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| |    Your School Memories: What Do They Mean? by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. As your children get ready to return to school, you may find yourself thinking back to your own school days. Many people carry emotionally powerful memories of school. Did you have an especially kind or inspiring teacher, or one who was unusually cruel? Did a particular subject capture your imagination-science, literature, or music perhaps? If you're like many people, your most powerful school memories don't revolve around the teachers you had or the subjects you studied, but instead have to do with your relationships with other students. If you were popular, your memories are bound to be very different than if you were an outcast. Friendships formed during the school years are often emotionally intense. So are the miseries of being bullied, teased, and lonely. Whatever your memories of school, it's a good bet that old memories will color your responses as your child returns to the classroom. Even if your child's school is quite different from the one you went to, you may find that emotions from long ago insist on attaching themselves to the present situation. For example, if your child is worried about the new year, you might find yourself going a little overboard in your reassurances (in a way, reassuring yourself). Or you may find yourself feeling anxious and upset about the coming year (an emotional reaction that really belongs to your own past), even though your child seems utterly comfortable moving ahead. Such reactions, mixing past and present, are entirely normal. If you aren't aware of them, however, there is a danger that you'll be too wrapped up in your own feelings to really tune in to your child. To put it more positively, if you can recognize and then set aside your emotional reactions that are based in long-ago experiences, you'll be more sensitive to what your child is feeling in the here and now, and more able to respond helpfully. Earliest school memories If you want to get special insight into your attitudes toward school, you might want to dig down to your earliest memory of school. While any memory can be meaningful, earliest memories often have special meanings, although these are not always obvious. There's a simple reason that very early memories are likely to be important: If they weren't, you would have forgotten them, just as you have forgotten so much else! Memories, we now know, are not like precious gems that you lock away in a safe and take out now and then to look at. Instead, they change, with parts being added or taken away, or altered over time. A very old memory tells about the original event, and also about how one has thought and felt about that event through the years. Your very first memory of school--perhaps a particular teacher or child, or a classroom where you were especially happy or sad--may give you clues about your deepest feelings toward school, as those feelings have evolved over time. The insights you get through this process may help you to take a fresh look at your present-day responses to school--your child's school, that is. And that fresh look may be what you need to be able to support your child's return to school realistically, without bringing in too much of your own history, positive or negative. More information:
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