Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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I was “academically gifted,” as they say, and if I in any way make this out to be a potential weakness I also understand how that will come across. I did well at school and was moved up a grade and probably could have been moved up a few more. I was a parent’s dream. I was, to anybody looking at me from the outside, a massive success. How could any of this in any way ever prove to be a problem?

Today, children are rarely accelerated through the school system ahead of their age group as it is better understood now that school is as much about life as it is about education. School is about learning the basics, learning how to learn, learning how to socialize, and gaining the ability and confidence to facilitate your own development. If you aren’t developing emotionally as well as academically, you’re in a very dangerous place. And with all that was going on, I was in that dangerous place, an isolating place.

When I moved ahead in hockey, at least I had my school friends. When everyone figured out I needed more in school, they reasoned I could deal with it because I was already playing sports with older kids. Except, by moving me up a year in school, they took me away from the very group of kids who were keeping me socially integrated at my emotional level. As large as I was physically when I was young, I was not an emotionally strong child. I was not ready to live in a world where my hockey and school peers were all older and more emotionally mature.