Kids Who are Different.

As a kid who was sometimes called “different” and who grew into an adult without changing too much, I have a special place in my heart for kids who don’t fit neatly into the “normal” category.

This post is dedicated to kids who are different.

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Kids who are different are often made fun of and even picked on.  Children and teenagers can be pretty cruel.  I got teased sometimes and even bullied now and then but, honestly, some kids had it a lot worse.  We’ve all known, or at least heard news reports about, kids who were picked on and bullied so much that they couldn’t live with the pain.

I wish they could have read this.

1. When Robyn was in school, she got made fun of for being different.  She recently said, “I got teased my entire life.  What they were picking on I don’t even understand. It was my skin color (which was lighter than her classmates). Then when I got older, it was about my breasts.”
2. Elizabeth M. can vouch for the fact that people can find something to tease you about if they really want to.  When she was in school, her parents sent her to a boarding school.  A childhood friend said some of the other students bullied Elizabeth over her appearance and reputation, “as quite a soft and nice person.”  According to the old friend, Elizabeth was traumatized by the experience.
3. Reeve was bullied relentlessly as a kid.  He was picked on for being, “the youngest and smallest guy in his school,” according to his mother.  Reeve’s brother agrees, “Kids gave (him) a hard time.”  It made Reeve’s life tough.  His mom said, “It’s pretty rough (here).  If you’re getting bullied, you still have to go to school. You just have to get up in the morning and go. He hated it so much.”
4. Bruce’s family moved around a lot so he was frequently bullied for being an outsider.  “I was beat up in the bathrooms, in the hallways, shoved in the lockers – for the most part for being the new kid.”  When his family was one of the few white families living in a predominately black neighborhood, he was bullied for his race.
5. Mike was hyperactive.  He wore hats to hide his big ears.  His arms were disproportionately long…and he had a lisp.  The teasing he took made him so angry that once he even got suspended for fighting one of his tormenters.
6. Joanne says she was teased for “being ugly; having a big nose; being annoying.”  She imitated one of her former tormentors, “’Your laugh is funny; you’re weird; why do you always sing; why are you so into theater; why do you do your make-up like that?'” She concluded, “I didn’t even want to go to school sometimes.”
7. Marie was from a poor family and was socially awkward, which made it hard for her to fit in.  Other kids made fun of her looks and buck teeth.  They called her “uncool” and sometimes attacked her for being different.  The ridicule was bad enough that she ate lunch in the nurses’ office for solitude and safety.  Her dad even had to walk her to school to keep other kids from bullying her.
8. Eva says, “I was a gawky, skinny girl with big teeth and that made me an easy target. I had two bullies and they tortured me all through junior high school.”
9. Elizabeth W. was a chubby child.  Her nickname at school was Blubber.  She was told that no-one would ever fall in love with her because of her appearance.
10. Julius was one of the few black kids attending his school and was routinely picked on by white students.  He says that he, “got beat up just about every day.  I got called n—-r every single day.  I got kicked and whatever.”
11. William liked music enough to qualify as “different.”  Besides being from a family of limited means, he was picked on for being a “fat band boy” and a funny dresser.  At a junior high dance an older student picked on him for not dressing like “everyone else,” and hit him in the jaw.

These kids’ stories are fairly typical of what “different” children experience.  Their childhood experiences may be typical, but the outcome was not what you might expect.

Keep reading.

