I spoke to @mrjamesob on @LBC radio once, about his love of reading, especially books, and his desire for all kids to be encouraged to read and catch the enjoyment of it. I called in to say, that is fine unless you are a kid who has a chaotic and stressful home life then reading is a luxury, one that you can only engage in when you are relaxed or have enough security in your environment to be able to escape into a book.
I was always too anxious to read, to guarded in my environment and dyslexic, which made any reading hard core.
Something similar to this I found recently are emotions. Not all emotions are a luxury but the ones that make you vulnerable are and when you're in difficult circumstances as a kid, you just don't have time for them or the resources to be able to indulge them.
I never had a problem with feeling angry, frustrated, annoyed, hostile, assertive, cheerful, bored, exhuberant, fascinated or happy. But I never allowed myself to feel attracted to someone, close, fear, guilt, grief, infatuation, love, lonely, attached, sentimental, worried, sensual, upset or apprehensive. These, it seemed to me, could all be exploited by someone who wanted to manipulate you.
Slowly, over the last year of being more settled and relaxing, I had realised my emotional capacity expanding, especially when I got a first crush!!! Too funny, awkward, delicious and hard to keep a lid on that in my thoughts!
I even started reading books, ha! Mostly autobiographies and crime novels, nothing trashy.
Then one day your usually quiet, studious, mild mannered, husband ups and smacks you in the face hard enough to give your concealer a challenge and you realise that against all your cautious plans to have avoided this predictable, familial pattern from impacting on your own choice of partner, unbelievably, it somehow did.
So, now I have to figure out what to do next and no,...now I am a fully rounded, emotionally engaged individual, who cares about what my religion teaches about marriage and who feels responsible for others around me, it's not so easy as,...leave.
I'm not the same person I used to be, I could easily have walked away without a care for anyone, including any child actually, but once you set eyes on your helpless bundle so reliant on you for everything they need to survive, you realise what love is and you're hooked, in the most primitive and exhilarating way. It's a game changer for sure.
So when kids are in school and teachers, counselors, mentors et al... want them to open up and enjoy the learning experience or they want them to become a more sentient being, sometimes it's not always possible or helpful for kids at that time. Some, might need all their resources just to survive in their yard. Don't try and take away the only tools they have to keep them safe is all I'm saying. It's not helping them even though it might feel to you like it is helping.
Teaching someone to learn is key and that skill is essential in whatever area of life you apply it to. A police officer who was in my life regularly used to ask me this every time he picked me up in his car for absconding.
"So what have you learned from this Poppy?" I used to laugh and answer "Not to get caught!" or some similar words for my own amusement. But his monotonous question fortunately got stuck in my mind.
That ability of being able to learn from situations, helped me back then and it will help me now as I figure out my current predicament and wtf to do next.
So teach kids something useful that crosses all socio-economic environments and lasts well beyond their school years. Dam, even make it a qualification. I might even have outshone some of the academic giants in my school if we had a class where the topic suited my skills and the ground was level.
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