Do not punish the behaviour you want to see

signedtheghost:

olofahere:

I mean, it seems pretty obvious when you put it like that, right?

But how many families, when an introvert sibling or child makes an effort to socialize,  snarkily say, “So, you’ve decided to join us”?

Or when someone does something they’ve had trouble doing, say, “Why can’t you do that all the time?” (Happened to me, too often.)

Or any sentence containing the word “finally”. 

If someone makes a step, a small step, in a direction you want to encourage, encourage it. Don’t complain about how it’s not enough. Don’t bring up previous stuff. Encourage it.

Because I swear to fucking god there is nothing more soul-killing, more motivation-crushing, than struggling to succeed and finding out that success and failure are both punished.

I demand to know why I can’t hit add a million more likes to this post.

absolutely-walnuts:

themuditaendeavour:

bogleech:

deliciousstomach:

gwinny3k:

The worst trick a childhood anxiety disorder pulls is, you spend your early years being applauded for being so much more mature than your peers, because you aren’t disruptive, you don’t want any kind of attention, you don’t express yourself, you keep yourself to yourself – this makes you a pleasure to have in class, etc etc – and you start to believe it’s virtue. But you’re actually way behind your peers in normal social development, and who knows if you can ever catch up.

Never heard a truer thing in my life.

holy shit wait you mean being just morbidly terrified of doing anything wrong ISN’T necessarily the same as being “well behaved?!”

Convenient children =/= healthy children

Convenient children do not equal healthy children