Premonitions of the Teenage Years
Raina attended a birthday party last Friday and it was a totally traumatic experience for her. The reason? The first seven people at the party were in super hero costumes and Raina was not. Even though she knew this would be the situation going into the party, the reality of being so visibly different from the other kids just undid her. She immediately clutched a parent, refused to interact with the other kids, physically removed herself to the outskirts of the party, and cried. In the end, there were plenty of kids who were costume-less at the party, and later on one of the kids volunteered her costume so Raina could wear it ... nothing helped. Raina stayed on the edges of the party space and literally moved even farther away when the "costumed" kids approached.
We really didn't know what to do in this situation. We tried rationalizing with her, bargaining with her, bribing her ... nothing worked. She just shut down because she looked different than the others. She said that since she didn't have a costume, she didn't belong at a superhero party. This line from my daughter's mouth terrified me: "I don't belong."
It was crushing and emotionally draining for all of us, and really pushed to the forefront all sorts of things for me. As a kid, I never minded being different and I was never bothered by other kids because of it (or if they tried to bother me I never noticed it). Raina clearly is cut from another cloth so we have to make a decision. In our house, we celebrate differences because they are interesting and make everyone special. Do we keep pushing the statement that "difference is good" while making her identical to everyone else (therefore she won't feel different as often) or do we endure possibly dozens more experiences like this one until Raina realizes that everyone is different and that's just how life is?
Because, admittedly, the Whompton household has a few attributes that make us different than the kids she'll be schooling with at MICDS. While our income is comfortably upper middle class, we're also financial aid recipients. We cannot compete with many of the monied families at school, which will matter to her very soon when she clues in to more aspects of clothes than their colors and that all her friends have the latest gadget when she doesn't have any. We're also environmentally conscious (which means 90% of her clothing is second-hand among other things), we're not avid consumers of anything except local food and books which makes us quite frugal, we're raising our children in a secular humanist way, and we have an in-house auntie. Our family is different -- in ways that may or may not matter to Raina or her classmates -- and I wonder if our internal loving community will be enough support for her as she navigates these tough roads ahead.
We really didn't know what to do in this situation. We tried rationalizing with her, bargaining with her, bribing her ... nothing worked. She just shut down because she looked different than the others. She said that since she didn't have a costume, she didn't belong at a superhero party. This line from my daughter's mouth terrified me: "I don't belong."
It was crushing and emotionally draining for all of us, and really pushed to the forefront all sorts of things for me. As a kid, I never minded being different and I was never bothered by other kids because of it (or if they tried to bother me I never noticed it). Raina clearly is cut from another cloth so we have to make a decision. In our house, we celebrate differences because they are interesting and make everyone special. Do we keep pushing the statement that "difference is good" while making her identical to everyone else (therefore she won't feel different as often) or do we endure possibly dozens more experiences like this one until Raina realizes that everyone is different and that's just how life is?
Because, admittedly, the Whompton household has a few attributes that make us different than the kids she'll be schooling with at MICDS. While our income is comfortably upper middle class, we're also financial aid recipients. We cannot compete with many of the monied families at school, which will matter to her very soon when she clues in to more aspects of clothes than their colors and that all her friends have the latest gadget when she doesn't have any. We're also environmentally conscious (which means 90% of her clothing is second-hand among other things), we're not avid consumers of anything except local food and books which makes us quite frugal, we're raising our children in a secular humanist way, and we have an in-house auntie. Our family is different -- in ways that may or may not matter to Raina or her classmates -- and I wonder if our internal loving community will be enough support for her as she navigates these tough roads ahead.
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