The Forums › Forums › Emotional Journey › Stuck in Regret/Anger › Beating yourself up about your mistakes – especially if they affect others › Re: Beating yourself up about your mistakes – especially if they affect others
Both sides can always be right in a grey society. Everything we are taught falls in the black and white category. We are either wrong or right. But sometimes what is right or wrong for me is fine by society or vice versa. But you are right, if our brains do not function in “normal” mode how can we be penalized if we fail not because of lack of will, but because of a neurological dysfunction. However in our society they penalize you whether you knew what you were doing. You witness someone breaking into a car, you walk by because you are afraid of being hurt, the police catch them later and they mention that you witnessed them breaking into the car. Technically you did nothing wrong. But you also did nothing right. So you can be right and wrong at the same time. And the new laws more often punish the innocent then the guilty, because you feel guilty. You are in a car accident, you start blabbing all of your information, you start taking responsibility even if it isn’t your fault, you end up paying for the accident, then 6 months down the road you learn that they went through on a red light when you hit them. Then you get mad, you weren’t responsible, you shouldn’t have paid for the accident. But you admitted that it was your fault. They got away scott free because your sense of responsibility was stronger then theirs.
It’s funny looking at my two children. One because of her mental health conditions lies with impunity. How do you know she is lying, she opened her mouth. So can she be held responsible for the consequences of her actions? Yes, but how do you penalize her for something over which she has so little control. When we penalize someone it is for two reasons: 1. Make them learn from their actions; and 2. To protect others from potential harm. The other day she got yet another ticket. When the officer asked her whether she wanted to receive a ticket for smoking or not having a valid transit ticket her answer was simple. Doesn’t matter because I won’t pay them anyway.
The other child takes responsibility but thinks the whole system is out to get her. She has been late 150 times this year. So as a consequence for being late they now send her home from school. Now we aren’t talking 2 hours late we are talking 15 minutes late. She has 1 more thing syndrome. Then before she knows it the bus has gone. But one day she is going to wake up and realize that if she just stayed in bed for another hour or two she will be able to do whatever she wants all day. So why bother. The school knows she has ADHD, they know about her co-morbids, yet they make no accommodations for these. Other kids get to talk in class and she gets sent to the office. So many unfair things that she can’t help yet she gets penalized when others skate through. Now she is getting more vocal in her protests and she is labeled a troublemaker. How many millions of people are being labeled as troublemakers for standing up for their rights.
Main stream schools are made for the sheep of the world. Head down, butt up, just keep moving through the system. Sit quietly in your seat, listen to a teacher drone on from rout, do the work they hand you in the way they want it done. Trains you for the next phase in your life, working for someone else. Pack a few hundred kids into a school with a few teachers with only a little training about any sort of disabilities. Then give them a curriculum that has been put into place to ensure that our kids don’t fall behind. More and more demands, less physical activity, lunch rooms with 15 year olds supervising a couple of hundred kids. They hate the troublemaker and a lot of administrators see it as their job to whip these kids into compliance. In the Edmonton Public school district we are going to lose 229 teachers and 79 special need aids. At the same time we are going to add 6000 new students and if even 5 percent of these are special needs then we are going to have a lot more frustrated students, parents, teachers and administrators. But it all comes down to dollars and cents and we seem to lose sight of the people that are hurt. In some districts there is extra money for “coded” students. So you expect to see a lot of “coded” kids because they get paid for them. And even then they only code the ones that are obvious because someone who is doing fairly well, and gets along fairly well is going to be passed through, while that live wire is going to be flagged. So yes they can be wrong and right at the same time.
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