Should We Tell Our Kids They're Extraordinary?

Guest post!

I tell my kids they're extraordinary. For now.

I have four of them, so statistically this is probably unlikely. And given that all four have more than a sprinkle of neuro spice, they're not extraordinary in the ways we traditionally measure these things. That might make some people mad. Yes, I'm aware that autism and the like don't disqualify people from being traditionally extraordinary.

My third born is nine and can't recognize letters outside of her own name. I've been told this is due to memory issues connected to her cognitive delay. The same child changes the passcode on an iPhone weekly to a new six-digit number and has never once forgotten it. To me that's pretty cool.

But I do wonder about the encouraging words. Whether we should, as parents, be telling our kids they're special at all.

There seem to be two fairly opposing schools of thought.

The first is that our kids should grow up absolutely certain that they are special. That home should be the place where they are always believed in. Tell them they're brilliant. Tell them they're talented. Tell them they can do anything they put their minds to.

While I was being relentlessly bullied at school, my dad told me it was because I was too pretty (I literally had a bowl cut, so that was false) or too smart (probably closer to the truth, since my constant questions during class did nothing to endear me to my peers, and I wasn't going to stop pointing out the teacher's errors, so, impasse).

Either way his words missed the mark. They didn't make the bullying feel any better. If anything, I started telling myself that being extraordinary was the reason I was being bullied, which made the obvious solution to become far more ordinary. Turns out I wasn't very good at being ordinary, but that's beside the point.

I was an odd child. At Montessori school I mastered reading at the age of three and then quickly moved on to my next challenge, window washing. I washed windows day in and day out for almost a full year. I had a squeegee and a bucket, and because Montessori is child-led learning, no one redirected me. I wasn't even particularly talented at it.

My mom used to tell me I was a free spirit. I remember her saying it the day we went to a flea market and she bought me a crop top popcorn shirt (they were all the rage) and I spent the next half hour pulling it down trying to cover my stomach, until she finally gave in and we returned it to the vendor. In that context I understood "free spirit" to mean that I didn't like crop tops, although my mom's message was probably that I was rejecting fashion norms.

Her message and my dad's played on a loop during my ruminations as I grew older. Frustrated by my inability to fit in or just be "normal," I would try reminding myself that I was a free spirit, that I was too smart for my peers to get me. It wasn't a soothing thought. And due to probable extraordinaryness I was far more prone to dissect both my own thoughts and the thoughts of my peers, everything a puzzle I just needed to understand. I think for someone like me, a concrete answer about why my brain worked differently would have been far more useful, both for understanding myself and for understanding the motivations of the ones othering me.

The other school of thought is that telling children they're exceptional is how we ended up with a bunch of people who were told they could be anything they wanted and are now deeply offended that the world has failed to recognize their specialness.

There may even be research explaining the random guy at the bar who is absolutely certain every woman in the establishment would be honoured to have him buy her a drink. Researchers have found a relationship between parental overvaluation and narcissism in children. Overvaluation isn't loving your kid a lot or thinking they're wonderful. It's believing, and communicating, that your child is more special and more deserving than other children.

There probably is a difference between raising a child who thinks:

My mom thinks I'm extraordinary.

And raising one who thinks:

I am objectively extraordinary and it's concerning that the rest of you haven't noticed.

I'm just not entirely sure where that line is.

It does seem to me that the people most convinced of their own extraordinariness aren't always the people I find particularly extraordinary. Some of the most genuinely extraordinary people I've met seem to have no idea just how special they are. Which makes me wonder if believing you're extraordinary and actually being extraordinary have much to do with each other at all.

But if we don't tell our kids they're extraordinary, who does?

Not every kid is going to be exceptionally intelligent or athletic or artistic. That's literally not how exceptional works. We can't all be above average. Some of our children are going to be extremely, aggressively average.

Do we need to be the ones to let them know? I'm not sure. The world seems pretty well equipped to eventually deliver that information.

There will be grades and jobs and promotions they don't get, unrequited love and broken hearts. There will be other people who are smarter and prettier and funnier and more successful. At some point they will discover that their parents' assessment of them was perhaps not conducted under strict scientific conditions.

Then there are the kids who really are extraordinary at something. Being told that constantly can probably create its own set of problems.

Maybe you work harder because you believe you're capable of more.

Maybe you stop trying because being brilliant is supposed to come easily.

Maybe being "the smart one" or "the talented one" becomes so much a part of who you are that failing at something feels less like failing and more like finding out you aren't who everyone said you were.

Or maybe, like me, you discover that the thing everyone keeps telling you makes you special isn't necessarily making your life any easier, and you start trying to make yourself a little less special instead.

Some people seem to do remarkably well when the safety net is enormous. They take risks because failure isn't catastrophic. Other people seem to need just enough discomfort to make succeeding feel urgent.

Maybe believing you're extraordinary gives you confidence. Maybe it gives you entitlement.

I don't want my kids to think the world owes them anything because I think they're special. I also don't particularly want to be the person responsible for making sure they're appropriately humbled before the world gets a chance. There will be plenty of people willing to do that.

Maybe the goal isn't actually to convince our kids that they're extraordinary. Maybe it's to make sure they grow up knowing that we thought they were.

I'm not sure those are the same thing.