Follwoing the Herd Never Ends Well

"If you follow the herd, you'll end up stepping in shit."

           - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, I Can See Clearly Now 

When I was in Kindergarten, I was a table for Halloween.  My Aunt Bibby, as we call her, made my costume for me.  My mom was the oldest of five girls and Bib is her youngest sister.  Growing up, Aunt Bib was more like a big sister to me because of the age difference between her and my mom - when I was born she was only around 11 or 12 years old.

As the first grandchild in a big family of five girls, there was much excitement when I was born.  I was showered with attention from everyone, especially Bibby and naturally she became my favorite.  

Bibby loved kids, especially babies, and she took her role as my aunt very seriously.  My grandparents lived about 30 minutes away so my mom would bring me up to visit them quite frequently.  If Bib knew we were coming, she would race home from school to see us and brag to all of her friends about her new baby niece waiting for her at home.  My mom used to tell me how Bib would burst through the door and completely take over my care, even expertly changing my diapers with intense precision, the safety pin dangling from her lips, folding thet thick, white cloth just so, treating this mundane task as if it was the most important job on the planet.  

Bibby was also very creative and as I got older she insisted on making all of my Halloween costumes.  The table was the first of many memorable get ups including a Rubix cube and a Hershey's bar.  Of course, Bib's creations never failded to steal the show.  

I remember the table costume vividly.  Bib was so excited and had spent weeks designing and creating her masterpiece but she wanted to surprise us - I don't even think my mom knew what I was going to be until Bibby showed up with it the day before Halloween. Well, let me tell you, this table costume was a work of art.  No detail had been left undone, down to the beautiful white table cloth, place settings, plates, wine glasses and the "piece de resistance", a giant turkey just waiting to be carved.  I wish I had a picture of it - words just do not do it justice.  It almost made you want to take a seat and dig in!  

Sure enough, the next day at school, guess who was selected to lead the parade through town?  You got it - the table was the hit of the entire celebration!!  I will never forget the feeling of sheer joy and overwhelming pride as, at 6 years old, I led the entire school through the streets of our small community.  It was a memorable moment that made a lasting impression, a moment that has stayed with me all these years.  

The reason I tell this story is because when I relive that moment I realize how free I was back then.  I wasn't worried about standing out, looking silly or making a fool of myself.  I never doubted that everyone would love my costume as much as I did.  I had no voice inside my head worrying about being made fun of or whether I'd be the only kid wearing a homemade, giant cardboard box costume when everyone else was wearing storebought Disney character costumes.  I completly embraced the fact that I stood out from all the rest of the kids and enjoyed every minute of being in the spotlight.

I was thinking about this the other day and I realized that as I got older, something changed and at some point I decided that standing out was not a good thing and that the thing to do was to fit in.  Blend.  Be myself but only if being myself meant being cool and doing what everyone else was doing, saying, and wearing. Obvioudly I know I'm not alone in this - as we get older and more aware we all become much more self-conscious and concerned with fitting in.  But as I thought about it more,  it occurred to me that maybe it's more than just a nutural maturation process, maybe kids feel the need to fit in because we tell them they should.  

I wondered...what if society, parents, teachers, the media and everyone else stopped sending the message to children that in order to be okay, they need to fit in?  What if kids got a different message that said something more along the lines of "striving to fit in and be like everyone else is the equivalent of choosing to be ordinary - why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?"  How did being ordinary ever become a good thing?

Admittedly, kids  definitely hear alll the time things like "just be yourself" and "don't be afraid to be different" but the problem is that these are just empty words that don't convey to a child how to actually go about doing that in a world that encourages selfies, plastic surgery and fashion trends.  The overwhelming message they are getting is quite the opposite of encouraging them to embrace who they are.  We don't even give them a chance to figure that out before we start barragomg them with messages of conformity.

