive merits throughout College and will be transferring to the University in 2011.
See, that potential was always inside him. He didn’t suddenly get smarter. He had always worked hard, maybe harder than the other kids, but because he couldn’t demonstrate it, he never got the positive encouragement from those teachers, except as being easy to deal with in class. He was quiet, never a problem student, didn’t act out. He had learned how to survive school but he had missed how to really learn.
He could talk circles around you with theories and concepts, but not in class, and he couldn’t get it down on paper. He blocked.
What had happened to this bright, intelligent, gentle child that had entered school eagerly?
The teacher in the 1st grade had scared him. She taught over his head, didn't allow questions, and did not adequately explain instructions. And, she over emphasized discipline. This wasn't a bad teacher. She was a mismatch for my son, as well as 4 other little boys that year.
He still calls her the mean one but at the time I missed it for most of the year! When I look back on it, his primary focus was on the time out board! He came home each day and would say “no one got in trouble”. His brain, during a very important stage of development, was hardwiring the message that the most important thing was not to get in trouble in the classroom-not for anyone to get in trouble. By the end of the year he was testing a year younger than he had at the beginning of the year! Why was this considered the CHILD'S problem and not the teacher's?
Now mind you, when he was removed from her room, his testing went up to 2nd grade 9th month within six weeks of summer break, once he was safe and realized he didn't have to go back. But the damage was done, and any time he stepped into a situation that his internal system deemed "dangerous" and involving academic pressure, he shut down but he never told us.
See, it was never that he wasn’t smart enough. It was that his survival mechanisms overrode his will, and that is what happens to all of us given certain situations.
He went through school with the message not to get in trouble and disappear to survive. He was successful. So successful he fooled even us. What are we really teaching our children? What are they really learning? What behaviors are we really reinforcing? How are they interpreting what we say, do and instruct?
He didn’t need special treatment. He just needed to feel safe. And the more sensitive our children are, the more imperative it is that we create safe schools for academic achievement. The child’s brain is a natural learning system, set up to do exactly that, and if it isn’t, then you know there is stress hidden in the circuitry, no matter the age. I have adults tell me the horror story of the teacher that scared them, and they remember it in vivid detail, the rest of their lives. My grandmother died at ninety six years of age, and she could still tell me about her elementary teacher that terrified her and how it affected her approach to life ever after.
Wherever the emotional charge is, there occurs rerouting and that rerouting causes stress. Unfortunately my son’s story is not unique. What does 'safe' mean? It means consistency, clarity and stability in the classroom for optimal learning. Safe to explore, to ask questions, to move, to integrate the learning and let information grow in an organic pattern of interaction. Do we have that in our schools today? Not for the most part. Can we imagine it for the future? That is my sincerest desire.
