For most of my life I’ve been okay with the fact that I have naturally curly hair. In fact, I’m actually thankful for my hair…but it hasn’t always been that way. You see, I was in junior high and high school when Farrah was in her prime; meaning you couldn’t turn in any direction without seeing long, layered hair with feathered bangs that required a LOT of hairspray to hold them in place. And if you didn’t have that kind of hair, you had the short and very straight Dorothy Hamill look with that perfect little upsweep in the back that came to a point.
And then there was me...and Penny, Donna, and Lisa. Layers only made it curlier, feathered bangs were not an option (feathers aren’t curly, you know), and the whole Dorothy thing—well, that was definitely out of the question.
So, what did I do? I gave up, that’s what! I gave up trying to transform myself into someone I wasn’t. And you know what? I turned out just fine. I married my childhood sweetie (he loves my curls.) I raised four nearly-perfect kids who have given me five absolutely perfect grandchildren, and I am honoring God by using my gift for writing to educate and encourage people around the world (hopefully you’re one of them.)
The moral of this story is QUIT TRYING! Quit trying to make your eight-year old into a musician when he/she would rather be drawing pictures or building robots. Quit trying to turn your thirteen year old into a future scholarship awardee for playing soccer when he/she would rather be blowing into a clarinet or making jewelry to sell to all her friends. In other words, QUIT TRYING to turn their “curls” into “feathers.”
When you encourage or even force your kids to work on their weaknesses instead of their strengths, you set them up for failure and a sense of poor self-worth. You are also wasting time they could spend doing things that make them feel great about themselves and that are actually inspiring them toward a bright future.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t encourage your six year old to keep trying when it comes to reading or that your two year old shouldn’t be encouraged to use the big girl/boy potty. What I’m saying is this: God made us all uniquely special and as parents, it’s our job to help our kids learn to let that uniqueness shine brighter than the north star—not try to “fix” what we think God could have done better.
