“Man, what a voice!” The wide-eyed fourth-grade boy had blurted these words of praise to seventh-grade me after I’d belted out a hymn during a Sunday school assembly. Emboldened, I mustered the courage to start singing around the house. Big mistake.
My mother had been raised by a judgmental single parent and never quite grasped the concept that positive observations build children up while negative observations erode their self-assurance. As a child, she once asked her mother that little-girl question, Am I pretty? Mouth sternly set, eyebrow severely arched, my grandmother responded, Pretty is as pretty does. End of discussion.
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