I was shunned. Elementary school was prison for me. I had trouble sitting at my desk. The hands of the wall clock seemed frozen in time. I had no idea what teachers were saying; it might have been in a foreign tongue. Antsy, playful, dipping pigtails into inkwells, giggling the day away; Joel Dames was screamed at me by teachers throughout the school day. F’s on the left side of my report card for “Cooperation and Dependability” were marked in bright red through seventh grade.
Shunning the Shunned
Public Domaine Image
So often kids with insecure attachment are the ones shunned by the educational system. They are hard to get to know and like. Their system produces adrenaline and stress hormones in response to learning that is stressful for them. It is a cat chasing its tail, because adrenaline and stress hormones interfere with learning making it more difficult. They are in a constant state of arousal, anxiety, and fear. Their behavior is erratic. They are behavior problems or just “out of it.”
Strange even to me, I became a teacher. My first year of teaching was a fifth grade all Black class in a low socioeconomic area of Newark, New Jersey – Bergen Street School.
Robert (not his real name), a tiny kid seated up front next to the door alongside the chalkboard wall, could not sit still. I called out his name angrily throughout the day. Talk about history repeating itself, he was exactly as I had been and I shunned him as I had been shunned.
One afternoon, at wit’s end, I trudged a couple of blocks along Bergen Street to his house and rang the bell. At the top of the second floor stairway, Robert’s mother stood by the open door of her apartment. I climbed the stairs to where we could more easily talk. She had on just a flimsy nightgown. Inside the apartment, I could see a man sprawled on the couch. Not likely Robert’s father, because the father was not part of the family. The smell of whiskey wafted heavily. I told her why I was there and she said “Take off your belt and whip Robert. Whip him real good.”
Loners in Need of Help
Kids like Robert require relationship building and routines to help reduce stress and develop coping skills. They have a different understanding of what is going on and cannot pay attention. They shut down as far as learning is concerned.
After that day, I never saw Robert as a behavior problem. He had a special place in my heart. I saw the change he made over the course of a school year. That was the school year of 1961-62. Robert is now in his sixties.
Most teachers focus on the bright students seated up front. I formed an attachment with loners at the back of the room. Neglected and abused kids who haven’t learned to care enough about themselves to care about academics need encouragement and involvement.
For once my insecure attachment turned out to be an asset. The kids spotted me as easily as I spotted them. There is a bond that cuts through. These kids confided in me. They stole, they were raped, there was incest. Writing became a source of communication and therapy.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