1. Robyn found an interest in music and kept practicing.  Despite the way others treated her, she found the courage to try performing.  She decided to go by her middle name.  Today, Robyn Rihanna Fenty is one of the world’s best-selling music artists.
2. Elizabeth M. made it through her boarding school days.  She studied acting and, today, no-one is teasing her about her appearance.  Catherine Elizabeth “Kate” Middleton is still “quite a soft and nice person,” and is married to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.  Despite her success Kate hasn’t forgotten her mistreatment by other kids.  At her wedding, she asked guests to donate to the charity BeatBullying, among other organizations.
3. In spite of the hard-time he had in school, Reeve persevered.  Today Elon Reeve Musk is, according to Wikipedia, “an engineer and technology entrepreneur.  He holds South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship and is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX; CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company;] co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018.  In December 2016, he was ranked 21st on the Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People, and was ranked (co-)first on the Forbes list of the Most Innovative Leaders of 2019.]  He has a net worth of $30.4 billion and is listed by Forbes as the 40th-richest person in the world.  He is the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.
4. Bruce survived his childhood bullying which got so bad that one incident left him with a serious head injury.  At fourteen he started rapping with a high school friend, adopting the name M&M.  He must have liked it because Marshall Bruce Mathers III is now known as Eminem.
5. Mike channeled his hyperactivity into energy and motivation to train in his chosen sport.  His ears don’t look as big on his adult body and he still speaks with a touch of a lisp, but the long arms came in handy when he trained to become a competitive swimmer.  Today Michael Phelps holds the all-time record for Olympic gold medals (23), Olympic gold medals in individual events (13), and Olympic medals of any kind in individual events (16).  When he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, he became the only person to ever win that many in a single Olympic Games.
6. Ignoring the teasing, Joanne Angelina Germanotta kept singing and began to perform at open-mic nights in her area.  Today, using the stage name Lady Gaga, she is one of the world’s best-selling music artists and has won awards too numerous to list here.
7. I don’t think anyone today would tease Marie about her looks or call her “uncool.”  She began her television career at age 13.  She really gained fame at 19 as the lead actress of the television series Dark Angel.  Jessica Marie Alba is today considered one of the most beautiful women in the acting business.
8. The gawky, skinny kid who had two bullies also went into acting and has appeared in several movies and music videos.  Like Marie above, Eva Mendes is considered one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood.
9. Despite being bullied as a chubby child, Elizabeth W. found the courage to take up acting.  She first appeared on screen at the age of 15.  She has since won many awards, including three British Academy Film Awards, and she is among the few performers to win Academy, Emmy, and Grammy Awards.  She is perhaps best known for playing Rose, Leonardo DiCaprio’s love interest in the blockbuster Titanic.  Kate Elizabeth Winslet is no longer chubby and definitely not ugly.
10. Julius did indeed have a tough time with bullies in school.  It was bad enough that, after he had established himself as a stand-up comic and actor, a television series was created with him as the subject.  Christopher Julius “Chris” Rock says Everybody Hates Chris was cathartic, helping him to come to terms with his childhood experiences.
11. Even though William was made fun of for being heavy, dressing funny, and from a poor family, he stuck with his musical interests and became a talented and celebrated saxophone player…besides being the leader of the free world.  William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

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Kids who are different are often treated with disdain by other children around them.  Yet, sometimes those same “different” kids may gain strength from their hardships, and go on to achieve great things.

I’m not, in any way, condoning bullying or mistreating any child, I’m just pointing out that kids who are different may actually turn out to be amazing because of those differences. 

If you have a kid who is different, don’t try to mold them into a child just like everyone else.  Sure, sure, they need to learn how to get along in society, but they don’t have to do so by giving up those harmless differences that make them unique.

As I wrote that, it occurred to me that a huge percentage of kids are “different” in some way. 

I think that means that different is normal.

Here’s to kids who are different.

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I had the tiniest seeds of an idea for a post about kids who are different and, while I was researching the information above, I ran across a poem that I just had to share.

Kids Who Are Different

by Digby Wolfe

Here’s to the kids who are different,
The kids who don’t always get A’s.
     The kids that have ears,
     twice as big as their peers,
Or have noses that go on for days.
 
Here’s to the kids that are different,
The kids that are just out of step.
     The kids they all tease,
     Who have cuts on their knees,
And whose sneakers are constantly wet.

Here’s to the kids who are different,
Kids they call crazy or dumb,
     Kids who don’t fit,
     With the guts and the grit,
Who dance to a different drum.
 
Here’s to the kids that are different,
The kids with a mischievous streak.
     For when they have grown,
     As history has shown,
It’s their difference that makes them unique.

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