Tough love

3:23 Μ.Μ.

Dear future historian,

 

I still can't really swim. Born and raised in Greece, where almost everyone knows. When I was 6, I had a panic attack, when the military-minded dad of one of my peers tried to teach me how to swim using tough-love methods. He just left me where I..

5:37 Μ.Μ.

Hi, sorry for the interruption, I was summoned in my kitchen. Where were we? Oh, yes. We were where I thought I was downing and the guy thought he was training me, as if I was a puppy or something.

I still can't swim, as I said. I kind of know how to float, how to move my hands and legs and stuff, but I get minor panic attacks, and then a nervous laughter (I get that every time I can't control my panic, but my observer self finds that ridiculous) makes me drink sea water and then I'm actually drowning and then I regret even trying and then vacations are finished and then I have to wait again for my next chance to overcome my fears.

Around the same age my family though I could come down a rocky hill, up on a mountain, which I did with my hands up, crying with all my strength 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' while I was doing it. The idea behind that.. to show me I can do it. The result.. I never went out in nature again till I was 18. Also I am afraid of heights now, I get dizzy in heights, I got stuck up on a tree -trying to overcome my fear- and a 12 year old boy saved me, and I got stuck up on some rocks in Samothraki (must-go-place if you find a chance, it's magical,) and my dad saved me. Never tried again.

Conclusion, even if (whatever) tough love works to some people, it doesn't work to everyone. To some people its traumatic. And leave a lifetime scar.

Maybe it’s the PDA* autism profile (I think I have mentioned that before,) maybe it's autism in general. Maybe because my mum ate too much chocolate when she was pregnant to me, or maybe she didn't eat enough chocolate.

Speaking of chocolate there is also Sheldon's training reward-based methods**.

Still Dayna Martin***, and many more, warn about that approach. It detaches the actions from the actual outcomes and shifts attention to a constantly-fed need for acceptance.

It's not bad.. rephrase; Its necessary to survival to be accepted in the society you live in. Not at any cost thought. And for sure, not to gain a chocolate. 😛

Dayna Martin's parenting approach can create a new social revolution in the next generations.

Wouldn't it be great, my dear future historian, if you grow up in a world where it would be common knowledge that to learn how to swim you don't need to have a (controlled) near-death-experience?

I hope your world absorbs the scientific evidence for the inability of humans to actually learn anything when in fight-or-flight mode, and the differences on what each child has as requirements for learning.

 

Note to self, last times you posted earlier in the day and you didn't stress so much about it, maybe consider writing by the night before of each posting day. And be a bit more creative with the photos on each entry.

 

Answer to self: whatever.

 

Links:

·       https://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/pda.aspx

·       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_mIEnnlF4

·       https://www.facebook.com/DaynaMartin/posts/10158306257878070?notif_id=1596555167824129&notif_t=close_friend_activity&ref=notif