We need to ask ourselves why we are, as a society, so completely obsessed with looking, acting and thinking like everyone else.  There is so much pressure to conform that we are often afraid to share new ideas or express differneces of opinion for fear of being judged.  Societal pressure is tough, and it's not just kids who are affected.  Adulst, too, are so quick to criticize, and in some cases even ostracize, those who voice opinions that are not mainstream or that go against popular belief.  We are taught not to question autihority, to just go along to get along and to not make waves.  But is this really the recipe for a life filled with happiness and fulfillment?

I ask you, is this really the message we should be sending to our future generations?  Is this the way to encourage growth, expansion and innovation?  To just copy and to conform to what everyone else is doing? 

Picture the entire world as a giant jigsaw puzzle and we are all pieces of that puzzle.  Yes, it's true that all of the pieces are more alike than different but it's also true that it's the differences that work together to create the picture when all is said and done.  Without the slight variations in shape and color of the individual pieces, it would look like a giant pile of identical puzzle pieces that was virtually meaningless.

E.E. Cummings wrote, "To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight - and never stop fighting."

 As parents, we never want our children to feel left out or like they don't belong and for this reason I think we tend to encourage conformity versus individuality.  We are all guilty of it and it comes from a place of love - we just want our kids to be happy and we want them to avoid being teased or treated badly in any way.  

I am definteily guilty of this as well.   I have three children, a fourteen year-old boy and twin 11 year-old girls.  Fom the beginning they all had three very distinct personalities. When our kids were little, we belonged to a country club with a specific dress code.  Early on, I would revel in dressing them all up in cute little coordinating outfilts, especially the girls.  But soon it became clear that the days of picking out my kids clothes was over and the dress code at the club became the bane of my existence.  

I look back at the days of crying fits, forcing collared shirts and dresses over my kids heads and shoving uncomfortable dress shoes on their little wriggling feet and see the humor in it now - but at the time it was anything but funny - it was sheer agony!  I remember thinking, why can't my kids just wear the nice clothes like all of the other kids without complaint?  Why can't my kids just be normal?

As it turns out, my daughters are not girly girls - they are complete tomboys just like I was.  Go figure!  The idea of wearing a dress, skirt or even somehing that does not resemble athletic attire is completly offensive to them.  We finally started to wonder if it was worth it to go through the same battle every time and wasting money on clothes our children hated.  We decided that it was indeed NOT worth the battle and that only under exteme circumstances would we insist that the kids dress up in "fancy clothes", which for the girls means that their shirt does not have a giant Nike swoosh spashed across the front.  

Recently, I found out that some of the girls' friends had signed up for 6th grade cotillion (which I had been forced to do as a kid) and although I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would be, I asked them if they wanted to do it.  Since their best friends were doing it I thought maybe their decision would be swayed.  Nope.  There will be no cotillion for our daughters.  The mimute they found out what was required (i.e. dresses and uncomfortable shoes) they did not even hesitate before declining my offer.  

Although I wasn't surprised, there was a part of me that felt that familiar pang of worry that they would feel left out and regret their decision.  Should I force them to do it like my mother did?  I even worried that if they didn't do cotillion they would never learn the etiquette of a proper young lady or how to ballroom dance with a boy.  I envisioned them dancing at their weddings and stepping all over their new husbands' feet - and then I reemembered somehing very important: I took cotillion.  My husband loves to tell the story about how even after dragging him to dance lessons, I still insisted on leading - which lead to a pretty disastrous first dance.  (Luckily, not many people saw it because everyone had beelined it to the bar but that's a story for another time!)

Lately, I have really been trying to catch myself when I start thinking this way.  I focus on encouraging my kids to listen to their own voice and think for themselves.  Yes, there are times when there is no way around it and we need to just go along with the program out of respect or for certain special occasssions like weddings or graduations.  But overall, both my husband and I try not to force our kids to do anything unless absoltuely necessary.  We revel in their individuality and encourage them to express themselves exactly as they are, miraculous little humans who are perfect and lovable just the way they are.  After all, if you follow the herd, you are bound to step in poop.  Avoid the herd!