On Being Different

Jan 18, 2020

Read time: 1 mins

Recently, after reading a children's book to Liam about how people are different, he had some questions. You could tell it just wasn't clicking for him. "Different" was a new word he didn't have a definition for, so we tried to help him out.

We used our little family as an example. Typically when he can related something to us, he can use that lens elsewhere too. So we said see, Momma has yellow hair, and Dadda has black hair, and you have brown hair. Each one of us is different! No one person's hair is better than anyone else, it's just different.

You could tell he was catching on as he started pointing out other features of our bodies that were unique to us. Then came the part where we try to pull that further outside of just our family. We said hey think about your best friend Max, or all of the kids at school and your teachers and the person that brings us food at the restaurant, are they different too?

And he has a little light bulb moment where he gasped and raised his eyebrows and the pitch of his voice as he excitedly proclaimed,

"Oh now I get it! Everybody is different! Just like us!"

So close little one, so close!