August 28th, 2008
Special
When I was about three years old Mr.Rogers looked right out of the television, right at me, and said, “You are special, and I like you. Do you know why? Because you’re you.”
It’s four in the morning; I worked on putting broken glass into test tubes all night. It’s relaxing work if you can get it, except for the worry that maybe you are a bad parent for getting tiny pieces of glass everywhere.
I find Nicolaus so fascinating. Sure, in that ancient and perfect way that every parent marvels at their kids, but also because he has ways of thinking about things that are startling and new and old and complex and beautiful, and simple and fivish all at the same time. Basically he’s a cool person. I like when he tells me things, and when he wonders things, and when he talks to himself, recounting these wonderful narratives. He has a talent for words that borders on superpower.
I tell him so sometimes, that most people don’t think about things that way. I tell him in a good way, I don’t point and yell “freeeeak!” because I read in a book that it’s better to tell your kids good things about them than to point and call them a freak. He’ll tell me how he figured something out, or about the way he groups things in his mind, or what it feels like to almost be asleep but not quite - and I tell him, “That is really cool. Not many people think about it that way.”
But tonight while I worked on the test tubes I was thinking, maybe it’s too much pressure. Maybe he doesn’t need to hear that he is special and interesting and creative. He talks about wanting to be famous, wanting everyone in the world to know about his inventions. Tonight as I sat at the table alone and worked on something for the total fun of making something pretty, making an old idea from my college sketchbooks into something real, I thought about Nicolaus and how kids don’t need to want to be famous. He doesn’t need to save the world. He just needs to eat mostly healthy food and drink water every day. He needs to take baths sometimes, and get muddy afterwards. He needs to practice reading and coloring and kicking a ball.
When you look at the core of who he is, he is an intensely curious, animated, creative, passionate, self aware person. We didn’t make him that way, he came that way and has never changed course. As his parents we try to find a balance between letting him be who he is, and countering it with things to help him chill the hell out sometimes. But maybe he also needs us to let him know that we don’t expect him to more than an ordinary human, that we just expect him to eat his broccoli and to talk to us in a nice voice and to try not to spill things if possible, but we’re flexible on that.
I don’t know what I’m posting this for. My parents always told my brothers and I how special and talented and artistic and creative and etc we all were. And we all grew up to be artists. So - did they do that? Or did they just notice what was there, and comment on it and buy us art supplies because we wanted them? Was it too much pressure somehow, and that’s why my brother is at Burning Man right now, experiencing the same level of responsibility and societal burdens that he experiences every day at home? Or did being considered special help us each embrace our uniqueness and fight for a creative life in a society that makes that difficult?
Don’t know. But I really like how my test tubes turned out. This weekend: petri dishes!
August 28th, 2008 at 6:09 am
This was such a wonderful post. You got right to the heart of your son, which will always be more important than the brain. He’s already brilliant. I think that by letting him know that he’s special that will feed his heart and allow him to really be himself. You’re right to want to let him know that he’s special just for being himself and being a kid. A sensitive child like Nicolaus couldn’t blossom without caring, understanding parents like you and Kevin.
Have fun with your petri dishes. You’re special, you know.
;-)
August 28th, 2008 at 9:13 am
This is one of the most beautiful posts I’ve read in ages… I think that there’s a relatively thick line between “pressuring” and “nurturing.” Telling him that he’s special and wonderful and brilliant is a good thing. Telling him he always has to be the absolute best at everything he does, he must play soccer, no wire hangers - that might be a bad thing. But I think you’re a nurturer, and from the way Nicolaus is turning out so far, I think you’re doing a damn good job of it.
August 28th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Wonderful, heartfelt post. I think you are totally doing the right thing by Nicolaus, praising him for the kid he is, telling him he is special and different (but not in the FREAK!! way). From my own experience as the oldest of four children, I always wanted my parents to appreciate and praise me for being ME: having different talents, likes, dislikes and achievements than my siblings, rather than being a chunk off the same piece of PlayDoh.
As for putting pressure on him? I don’t think you’re doing that, especially not at his age. Besides, I wanted to be eleventy billion things before ending up in my current (and hopefully not final) career. You have been supportive in each and every thing Nicolaus has fancied, from costumes to work benches to I can’t even remember what. That’s all I ever wanted from my parents (and still to this day want).
You’re awesome. They’re so, so lucky to have parents like you and Kevin.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I think a lot of little kids want to be famous, and it doesn’t mean that when they get older, that’s what they’ll want. And you seem to do a great job supporting Nicholas and allowing him to express himself and going to great lengths to facilitate his creativity and let him explore his interests. That doesn’t sound like pressure. It sounds like you’re a fabulous parent.
One thing that my husband and I have been a little careful of, with a kid who is always being told that he’s very smart, is to tell him that hard work is important too - that he will get to times in school/life where hard work combined with smarts will take him so much further than just hard work will - and to generally praise him for persisting on projects / homework and doing great work on them, and praise him when he’s being creative/kind/thoughtful, rather than for being smart.
Mainly because we both know people who coasted through high school on their smarts and then had trouble in college doing sustained work, and because we don’t want him to get a huge ego of “I’m so smart, aren’t I great” (though we tell him sometimes that he’s smart and that we think it’s cool how he figured out a math problem that he made up, etc. - don’t want to deflate the ego either, just keep it at a nice healthy size). And then there were studies (after we started this approach) of kids who were praised for being smart and kids who were praised for being hard workers (in the context of the study), and then when they gave them all a harder problem, the ones who were told they were “smart” got frustrated and gave up more easily, apparently because they thought they should’ve been smart enough to understand it right away. This is something I’ve seen generally with my kiddo, that he can be frustrated when something doesn’t automatically come easily, and then we remind him that it’s nice to have a challenge, that he can do it if he puts his mind to it and is persistent, and most of the time, that works for him.
None of that is meant as criticism of how you’re raising Nicholas, not one tiny bit — I love the approach of “That’s really cool, not many people would look at it that way” and I think you’re an incredible mom. Your homeschooling for Nicholas is so fabulous and so thoughtful about his interests and his skills. I’m only posting this in response to the question you’re raising, as to how to walk that tricky border, and in part we do it by praising him and telling him what we love about him, but also by focusing on what are good qualities to develop, and/or praising things other than the smartness he hears a lot about already from others. And by telling him he can do anything he wants to do in his life, we just want him to be happy and do what he wants to do.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
I also find the research on praising kids for their ’smarts’ interesting. If you want to follow up, I recommend these articles:
http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.c00a836e7622024fb85516f762108a0c/?javax.portlet.tpst=818d37ec925d82800173fc1062108a0c_ws_MX&javax.portlet.prp_818d37ec925d82800173fc1062108a0c_viewID=article_view&javax.portlet.prp_818d37ec925d82800173fc1062108a0c_journalmoid=6056f56302165110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.prp_818d37ec925d82800173fc1062108a0c_articlemoid=31c6f56302165110VgnVCM1000003d01a8c0RCRD&javax.portlet.begCacheTok=token&javax.portlet.endCacheTok=token
September 2nd, 2008 at 2:46 am
Ooh! Good thoughts! I struggle with that stuff like crazy sometimes. I wanna encourage my kids and give them ideas about things they can do with their lives, things they can explore and have fun with… but I don’t want them to think that a compliment about talent X means I only think they’re talented at X. That X is the only measure of their worth. And GAHHHHH.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I love this post. While I was reading it, it was like you were puttering over your colorful test tube project late at night while narrating to us (readers) across the table very calmly and quietly. Love it.