Special! Special!

And some better ways to recognize kids

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to tell kids they’re special. I was told this as a child. I was told it both in so many words and in the declarative statements adults were always making about me and my aptitudes. I think most kids of my era with decently supportive parents probably were told they were special in some way. (Cue The Fleet Foxes “Helplessness Blues:”)

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see

Of course, there’s been a lot of derision towards the idea of telling kids they’re special snowflakes like that. But I think the urge to do so comes out of real love.

As a parent, I also have the urge to tell my child about her specialness, much as I have the urge to tell everyone every incredible amazing adorable hilarious thing she does. But as a teacher, if I’m seeing my students with any degree of clarity, as in, if I’m seeing anything about who they are in their essence, then I’m seeing that each of them is special. Which they are. Which means special is really not the right word.

The problem with special

The whole idea of specialness comes with some problems, too. Being singled out, even positively, often feels bad. (Not to mention how people use air quotes “special” as a pejorative.) I remember wearing an unusually beautiful dress to school once when I was eleven, and getting compliments all day, and it completely ruining the lovely feeling of the dress for me. I wasn’t wearing it to stand out. I was wearing it because I liked dresses and I felt like my beautiful self in that dress. I wanted them to see me as beautiful in the dress in a way that drew me in towards them, like they saw me and I belonged. But the excessive gushing people greeted the dress with set me apart from them, which hurt my little adolescent herd-brain’s heart.

Being told we’re special feeds entitlement, which cuts us off from empathy, which hurts (among other things) our hearts too.

Being special often depends on us doing special things, which makes us need to win in order to feel like ourselves.

Also, being special is brittle. It depends on other people not being special, or not being special in as special a way as you are. This gets ugly pretty quickly. This turns into things like, well, white supremacy. This kind of special can be genocidal. Or it can be more subtle, as in me as a child coming to the conclusion that if my blue eyes are special like everyone says then they must be better than brown eyes, right? Yikes.

Clearly we need a way to recognize kids that isn’t a zero sum game.

What else then?

I think what adults are trying to say when we tell a kid they’re special is that we see them, and we respect them and celebrate them for who they are.

We respect the ways they are unusual and the ways they are ordinary. The ways they astound and disappoint us. Or maybe we’re not even evaluating unusual/ordinary, astounding/disappointing. Maybe we’re just witnessing and reveling in the being of the child. And it’s not a competition, being. And it’s not about excelling. And there isn’t only one good way.

This message comes out of that same pride and love that compels us to tell our kids they are snowflakes, but it’s so, so different. It doesn’t isolate them. It doesn’t let them off the hook for their responsibility to the group or the world. It doesn’t depend on them winning. Or on them doing anything, exactly. At the same time, it believes boundless things of children, and they feel that potential.

I think it also gives kids more space to struggle and to fail without their identities collapsing. It’s also not telling kids who they are. It’s just enjoying witnessing them as they are today and as they become tomorrow.

Anyway, this is something I’m just articulating, though I’ve been watching its magic in other people’s work and in my own for a long time.