Normal
In the movie Pump Up The Volume, the Christian Slater character has a line where he says "At some point, I realized I was never going to be normal. And I said, f— it, so be it." I saw this movie with a friend from high school, at a theater somewhere in the middle of Queens, and I laughed so hard at this line that I literally fell off my chair and the few other people in the theater all turned around to stare at me.
I was reminded of this line by Laura at 11d’s comment this weekend that "I think it helps that I have never placed a whole lot of stock in normality." It made me realize that while I’ve long ago made my peace with being weird, I’m not quite there yet with respect to my kids. I want them to be happy. D’s already come home saying that kids have teased him, and I know that’s part of life, but I still want to strangle them.
D says they call him short. And you know what? D is short, and he’s probably always going to be short. Physically, he seems to take after me, and I’m short. Plus he’s on inhaled steroids for his asthma. So what can he do? He can ignore it, or try to turn it into a joke. He can tell them they hurt his feelings, or find other kids to hang out with. He can try to fight the kids who tease him, or tell a teacher. Mostly I think he needs to get a little thicker skinned, but I don’t think that’s something you can learn by being told — you need to figure it out yourself.
He’s also said that kids laughed at him because he was licking the sweat off of himself after they were running. I had to work hard not to laugh myself when he said that. D can’t control that he’s short, but I don’t think it’s crazy to think that he could choose to save licking his own sweat for when he’s in private. I wouldn’t suggest that someone pretend not to be smart, or hide her sexual orientation in order to fit in, but this doesn’t seem like such a fundamental thing.
When we were talking about Madeline L’Engle after her death, one of my friends who does a lot of work with gifted kids commented that Meg clearly thinks it makes sense to pretend not to be as smart as she really is; she only gets in trouble because Charles Wallace is totally incapable of doing so, and Meg gets in fights defending him. The problem with pretending is it’s hard work, and you miss out on friendships with the people who might actually like you the way you are, and if you’re good enough at pretending you sometimes forget who you really are.
The best fiction I’ve ever read about these issues is a comic called Zot! by Scott McCloud. Zot is a teenage superhero from a parallel dimension, but in the last 8 or 9 episodes that McCloud wrote, he gets stuck on our Earth and hangs out with his not-quite-girlfriend Jenny and her group of weirdo high school friends. They’ve never been published as a trade paperback, because the press that put out the earlier volumes of Zot! went under. I just found out that HarperCollins is going to publish all of the black and white Zot! episodes next year, as a single volume. I’m really pleased. (The Zot! book is now available for pre-order.)
October 10th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
When my youngest was just 3.5 last year, she came home from school one day very upset. The kids at preschool had laughed at her for having staticky hair. How innocuous! But she was quite upset. First off, she didn’t know what staticky hair was. On top of that, many kids she thought of as friends were taking part in this mild mockery. She literally shut herself in the bathroom and cried and cried.
And so we went thru the strangest dance, where I taught her how to laugh off teasing. I gave myself staticky hair, and then asked her to make fun of it. When she did, I said, aaaarrrghhh! You’re right! My hair is a WRECK!!! And I made faces and made it even messier. And then I made fun of her toes, and she got her turn to laugh it off. She still gets upset when this sort of thing happens, but at least she can get herself out of the situation.
While I sometimes wonder if she learned what I intended her to learn via that episode, I still feel better that I at least tried to help. I don’t think it’s terrible to teach your kid the life skill of learning to deal with teasing, and even sometimes learning when to keep a low profile. If you can help them with it, why would you not?
October 10th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
My four-year old daughter has had a rough time at school lately being teased about her shoes. Most of the adults I’ve told have suggested that a teacher intervene in the situation. While I think the teachers should know what’s going on, I’m inclined to think that my little one is going to have to learn to deal with this sooner or later.
