As we watch our daughter develop, we wonder if she too will be an outlier and what does that mean for her and us? Here I mean that she seems to be doing somethings ahead of schedule, and I'm not excluding this possibility for our son, but he's not so startlingly precocious at the moment.
Because of my childhood experiences, I have gone through a period of mourning over this possibility concerned that being different from her agemates would bring her inevitable grief. But as I have processed my own stuff, I have also thought about foundational principles that I would like my child or any child to understand.
I think one such principle is that God created us individually for his pleasure and glory (see Isaiah chapter 43 for one expression of this). This was translated for me in a 6th grade chapel as "God does not make mistakes." What a life-giving message to hear as a preteen, one that I went back to many, many time as a teenager. I wish that every outlier who feels alone and "not right" or "not normal" would be gripped with the reality of a loving God delighting to imbue him or her with just such qualities.
And just as the Creator God gave individual attention to each person, a second principle I want for our children is that the Redeemer Christ died for all. Translated, this means every individual is of the same, glorious worth, bought back with the shed blood of Jesus. So for all the pain of being an outlier, if you're out there in a socially approved way, smarter, faster, richer, more beautiful, etc. it's easy to believe that you're more special. And that, of course, is bupkis.
If we can communicate these two principles to our kids, I think their hearts will be well-prepared to handle life.
UPDATE: links to Part 1 & Part 3
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