The Stigma on Children Who Fail to “Blend In”

juliabohemian:

I was speaking to someone the other day about the subject of students who sport unusual haircuts. This person said that it is wrong for parents to cut their children’s hair in such a way that will attract negative attention from other students, especially if the child is so young. Ultimately, the goal should be for them to “blend in”.

Now, on the surface, this probably seems like reasonable position. Especially the first part of the statement. A five year old child cannot comprehend the social consequences of wearing a mohawk to school. And perhaps when they are older, they will regret having done so.

But after I spent some time thinking about this, I realized that this mentality is not the solution at all. It is actually part of the problem. Now, I want to make it clear that the person who made this statement is a nice person, a good person. And it is not my intention to condemn them or their value system.

But kids should not have to blend in, folks. They do not owe the world that.

There are certainly negative things a child can do to attract negative attention in a classroom environment: engaging in undesirable behaviors such as hitting, kicking, spitting eloping, rending of garments etc. Those are modifiable behaviors and we should definitely seek to modify them. But we are not modifying them so that the child can blend in. We are modifying them to improve the child’s quality of life and the quality of their education. We want to empower them to engage in satisfying social interactions, raise their self esteem and foster a growth mindset.

Growing up, I did not blend in…for a variety of reasons too numerous to expound upon in this post. I was not actively seeking to be different. But during my early years, the message from adults was clear…blend in. And being a child, and functioning within the scope of my own developmental age, I interpreted that as “don’t be you”. As a result, I spent a lot of years trying not to be me.

Well into my thirties, I was certain that the very problem with me was THAT I was me. I thought if I could just be someone else, that would fix everything. Then I could blend in. Then I would finally be happy. And yet, the harder I tried to be like other people the more miserable I became.

It took me many years to realize that happiness comes not from our ability to blend in with others, but from our ability to accept and celebrate what we are.

Children might be instinctively wary, even frightened, of peers who are different. But ultimately, their reaction to those peers is almost always a learned behavior. The burden does not fall upon children to blend in, in order to avoid attracting negative attention from their peers. The burden falls upon us as a society to model tolerance and empathy for our children, so that they can accept and celebrate themselves and one another.