It is easy to point out another’s mistakes, most people do this. But it is far more useful to offer other ways to do what someone has done wrong without injuring their feelings.
There are a few times in my life where I got very angry at someone who I had been trying to help for a long time, and the anger and what I said completely changed that person’s attitude and they came out of it shining.
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One very good example is when we were getting checked out by a homeschooling inspector from the Education Review Office. This woman was mean and threatening. We, my wife and I, were very nervous because it was very important to us that we homeschooled our children.
Our daughter Rachel was very active, yet kind hearted and struggled with school work. Tracy, her sister shone at school work.
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I got Rachel and Tracy to learn some things but Rachel kept failing the simplest of tasks. She was making me very nervous, and when she was at school prior to this she (like me) did not do well with school work, yet she was a natural musician, artist, and craft person.
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Upset and feeling the pressure on the morning that the inspector was to come, I lost control at Rachel and gave her a whopping telling off. All my gentle and encouraging attempts failed and I was desperate to believe in her, and I refused to accept that she was a failure.
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Poor Rachel stared at me with her big brown eyes, years flooding out, and looking at me completely shocked.
And the amazing thing was that she, when tested and inspected in the school work in front of the instructor, succeeded well beyond our expectations and did better than her sister.
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But in general I was battling how I was treated when younger by teachers and parents, and trying to teach my children and to parent my children, in a different way that would be more progressive, so I trying to encourage, and to not be too critical. I failed, I succeeded, and it was an amazing experience.
All the best from James Martin Sandbrook.
Thursday, 24 March 2016, 9:23:35 AM.