Gordon Flett

And I always mentioned in terms of past theorists that Gregory Brown, who was a student of Morris Rosenberg and his book, he talks about the abject feeling of feeling that you don't matter because it's a sense of profound social rejection.

And if you're not getting a sense of mattering through your relationships or through organizations, you can feel profoundly

rejected and he talks about this in the concept of the work by williams on being ostracized where you feel that you're so far removed and it's not just through lack of attention that people are actually keeping you at a distance but of course it's also the case that people who feel that way often keep themselves at a distance because they're expecting negative responses from others when in fact they might be getting positive i just want to underscore again though that

Mattering is a subjective appraisal.

And to underscore that people can be so inaccurate in terms of this, one thing that we studied through our school board project was we asked the young people whether they felt they mattered and about 35% of them either said, I don't matter, or I don't know if I matter.

Then we asked parents, is it possible that your child feels like he, she doesn't matter?

And only 8% of parents

said that they felt like it could be that their child has a sense of not mattering.

So I'm saying, well, there's about one out of five kids are walking around with a feeling of I don't matter, yet their parents think they do matter.

Whenever I mention this in an audience of parents, they're horrified looks because now they're thinking, is this my kid?

So what I tell them is just make it so that they know they matter.

You know, whether it's small things you do or big things or just tell them.

But the best is just to show through little considerations.

If somebody's been away, just say you were thinking about them, miss them.

There's so many different ways of doing it.

My wife, back when I started and we were a single income family, often I would find a note for a road trip that she had left when she had packed my bag because she's way better than I am, or in my lunch.

And I know she did this with our daughters and

That, you know, even just writing somebody a note because we don't write notes to people anymore.

And that can also show it.

So if you're not sure whether somebody in your life has a feeling of matter and you think they do, but you're not sure, just show them.