Don't Label People!

Tia D. is a guest writer.  She is an intelligent, vibrant, energetic, beautiful, young lady who believed that she wasn’t worth much.  She was told at a very early age as a child that she wouldn’t amount to anything and that everything she did was wrong.  She’s an adult who still believe that they were right.  I hope that she sees now that they were very wrong.  I asked her permission to display her thoughts here.  Eventually, Tia will use her creativity to start her own blog.   She has shown us all how well she can express herself.  There’s a lot more personal info about this young woman that I will not share.  She has endured quite a few hardships and disappointments.  Yet, she never gave up.  If you can’t believe in yourself who will?  We all have self-fulfilling prophecies either for ourselves or others.  We label children in schools all of the time.  They are placed in special education classes because they do not “fit” in with the others.  They are repeatedly told by adults that they can’t keep up and need to be placed elsewhere with others like them.  These children feel ashamed, embarrassed, and humiliated.  Eventually they drop out and take the wrong direction in life.  Then society wonders was this a socio-economic problem or a cultural problem, another label.  You know what I’m talking about.  Another easy way out is to give these children medications, get them addicted and then screw up their minds.  Labeled or addicted, these young lives are ruined and even worse as adults.  I can’t stand labels unless they are positive and meaningful.  Teachers during my day didn’t take cop-outs sending you to special classes or requesting that you need sedatives.  They simply whipped our little behinds, told our parents that they did, and we got another one from home because we embarrassed our family.  Understand this!  Our parents had given them permission to cut our butts at the beginning of school year.  Those teachers believed in us and we did our best.  We had something in those days that many of these teachers do not have; respect for each other, the teacher and student.  Most of all, we had parents that loved and sacrificed their lives for their children.