There's no discouragement.....

shall make him once relent, his first avowed intent........

So what makes you discouraged? What puts you off from your goals? Does discouragement affect your motivation or spur you on to "overcome the odds"! For a lot of us, I suspect, other people and the things they say and do are a big part of this.

Lots of verbal encouragement and I'll pretty much drive myself to exhaustion for you - a sincere, frequent "well done" is all I need.  Interestingly I also find outright, detailed specific criticism can spur me on BUT "no comment" or, worse, much much worse, faint praise is really discouraging!  The sheer lack of attention that this level of disinterest involves is the ultimate downer. (Hmmm, moment of self awareness).

The big change from life in the law to Life After Law is that, in parenting, feedback opportunities are in many ways greatly reduced! There are no client satisfaction questionnaires sent out, no annual performance reviews, no fortnightly one-to-ones.  So I don't have the opportunity to keep asking someone else a more complicated professional version of that basic human anxiety:  "am I doing ok?".

In fact I do get lots of encouragement through the various education and health experts that are involved in our "not-totally-run-of-the-mill" parenting puzzle, and they are quite often very generous in their praise, so perhaps it's not fair to pretend I'm an island of splendid isolation encouragement-wise.

Children can of course be devastatingly honest -either with criticism ("I don't like this dinner, it is disgusting") or with praise ("You are my best friend Mummy") but if you actually ask for "feedback" (unwise) you are most likely to be met with an uncomprehending stare, a completely random comment ("I've got squiggly pencils) or a Gallic-standard shrug of withering ennui, communicating with succinct precision their utter disdain towards your pathetic need for validation AND that you have unforgivably disrupted their viewing of cBeebies/creating a masterpiece in crayon, felt tip and bogies/hiding small plastic toys in your washing machine where they will wreak unimaginable havoc and lead to you being ankle deep in water!

On the whole, I think I need to carry on striding towards having an internal sense of achievement and validation.  When I become unbearable/launch a despicable super-villain plot to take over the world please promise me you'll stage an intervention!