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�I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.�

- Maya Angelou
(emphasis added)

Long one today. I enjoyed the latest additions from Wyldkat and S-T. Thanks!

If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. ~Bruce Barton

(These quotes keep me going. Thank you!)

Thanks, Inky. This was beautiful.

Not sure why it struck me this way but, unfortunately, it reminded me of my niece's teacher. She is constantly looking to see my niece fail at things. As if "catching" a gifted child being mediocre or even terrible at something, would invalidate her giftedness. Perhaps the teacher just never managed to overcome how she thinks about herself.

"Sometimes when the ideas are coming fast and heavy, it feels like my brain is dancing."
Boy, age 17 from Parenting Gifted Kids by James Delisle

You're welcome and I'm glad other people find them as nourishing as I do. Hope your niece is able to recognize that this says more about her teacher than your niece.

"The trick is to partition the whole past relationship with any school folk who are giving you a hard time and focus-focus-focus on the needs of the child and possible solutions. It's an odd trick, but I know you'll get the hang of it. You may not get the accommodations you are looking for, but at least your entire mind won't go crazy. Just that little walled off part that you can vent about here for the next 20 years. Hopefully somethings will have changed by then."
-Grinity

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you do succeed, try something harder."

Don't know who said it, but always liked it.

Have a happy day all!

I LOVE this! Thk you inky for posting and Grinity for saying it! I have to remind myself not to get overly emotional and FOCUS on what I want for my child. I hope I will what I want soon.

The forest is magnificent, yet it contains no perfect trees.
Gye Fram

"When we face obstacles early on, we discover how to separate our identi�ties from the task itself � that means the failure of meeting the goal or accomplishing the task does not equal failure of us as people."
-Tracy Inman

"Every decision is a value-laden decision. Even a nondecision is value-laden, meaning, when you don't think through a choice on behalf of your child but instead let social norms decide for you, you adopt the values those norms represent."
~Marybeth Hicks from Bringing Up Geeks