‘Sit there and keep quiet!’ How often did you hear that as a child? Or a variation of it. ‘Children should be seen and not heard’. Sometimes it might have been more specific. ‘You haven’t a note in your head’ or ‘you can’t dance, you have no rhythm’. Most of us have some experience of having been shut up or shut down. It is likely that when it first happened it was an unpleasant experience. This could range from mild embarrassment to deep hurt. In some instances this was made worse because the ‘put down’ was done in public, say in a classroom, or worse still in the school assembly hall.
Full Article by Fr. Joe can be found here.