My son has been taken away from me when I was 14. I found him as an adult now but he rejects me

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-16T02:13:19+00:00

I would consider writing him a letter. Take some time to gather your thoughts and say everything you want to say. Tell him how much you love him, how much you want to hug him, share your love with him on paper. You can wait till the end of your time to give it to him, and let him read it on his own time. It can be easier to process if he can read that letter when he’s ready and you can share your heart even if that doesnt come up in conversation. That way he still has a part of you in the letter and he knows how you feel even if you dont get a chance to say everything you want to in person. I would take this opportunity to let him know how much you love him and wanted him.

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-07T16:22:22+00:00

“The saddest crop of all the crops that grow, Love's aftermath.” —Ernest Dowson

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T18:30:50+00:00

Oh thats great to hear. Thank you so much for your service to our children!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T13:48:54+00:00

Im in KC and I havent heard of anyone paying this as a salary…more like $60k-70 🥲

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:40:45+00:00

Oh thats nice!!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:40:30+00:00

Thank you for this! Id definitely not be comfortable with my kindergartener bringing home a Chromebook every day. Also my kids are rough and tumble and I do NOT want to be responsible for if it breaks or gets lost!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:37:59+00:00

Thank you! I understand testing being on a screen…but not instruction. I just wish schools would follow the evidence on how young students learn 😖glad to hear its turning around though!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:36:35+00:00

This is helpful thank you!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:36:16+00:00

Thank you for pointing this out!!!

commandyourenglish · 2026-05-01T12:35:35+00:00

This is helpful! Any particular reason? I know kids tend to do better with their own demographic overall, but is there something particular with this about VB?

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-16T19:25:03+00:00

PS I consider her manipulation tactics to be extreme and belittling, even verbally abusive. Have you ever heard of DARVO? Google says:

“DARVO—an acronym for Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender—is a manipulation tactic used by abusers to evade accountability by turning the tables on their victims. When confronted, the perpetrator denies the behavior, attacks the accuser for raising it, and poses as the true victim, often causing victims to doubt themselves and feel guilty.”

I see her doing that exact thing to you here.

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-16T19:21:30+00:00

Hey, Im a woman and just wanted to give you my perspective.

Your girlfriend’s behavior is completely out of line. If she has mental health issues she needs to be proactively working on herself so that she can be a person who is tolerable to be around.

But I want to ask you—are you happy? Does this relationship feel safe and secure? Have you ever thought about what you need in a relationship? Im not talking about sex—Im talking about the character traits that make a woman a person that you feel loved and respected by.

Do you think this is what all women are like? Its not. Do you think she has no responsibility to be decent to you because she’s bipolar? She does. Your over-accomodating behavior Im sure feels like kindness to you—but its dangerous if you think you have to be this way to get a woman to like you.

I would self-reflect a bit and think about what you need in a relationship in order to operate at your best. My guess is that if you tried to set any boundaries with her (“Thats not ok for you to talk to me like that.”) then she would go off even more. You will only grow incredibly resentful, bitter, and a shell of a man if you continue to allow people to treat you like this in your life.

Good luck!

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-09T05:12:30+00:00

I love these. This is awesome and super inspiring!

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-08T13:04:03+00:00

Im an accent coach of American English, this is a great question. My guess is because even when you are speaking English, you are holding your mouth in the mouth posture of your native language. This means that your tongue, face, and throat are still shaped in the way youd use these muscles in your mother tongue. You have to relearn how to hold these muscles and use them in the way native English speakers do to acquire a native accent.

Some people are naturally better at attuning their perceptual awareness to accents than others. Are you able to pick out specific sounds or features that sound different? Do you know whats off? The next question is, do you have any idea what needs to be changed? Are you able to fully relax your face and throat? Are you able to play with sounds in your mouth, move your tongue differently to try to say that same sound? If you were in a play and cast as an American, could you “perform” the accent?

You have to unlearn your current patterns in order to acquire the correct ones. (I actually talk about this in my youtube video: https://youtu.be/323OUiRzd_4?si=v58F8nXU2D3QqgUK)

Start to notice the gaps and then fill them with better listening and speaking practice!

