Don’t make your children normal

Every parent wants their children to live a life without fear or pain. Sadly, life can be very disappointing. We have been told that life is just wonderful and dark emotions imply there is something wrong with you. Most parents want their children to fit in. But you are misguiding them.

The West wants you to be Normal

Being gay, transsexual, overweight, introverted, or even just interested in non-mainstream things can be a very rough experience as a child or young adult. (And, of course, keeps on being hard as you grow up.)

Society pushes to normalize people. The diagnosis of schizophrenia has a poorer prognosis for people in the West than for those in less urbanized, non-Eurocentric societies, as David Dobbs writes. If you are a schizophrenic in the West, you are an outcast, and it should be medicated out of you. Why not letting you be yourself, and maybe being treated like an eccentric?

Don’t force anyone to be normal

It is the “different” people who create a new world. If you have been told not to stick your neck out, think you are something, or even worse learned to hide, you won’t push any envelopes. But, on the other hand, if you have been told that crazy can be crazy good, you can be an artist and innovator. Anyone who ever loved, know that at their best, they were furthest from sane.

Normal is hiding who you are. Normal is letting fear being your compass for action. Don’t force anyone to hide.

Here are five ways to help your children be who they are and not being someone else to fit in:

1. Let them admire people who push the envelope

Go to cafés, restaurants, art fairs, “nerdfests,” where people really do something with passion and beyond economical optimums. If you have ever been to a Maker Faire, improv show, or artisanal cheese tasting, you know what I mean. Let them experience people who make wonderful non-mainstream things.

2. Encourage them when they want to go their own way

If your child doesn’t feel comfortable playing soccer or participating in the dance, then don’t push them. Talk to them about it. Praise and support them if they want to go their own way.

3. Stop acting normal

If you think they should have more normal interests, act more normal, dress more normal, or cut their hair normal, then just shut up. You are continually projecting your fear of them being hurt and not only normalizing them but hindering them from experiencing life. If you treat people like fragile bread dough, they will not survive the scorching from the oven of life.

4. Let them play on their strengths

If your child’s difference makes them elite in a subject, then deep dive. Theatre, origami, programming, creative writing, cooking, and so many other things can all be nerd sports. Your child might have a superpower. Make it one and build their confidence. A weakness is a strength and vice versa.

5. Help them ignore the hail

The hardest part is of course to ignore the haters. Anyone who has ever read a bad review of their work, or got a nasty comment, knows that it hurts. Even if it came from an anonymous person, whose opinion you really wouldn’t care about. Talk about it. Their guiding light shouldn’t be other people, but what they want. I’m not saying this isn’t hard. Why isn’t stoicism taught in pre-school?