PODCAST
Nerves, Shame, and Negative Self-Talk
Germany, June 2023
After months of back and forth with my son’s teachers and the director of his kindergarten, I decided to de-register his place. I was beginning to feel like prey backed into a corner by these women. Every meeting was the same; two or three women sitting in front of me at a table telling me, “he needs too much attention, he needs too much care, we can’t deal with him.” They wrote reports on his unusual three-year old behavior, some of the brow-raising notes included:
- he threw his noodles on the floor at lunch
- he didn’t want to wear his house shoes
- he didn’t want to go out to the garden
- he didn’t want to come in from the garden
I was talking to another Jamaican who lived in Switzerland for decades before moving to Germany. He had similar issues with his daughter in kindergarten. He was called in often, because they said she was too much and didn’t follow instructions — a preschooler not following instructions — imagine that!? His daughter had excelled academically throughout her school years and is now studying mathematics at university in Zurich. I was keen to get his advice on how to put an end to this strife between me and the kindergarten. The situation had become physically…
