The following story was told to me by one of my clients:
My son was in a class with a teacher, who lets just say is “Old School”.
He was having a hard time but I kept on saying to myself that bad teachers are good for kids. As long as I support him he will be okay.
He would come home and say, “I hate Mrs. K! She is always yelling!”
It was a little tricky but I tried to never speak badly about her. Instead I would empathize like I learned in your class. I would say:
“You are having a rough time with her. You wish she wouldn’t yell so much. You wish she would talk to you differently.”
Later on when he wasn’t so emotional, I would say, “You know, you probably don’t want to hear this, it is good to have a teacher you don’t like. It is not easy but it helps you learn how to deal with difficult people.”
One day he came home with his report card. She had written, “Sammy is a good student but he is spacey and day dreams. He needs to pay attention more.”
My son is very sensitive. He was so hurt and mortified by this comment. I was really mad!
I wanted to call Mrs. K and say, “How dare you? Could you not call me before and tell me this? I would have spoken to him privately about paying attention more. And by the way, of course he is day dreaming, he is thinking of all the places he would rather be than in this class with you yelling all the time.”
Again, I knew I had to calm down. I reassured myself again that my son was learning great things, by having a bad teacher.
Once I had pulled myself together I used the skill of empathy again. I said:
“It can hurt to have a teacher write that about you. You wish she would have told you and of course you would have made an effort to pay attention in class.”
He said:
“I want to you to go in there and tell her how mean she is. I want to rip up this report card right now.”
I continued to reflect his feelings:
“Boy you are really mad, even though you know that this report card cannot be ripped up- you want to do it anyway! You want to really show her how upset you are by her comment.”
That seemed to calm him down. I don’t know what happened after that but he seemed to be able to pull himself together. The rest of the year wasn’t great, but somehow he managed to pay attention and get decent grades.
I am glad I was able to support him through that difficult year. I did not try to fix things for him. I tried to give him the message that he is capable of handling life’s curveballs. My goal was to build up his resilience.
Let us know what you think!
Would you have done the same?