Not Special Unless Special

Most of the time, the best way to raise a kid is not to raise a kid, it seems, but to raise a person. The child of today is going to spend maybe 10 years being a kid and upwards of 40 years being an adult, God willing. So the question becomes, do you want to raise a big kid, or a person?

When you treat an adult like a kid, it means you're being needlessly suppressive (choosing not to respect them like the people they are). When you treat a kid like a kid, you're being needlessly repressive (choosing not to see them as people to begin with). Treating a kid like a kid is never letting them taste failure. It's excusing their misbehavior, spoiling them into submission by praising their lethargy, and never letting them face rejection--in short, it's about keeping them as far from being human as possible for as long as possible--despite their longings to be. It's about purposely neglecting to preserve or even recognize their dignity because they are supposedly incapable of being dignified. Here they are not being respected for their strengths, they are just having their weaknesses catered to.

On the contrary, treating an adult like a person is how respect is shown, and it should be no different with children. Treating kids like people means recognizing them for the their actual strengths (rather than treating even their weaknesses as if they too were virtues). It's letting them face the real consequences of their own misconduct with discretion (and not just the politically-correct prefabricated ones). It's teaching them how to walk away from rejection without feeling rejected. It's about building them up rather than talking down to them, building them up to be able to respond to the natural ups and downs of living--of personhood. It's a far more healthy way to live one's life.

When you tell a child he's special before he has even done anything worthy or special, you weaken his ability to be anything but average. All he becomes is what he is. Who needs to work to be special if they already are before they even put in the work? If you tell him instead, that he has the ability to one day be special through work, difficulty, and problem solving, and that his actions toward those positive ends are what ensure his being special regardless of the outcome, you strengthen his ability to go beyond himself--to become a better person than he is. Is that not what you want? Is that not what our society demands?

We need not tell a child they are good at something before they have shown themselves to be objectively good at it. We don't do that with adults, so there is no reason to do that with children. On the other hand, we shouldn't then be dismissive of a child's attempts to go beyond themselves, even if they fail in the end. We shouldn't fault a child when they do put in the honest effort and come up short, because that is life, and the same ought to go for adults. Working hard makes you "special." Working hard makes you a person.