I did not realize it then, but I was breaking the back of “learned helplessness” as a boy with life-long cerebral palsy.
“Learned helplessness” was not a common concept when I was in elementary school. But, somehow my mom knew it was a rut to avoid while raising a child with special needs.
I still remember the anguish I’d feel each morning when I was about six. I knew I would have to tie my own shoes. I had no option.
Of course, Mom could have easily tied my shoes for me. I could have learned to always be a taker – to always receive help, even though I knew I could help myself.
Turning that thinking around – that I was not always entitled to receive help and, instead, sometimes expected to help others – came as a result, I believe, of my home environment, where teamwork was a skill developed as a result of real family need. Everyone had “chores” to do.
Growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm in the 1950s meant everyone in the family pitched in to get the barn and household chores done during the winter months. During summertime, there were also pies to bake for the extra field hands and gardening, gathering and canning to do.
Gardening was my task, and I remember crawling between the rows of peas, pulling weeds.
Somehow, the teamwork I saw on a daily basis before I entered grade school stuck with me as I grew up. I knew I was not helpless. I knew I had an obligation to others.
* How did you break out of what seemed (at the time) a rut in your life?
I did not realize it then, but I was breaking the back of “learned helplessness” as a boy with life-long cerebral palsy.
“Learned helplessness” was not a common concept when I was in elementary school. But, somehow my mom knew it was a rut to avoid while raising a child with special needs.
I still remember the anguish I’d feel each morning when I was about six. I knew I would have to tie my own shoes. I had no option.
Of course, Mom could have easily tied my shoes for me. I could have learned to always be a taker – to always receive help, even though I knew I could help myself.
Turning that thinking around – that I was not always entitled to receive help and, instead, sometimes expected to help others – came as a result, I believe, of my home environment, where teamwork was a skill developed as a result of real family need. Everyone had “chores” to do.
Growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm in the 1950s meant everyone in the family pitched in to get the barn and household chores done during the winter months. During summertime, there were also pies to bake for the extra field hands and gardening, gathering and canning to do.
Gardening was my task, and I remember crawling between the rows of peas, pulling weeds.
Somehow, the teamwork I saw on a daily basis before I entered grade school stuck with me as I grew up. I knew I was not helpless. I knew I had an obligation to others.
* How did you break out of what seemed (at the time) a rut in your life?