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[quote=Anonymous]My friend is a dance teacher (different sort, I know) and every year she runs an audition to place dancers on the competitive team.  She auditions the students, and after each audition she says "Thank you.  Good job."  Whether they flub the audition, or are the superstar of the day, they all receive the same 4 words at the end of the audition.  Pretty standard.

One year, she was auditioning a dancer whose parents were, shall we say, a bit involved and always concerned that someone else was going to get something better than their daughter and as a result, her self esteem was going to be destroyed.  Mind you, this girl was a teenager and not a 7 year old.

The girl auditioned, and my friend says, "Thank you.  Good job."  As she did to every other dancer that auditioned that weekend.  Audition results come out, and this dancer was given many opportunities to shine.  There were a handful of dances reserved for the oldest and most skilled dancers, and this girl was not selected for those routines, although she made many others.

The parents called my friend, furious.  And I mean furious.  The irrational screaming kind of furious that only crazy parents can provide.

Their chief argument on why they felt their daughter was wronged?  My friend's standard closing of "Thank you.  Good job."

The parents felt that by telling their daughter good job, and not placing her in the most advanced groups, that my friend was purposefully setting this young adult up for disappointment and failure, and that it was mean spirited of her to tell their daughter those words if she was not going to be selected for the most advanced routines.  Mind you, the girl had never danced in these most advanced routines, and she had not yet developed the skills required in the dance, and the dancers were a few years older and much more experienced with many more hours of training each week.  They yelled and yelled, and when my friend did not relent on placement they told her that she was never to use words like that to set their daughter up for disappointment.  Nevermind the fact that the girl was closer in age to having babies in diapers than being a baby in diapers.  Her fragile self esteem (according to her parents) was simply in shreds because of this life shattering disappointment, all caused by the encouraging "Thank you.  Good job."

This was not the first or the last time that the parents had this type of reaction towards teachers at that dance school.   She has oodles of stories about them and their over reaching concern for their daughter (a great kid fortunately so it made the craziness a bit easier to handle.)[/quote]

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