superme – nobody can ruin you without your help. I work with a lot of struggling kids and have some of my own. The mechanchim usually mean well, they think they are helping you take life more seriously etc. They may be mistaken but then it’s your turn to decide what to do with it.
You can have a teacher who is very hard on you or puts you down and you can tell yourself that you know this isn’t true, this teacher is wrong about me and I will just let it roll off my back. Or you can decide to speak to the menaheles in a serious personal way explaining why you feel very hurt and hopeless (whining and saying, “she’s picking on me” usually doesn’t work). You can also decide that if that’s how the teacher is going to treat you than you are going to treat her like that too and teach her a lesson by being even worse than she expects etc etc. It is YOUR choice and if you need someone else to tell you that you really AREN’T a bad kid, then it is in YOUR hands to find that someone. You can use us, or some ‘real life’ person.
The bottom line is, (I got this from Dr. Twerski) if someone told you you have an ugly scar on your face it won’t bother you because you KNOW it isn’t true. If you believe the mean/stupid/hurtful things your teacher is saying, maybe it is because you need help believing that those things aren’t true. You just need to find someone who can give you twice as much positive for all the negative. Actually it’s supposed to be 4x as much but that’s for a different discussion.
So if you understood any of this, just show up each night and let us know how many compliments you need before you can go to bed.