Dear Problem Child

Dear problem child,

You’re being reprimanded by the teacher, getting yelled at yet again. Maybe you’re in time-out. Maybe you’re in the principal’s office.

Maybe you’re already used to the stares of your fellow classmates because you’ve been yelled at so many times. Maybe your parents wish this weren’t so, maybe you wish you could be like all the other eight-year-olds, quiet, obedient, the subject of praise. You can’t figure out how they sit still, pay attention, follow directions. Maybe you wish you were like them.

You and school don’t seem to click. In fact, you and expectations in general don’t seem to click. Everything they want you to do, you want something else. Maybe the material comes easily for you. Maybe you’re excited about it, maybe you have to stay in recess for calling out. Or maybe, if you’re older, you’re bored. You’re in trouble for not paying attention.

You wish you weren’t different, you wish there was nothing wrong with you.

Don’t.

You’re not alone. I was like you, and am still like you. I know many like you. There are many like you.

My friend Tom’s curiosity was too much for school. They called him confused, muddled, his brightness too much for them to understand. My friend Al was the slow one. “He will never amount to anything,” they said. He felt like you, stifled, out of place. They were stupid, they were the bad children. They were also Edison and Einstein.

When they tell you to do exactly what to do, exactly what to say, exactly what to think, you don’t like it. You can’t concentrate, or maybe you desperately need to concentrate as they drag you away, trying to switch to the next thing, to do what everyone else it doing, and you fight, fight, fight. They wish you weren’t like this, maybe you wish it as well.

Don’t.

What they think, what they say and feel, is all wrong. You are beautiful, amazing, intelligent. Where they want water, you are fire. Where they want peace, you bring music. You are different, unique, special.

You seem dumb because you are actually brilliant. Maybe you have trouble socially, and your gem of splendor is buried underneath the sand of your social mishaps. Maybe you fail because you’re more interested in learning. Maybe you misbehave because you’re bored, restless. True magnificence can’t be seen that easily. Within you is talent, potential, they just can’t find it yet. The brightest star is not the biggest.

Because intelligence doesn’t look like Hermione Granger, eagerly waving her hand in the air, the perfect student, the teacher’s pet. It looks like the child who sees through the rote, standardized nonsense being fed to them. It looks like a child getting kicked out of school because their gifts are so hidden by other things. They say teachers favor the smart. That’s not true. Teachers favor the average, the normal. They dislike the slow ones. But they also dislike the ones who question, experiment. The hungry, curious ones, looking for a challenge, who can’t concentrate, looking for more, more, more. They dislike the bright.

And all those good, obedient kids? The ones who keep their heads down and receive accolades? It won’t last. The famous people, the ones who changed the world, they were never obedient. They were not perfect students. They were children like YOU, blazing with uniqueness, with defiance, with infinite possibility. They got yelled at, called names, dislike. They were rebels.

So don’t listen to what the world tells you. You are smart, beautiful, amazing. Embrace your attention skills, feed your curiosity, never stop criticizing, questioning the world around you. One day, you will change the world.

by GRACE YANG