This piece is a response to Louise Gillet’s So, How Can I Tell If My Kids Are Weird? [see link below] in which she is responding to parent calling their kids “weird”.
There are no weird kids
There are no weird kids – what is weird is growing up in a world where adults call kids – especially their own kids -names like “weird”.
I’ve been called “weird” a lot – especially when I was young. It used to hurt – a lot.
Nowadays I realize that when someone says to me:
“you’re weird”
It just means :
“you’re really not like me”
so I say:
“thank you”.
Weird is just:
Wired: differently.
– and we all are: wired differently. If you’re not weird then you’re either boring – or else dead.
When it comes to children and weird, Hunter S Thompson had it about right:
“Weird behaviour is natural in smart children, like curiosity is to a kitten.”
…and it’s worth highlighting and emphasizing and even labouring over how he talks of weird behaviour, not the kids.
We are all weird
Seth Godin predicted the future of marketing relies on recognizing that “we are all weird now” and wrote a book about embracing weird.
We Are All Weird: The Myth of Mass and The End of Compliance.
.
.
Nietzsche showed us where “weird” really resides:
Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.
Weirdness and madness reside not in individuals – and certainly not in children – but in the absurd norms of a world created by so called grown-ups.
The language we use to describe others always will say much more about us that it can possibly say about them.
So when we call kids “weird” what does that say of us?
– especially when all they are doing is responding to the environment we have created for them.
Who wants to live in a boring world?
Who wants to live their life conforming to someone else’s narrow-minded idea of what is not weird?
Want to get a life?
-get your weird on.
K.H.
This came to me whilst reading Louise Gillet’s piece at her blog : So, How Can I Tell If My Kids Are Weird? [and also published at Hufington Post].
Related posts:
- Reality – much weirder than anyone’s imagination https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2014/09/05/reality-much-weirder-than-anyones-imagination/
- How society drives us mad https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/why-society-makes-us-mad-richard-bentall/
- Trouble and Toast https://recoverynetworktoronto.wordpress.com/2014/01/17/trouble-and-toast/
agnotarte
dave umbongo
drkenplacebo
highfellow
recoverynetwork:Toronto
recovery network: Toronto 
im not schizoprenic, never was, i was a weird, imaginative,curious, easy going natural kid and what was not normal was how other adults when i grew up and quit drinking,tried to pervert and mold me into theri perception of a schizoprenic and whats crazy about it is they were more schzio than me and tried to warp and pervert my identity because they were confused about their own…..i need to be cut down from this abuse…the quicker u have mercy for me the more grateful i iwll be, unless u want to let these jealous people win and continue to drive me nuts….its been unfair for 15 years and now its tiem time let amy ness walk (unless u think i deserve to be punishe MORE for being a normal weird human!)
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Totally agree. It may even be part of an ability to see the world from ‘outside the box’… 🙂
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hah yep.
Iian McGilchrist, in his book “The Master and His Emissary” suggests that what is called “schizophrenia” might be the result of being stuck in a pattern of over-use of too-narrow thinking, to the detriment of wider perspectives.
And that the society we have built is one that is built on just such stuck-in-the-box thinking.
by jove, I think he’s got it.
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