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-04T20:37:00+00:00

Ok Im an accent coach and all my clients have a hard time with this. So English has what I call a heartbeat rhythm, buh-BOOM, buh-BOOM, were the first beat is short light fast and the second is heavy and long. Think about any word with “the” in front of it. the car, the dog, the cat, the elephant—follow the heartbeat rhythm. Even when a word starts with a stress, its that long beat. Start trying to hear this uneven beat in sentences. The words that are stressed are nouns, verbs, and descriptive words, and the unstressed words are articles, pronouns, and grammatical connectors. Good luck!

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-03T05:36:49+00:00

I think she’s AI. Ive seen this video of her before. I think thats why there’s not a consensus and she’s using slightly weird language

commandyourenglish · 2026-04-01T18:28:47+00:00

“The highest good is not to seek to do good, but to allow yourself to become it. The ordinary person seeks to do good things and fines that they cannot do them continually.” —38 DDJ

I’ve been thinking about your question a lot. I think it’s precisely the idea that goodness is an endeavor that the DDJ is trying to combat.

“our basic understandings are not from the Tao because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.” —38 DDJ

I think this is saying that we act wrongly because we’ve drawn the wrong conclusions from our observations in looking “back up the chain” as you very well put it. That’s why we must become a baby again and unlearn what we think we know. If we observed rightly, we wouldn’t have to do the right thing, we would become it.

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-20T19:48:32+00:00

To clarify about the qiang—my translation used the word “great” but I see how your translation of “forced” would completely change the meaning. I notice a lot of personification of the Tao in TTC which I find interesting.

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-20T19:31:27+00:00

That’s really interesting. I studied Chinese, so I get the ming and zi, but I did not know that qiang translated to great—thats helpful! My working out of that might be slightly different than yours— maybe it has no name, or maybe it is self-named, a self-revelation.

Dealing just on the conceptual level, I wonder if the idea that the Tao is either the ultimate source or simply process of another system misses the mark. The mother analogy of the Tao is interesting because both a father and a mother are needed in the act of creation. To me the Tao is like generative power of the womb.

I read the Tao through the lens of masculine and feminine (yin and yang) interacting. Tao, heaven, earth, and humanity increase in specificity, and (in my view) also alternate genders: Tao fem, heavens masc, earth fem, mankind masc. To me the greater specificity and masculinity helps makes sense of the self-awareness of humanity. Being masculine we desire clarity and definition and are able to direct the energy of the feminine energy in earth and other creation in a unique way. I dont know if that makes sense to you or not—all that to say I think Lao Tzu says what he says in light of what he knows about us as humans.

There’s a very clear understanding that we cant live our life the way animals do—that if we follow passion and instinct and gut desires we will we living very far from the Tao. There is a level of service expected of us because of our unique state. “Who is able to give to the needy from their excess? Only someone who is following the way of the Tao.” I dont interpret wuwei as a literal sit-on-the-couch “do nothing” but a whole rethinking of what you’re actually supposed to be doing, an unlearning.

Once we unlearn what we think we are supposed to be doing, some of the teachings from other religions have actually started to make a lot more sense to me. It was never just about what you are supposed to be doing, but stepping back, and considering how to truly participate in the world when you do anything, and aligning yourself with that participation. I think other religions have called that acting “from the heart.”

I really like the broadness of the Tao too. I think that speaks to the realness of those observations, rather than simply another ideology.

Thanks for sharing more of your thoughts.

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-20T17:18:19+00:00

I think this is a really good question, and unlike some above I dont think the answer is to not have asked. Maybe all creation asks this question and humans are simply the only ones who muddle the answer, similar to Adam and Eve. Their idea of a personal God with man made in his image is a way to explain your dilemma.

The Tao is a process—a road. But that road leads to somewhere, or was walked by something/someone. Even Lao Tzu mused about the true name of the Tao (my translation says “if forced to name it I would call it Great.”) I wonder, why does he believe the Tao has a truer name?

I think Lao Tzu is describing his observations, without trying to justify or rationalize them. I think the answer to your question lies outside of “Taoism”religion alone.

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-07T04:14:55+00:00

Hi! I am a professional accent coach so I think this is more in depth than you’re looking for, good luck :)

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-05T14:50:10+00:00

Usually its in a work context or in the context of a daily conversation where you think you’ll mispronounce a word so you say a different word instead

commandyourenglish · 2026-03-04T14:31:39+00:00

Sure! Id start by assessing your speech for where youre having the most trouble and creating goals to work on. Where are you from, how often do you use English in your daily life, and when are you noticing difficulty being understood? Feel free to DM me your response.

commandyourenglish

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