We’ve been reading Stephanie’s Ponytail by Robert Munsch a lot which has been helpful.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
The teasing thing hurts me, because this was part of parenting that I think I ignored going in: that I was going to have to go through school again, with all the knowledge about how I’d do it differently, but not the remotest chance in hell that I could really help my kid figure it out. Well, maybe I can help each of them figure it out a little, but it’s a real stealth campaign. And teasing was hard for me.
I remember I wrote last year about how my goals were for my kids to have fun, make friends, and love learning, and a couple of people commented, “oh, that’s good, don’t be too obsessed.” But making friends was something I never quite figured out, teasing devastated me for years, and in point of fact, friendship hasn’t been easy all the time for Wilder, either.
I’m rambling.
I’ve gone all over the map on these issues with the kids. I do tell them a lot of stories from my own childhood. Which is weird, from a generational perspective, because my parents never told me anything about their school experiences, never offered another perspective from their own lives, but they were only 20 years older than me. You’d think they’d remember better because they were closer, right? But they didn’t.
Okay, I’m still rambling. Time to go to bed.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Oooh, Jody, good points about going through school again.
Yesterday, Petunia told me that one of the girls in her class said she was a boy because she liked superheroes. And I remembered all the flack I caught for playing touch football with the boys in fifth grade and how, in seventh grade, everybody whispered my friend Megan was a lesbian because she had short hair.
The sweat-licking thing is sort of funny. I would have struggled not to laugh too.
October 11th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Scott McCloud’s website (scottmccloud.com) is full of fabulous texts–I do love Zot, too. (to comment on a truly small piece here, on my way out the door to the airport…)
October 11th, 2007 at 11:48 am
I try not to worry about this stuff too much, but I know sooner or later my child and I will have to deal with it. Reading the post and comments I reminded myself that we all go through some form of teasing in school, which can build character and make for great art or literature in the future.
October 11th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
My brother-in-law, who is wise in the ways of children, has taught his little daughter a response which seems to work in most cases of teasing: “So what!”
October 11th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
I’d never heard of Zot – I’ll have to go check it out.
We had a bad period of teasing in Kindergarten. My daughter would get off the bus SOBBING because of a particular boy who was teasing her the whole bus ride home.
Having gone through the whole bus-teasing thing myself, some 30 years earlier, I understood how upsetting it could be. I wasn’t prepared for it being so hard to go through it as the parent. You’re so helpless. You can’t fix it.
I never officially intervened with the boy, his parents or the bus driver – but I did let her teacher know it was going on. (She’d sometimes burst into tears at the beginning of school, too.) We came up with lots of ways to deal with it and she survived. I think the answer that worked for her was “I don’t like it when you say that.” He didn’t know what to do with that. Luckily, the boy in question moved away….(I’m still convinced that he had a crush on her or something…)
But frankly, I’d rather parent the ‘teased’ than the ‘bully.’ I have no idea what horrible punishment I will inflict if I ever catch one of my kids teasing another human being.
Did you catch the last “This American Life” about a man going back to his high school reunion and confronting his bullies? It was funny.
We’re still working on the “thick skin,” though. It must grow awfully slowly, that thick skin…
October 11th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
While this hasn’t happened to my kids yet (they’re both pretty young), I expect my younger one is going to have to deal with it before her older sister. She is a major tomboy – in her clothing, in her obsession with cars, in how she plays mostly with boys…Right now everyone thinks it’s cute, but I wonder how this will change the older she gets (particularly since I don’t see her outgrowing her tomboyishness anytime soon – nor would I want her to.)
October 11th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Is it pathetic that I’m almost 30 and I still have not totally made my peace with being weird? I am really trying to do this though, because I want my kids to think like Laura, that’s there no reason to put a whole lot of stock in normality.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
two things…if you have an older kid, like 8ish or older, the book _the hundred dresses_ is a good one to read and talk about re teasing. the main point of view is the best friend of the teaser, and it’s quite thoughtful. also filled with 1940s era school things, which makes for some interesting comparison discussions.
second…one of my favorite quotes, which is of more use to us than to kids, but…i still like it.
The reward for conformity is everyone likes you but yourself. rita mae brown.