This morning, JoJo, my oldest daughter, walked out of the house wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, a navy and cornflower blue striped men’s tie, knotted loosely around her 9-year-old neck and a confident grin. Around 10 a.m. I got a message from my husband, who’d clearly been sitting on his concerns for the past three hours.
“I hope kids don’t pick on JoJo today. You know … because of her tie.”
I knew. I knew exactly where his heart was. I saw it on his face when I watched him tie the slick fabric at her request in our closet the night before. He brought it around behind her, under the baby hairs on the back of her neck, then came to his knees to fiddle with the knot’s intricacies, looking adoringly into her sparkling eyes every now and then. She was so excited, high on the proposition of making a personal fashion statement. Sporting something that was her dad’s no less!
But sadly, as parents, we know that allowing our little people do anything that could even be considered mildly different is like tying a bleeding cat to a concrete block in the middle of a meadow. It’s bully bait. It’s a healthy thing to do for them, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still bully bait. And some kids just have better armor than others.
Every morning, when I watch my oldest girls trot up the sidewalk and take that first, unnecessarily massive step up onto the bus, a handful of thoughts pass through my mind, like a ritual I’ve practiced a thousand times before. The first is, Dear Lord, please keep my babies safe and bring them back to me just as I left them. The second is, please protect their little hearts, followed close behind by please let them be kind to others’ hearts.
It’s no secret we’ve wrestled with confidence and emotional issues for a few years now with our JoJo, mostly a result of her finger sucking addiction. When she feels hurt, which happens quickly and often without warning, her response is to yell and say hurtful things. It ebbs and flows, but typically it feels like we’re storing an active volcano in the bedroom at the end of the hall. She’s also gotten disturbingly skilled at rolling her eyes, so that’s officially in the repertoire. It’s hard as the parent to see her reactions for what they are – a rusty shield she keeps at her side always – rather than just spite, but it’s gotten easier over the years.
But that’s at home. School is an entirely different island.
At school, her reflexes will get her labeled a “mean girl” and barred from social circles. At school, the triggers are peers and poor performances on tests and 8 million other tiny touchpoints. At school, the largest, and historically the most prominent pain point, is being different; acting different, saying something different, looking different. In any way. And thus we come back to the neck tie.
“Are there other girls in your class who are wearing ties, babe?” I asked this morning, as she ate her breakfast.
“Nah,” she shrugged.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, it looks really cool.”
“I know!” she lit up.
It’s just a tie, I told myself. Maybe the other kids will love it, and she’ll get compliments all day long and come home on Cloud Nine. Maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe if I build her up enough … But, just like her father’s, my heart quickened as she pulled her coat on. Send in the concrete block.
I listened to a podcast recently where a physician said that we are all exactly who we are supposed to be, and we are so unconditionally accepted by God and the universe that it’s unimaginable. Our flaws are intentional. They are the nuances that make us uniquely beautiful. The only problem? None of us realize it. No one feels that way. Instead, we spend our energy agonizing over whether or not one little neck tie has the power to emotionally level our fragile daughters.
This physician’s point was that, if we could all get to a point of internalizing that acceptance, all of the fear and anger and the destructive, selfish actions that come from that family of feelings would dissolve. The anxiety of finding our place would dissipate entirely, leaving room for the good stuff, like joy and love.
So the question then becomes, how do I make my JoJo, and her sisters as well, feel unconditionally accepted in a world where we’re all working with overactive label makers? For that matter, how do I get myself to open a gift that powerful? How do we drop that first pebble in the pond to start the ripple of peace and approval, both with ourselves and others, so we’re all on the same page, in the same mindset? So that we’re all living on the same island.
I don’t have an answer for that; Only a feeling that the implications of imparting those beliefs onto the next generation could turn some serious things right around for the somewhat sad state of this planet. For now, I’m going to keep telling my daughter that her accessories are fierce, but her confidence is fiercer. I’m going to keep saying my prayers as she skips up the sidewalk and steps up onto the bus. I’m going to tell her that we’re all different. That we’re all beautifully, expertly tailored to be different. Then I’m going to bend down and pick up another pebble.
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