Her name was Adelheid. We called her Heidi, and she was the daughter of parents only recently come to the U.S. Her English was good, but accented enough to made her stand out every time she had to read aloud from the 3rd grade textbook. She would open her mouth, and I would wince. I wanted to disappear for her; couldn’t she hear Jason M. snickering at every “w” she morphed into a “v” with her curious European accent? Didn’t she know the kids made fun of her?
She did. And somehow, miraculously, she didn’t care.
I couldn’t understand it. I had already learned to “beat my accent into submission” by code-switching, subbing a more bland, Midwestern accent for the one I had inherited from my home environment. I worked hard to keep other elements that might land me on the bully targeting list under wraps, too. I begged my mom to quit packing me lunch in the first grade after a boy teased me for my Dukes of Hazzard thermos full of chicken and dumplings. (“My G-d, what is that goop?”) I wrote a completely fictional paper one year saying my favorite thing to do with my dad was play golf, when it was actually spending Friday night at the stock car races. The thing to be was a fully average, middle class, nondescript kid of normal intelligence. The last thing I wanted to do was flaunt my individuality and somehow pop up on someone’s radar as an outlier.
Adelheid, however, embraced her unique status. I don’t know whether it was something she was born with, something her parents nurtured in their home, or simply something she couldn’t suppress if she had wanted to. She marched to the beat of her own drummer, and no joke— she was the happiest, most inviting, and most successful girl I knew in elementary school. Adelheid shined.
I ponder the anomaly that was Adelheid with fair regularity. If you ask just about any parent whether they would want their child to adapt, chameleon-like, like I did in childhood— pushing my own sense of self down deep, denying the unique story the Lord had written for my life— or to have the unflagging confidence that marked my classmate, they will say they want the latter. Everyone wants to raise the strong, confident, creative kid unfazed by the voices around him. No one wants to raise the child who second guesses every move, weighing it against the potential social consequences.
And yet, when our child seems a little too out of step, we flinch. We grow frightened when we see him wearing his precious, distinct interests, habits, and giftings for the big, critical world to see.
It’s great to be smart. But not too smart. It’s wonderful to be fascinated by a topic. But not, you know, too fascinated. It’s beautiful to be creative. But not artsy. And on and on.
There are limits to our ability to embrace our kids’ weird. And those limits are directly related to our own comfort level in the race to swim upstream.
And trust me, even if you think you’re the most open-minded, relaxed parent, you have a limit. I figured this out when one of my sons spent the entirety of his third year of life wearing red glasses frames with no lenses in them, a zip up safari vest and carrying a plastic toy spatula everywhere he went. Guys, it was… unique. People noticed. They commented. They raised their eyebrows and gave me “bless your heart” nods.
He finally quit, of course. It coincided with his discovery of a hand-me-down Peter Pan costume, which he wore for his entire fourth year of life.
Of course, if you ask said child today if he ever felt uncomfortable with his decided differences, he will tell you no. He will say this was just another season of who he was, and since his home environment allowed for being Peter Pan one moment and a fireman the next with no repercussions or social ostracism, he never felt the need to camouflage his own skin. Being weird was o.k. So o.k, it turns out, that it wasn’t actually weird at all.
I didn’t do anything special in tolerating the uniqueness of our children. It was a no brainer, really. Thanks in large part to our lifestyle of homeschooling, the outside pressure was minimal. Did I flinch at a few library story hours where my kid answered the, “Where do you live?’ question with, “Neverland”? Sure. How about the myriad times well-meaning old ladies greeted him, commenting on his mop of strawberry blonde curls, and he simply waved his plastic spatula at them? Yeah, I admit… I wanted to crawl in a hole.
And yet, I was always keenly aware, as I am today looking at my younger kids, that the gift I am giving my children by allowing them to simply be unashamed of who they are is priceless.
My kids don’t suppress their passions. They don’t hide their talents. They don’t shrink from celebrating what they love, even if it’s not popular or in or something others think is cool.
This part, at least, I can say we’ve somehow done right. By God’s grace, my kids are weird. And they don’t mind one bit.
I’ve always wondered what became of Adelheid. Our paths diverged when our school was splintered into different zoning paths for middle school. We’d never actually been friends or run in the same circles, so I never heard from— or of— her again. I always imagined that she kept her confidence and continued to navigate life successfully. Thanks to the magic of the internet, I now know I was right. She’s a successful musician, returned to her home country. The reviews of her work are amazing; exactly what I expected of the girl who had the moxie to audition for the lead role in Annie against kids two grades above her. One reviewer positively beamed over Adelheid’s unique voice. I read the glowing report and had to laugh, because, I suspect… Adelheid can care less what the critics say about her, still.