It is easier to tell a person what life is not, rather than to tell them what it is. A child understands weeds that grow from lack of attention, in a garden. However, it is hard to explain the wild flowers that one gardener calls weeds, and another considers beautiful ground cover. Shannon L. Alder
About This Quote

If we want to explain something, we must first describe it. This is easy when the thing in question is something that is obvious. An example that comes to mind is a child who doesn’t understand weeds because he or she has never seen them. I’ve seen this happen all the time with students and parents alike.

They can’t quite wrap their mind around concepts like “self-esteem” and “eating disorders” and they always ask me to explain what these terms mean. Now, I can make it very simple and tell them what I think “self-esteem” and “eating disorders” mean: Self esteem: The idea of having confidence in oneself. It means that a person says to himself, “I am good at this, I am good at that, I have been successful in my work or studies,” etc.

In other words, self-esteem is having a good opinion of oneself. Eating disorders: In some cases, a person can have a fixation with food and become obsessed with eating foods they shouldn’t be eating. This is an unhealthy obsession with food and someone who has an eating disorder may be physically addicted to food or have a distorted body image about their body shape or size. When we explain things in this manner, it makes sense for us to ask the child to help us move the weeds from the garden so that we can grow beautiful flowers instead of weeds. It also makes sense for us to tell him how great his job is helping out the gardener by clearing away all of those weeds from the garden because he will get paid!

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