Why are we so frightened of being different?

Reflecting back at a conversation I had with a mum about her 6 year old son, I came to realise that as parents many of us fear nonconformity. 

My 4 year old son was having swimming lessons at the time and this little boy was sitting next to me and we were chatting.  He was passionately telling me about all things he loves to create.  He was an amazingly happy creative little soul.  His mother asked if I was a school teacher as I was very good with kids.   I responded with “No, your son just reminds me of my little guy” and she proceed to tell me all the challenges her son was having at school.  Her son was very much at a stage that he wished to express himself creatively and was finding it difficult to apply his creative expression to his school work.  I shared some of the things that I had found helpful with my very creative son.  At the end of the conversation she shared that her son was learning how to play football and he hated it.  I said “Why not just stop then?”  Her response was “Every boy loves to play football and my job as a parent is to teach my son to fit in to society.”

It didn’t dawn on me until years later how easy it is to feel the pressure of conformity, particularly when it comes to your children.  At a deeper level as adults we carry this fear of rejection and abandonment so we don’t wish that on our children.  We don't want them to miss out on "opportunities" in life and feel left out.  We want them to have the skills to achieve what they want in life.  To save them from that pain we try our utmost to teach them to fit with expectations.  We want them to “fit” with their peers and to be accepted by their peers.  We constantly refer back to the “normal” developmental miles stones so that we can rectify quickly any deviations.  We have this system of learning and development that we follow and what happens if your child doesn’t want to follow that system?  How does society cater for that?

I struggle everyday between nurturing what my children are passionate about and inspiring them to learn knowing that they may not be fitting in with “developmental milestones”.  I want my children to live with a sense of purpose and passion and the is what I nurture at home.  Yet it is not necessarily what is being nurtured in the world out there.

Change happens when we push against conformity. New ideas are born when we challenge the status quo.  We inspire others when we lead from our own inspiration.  Each day I battle internally as to how to raise children who have the courage to be different, when I didn’t have that courage at their age.  Our children are trying to challenge the status quo in their own way, yet we as parents are having our own internal battle with the belief system we were raised with.....to conform.