Earliest Memories

If you want to get special insight into your attitudes toward school, you might want to dig down to your earliest memory of school. While any memory can be meaningful,earliest memories often have special meanings, although these are not always obvious. There's a simple reason that very early memories are likely to be important: If they weren't, you would have forgotten them, just as you have forgotten so much else!

Memories, we now know, are not like precious gems that you lock away in a safe and take out now and then to look at. Instead, they change, with parts being added or taken away, or altered over time. A very old memory tells about the original event, and also about how one has thought and felt about that event through the years. Your very first memory of school--perhaps a particular teacher or child, or a classroom where you were especially happy or sad--may give you clues about your deepest feelings toward school, as those feelings have evolved over time.

The insights you get through this process may help you to take a fresh look at your present-day responses to school--your child's school, that is. And that fresh look may be what you need to be able to support your child's return to school realistically, without bringing in too much of your own history, positive or negative.