Are You Normal?

Aug 24

7 min read

Updated: Aug 25

Do you know anyone who is normal?

I mean genuinely normal. Someone who developed at exactly the right speed, behaved in exactly the right way, liked all the right things, learned everything at the right time and somehow managed to navigate childhood, adolescence and adulthood without ever feeling that they were slightly different from everyone else.

Because apparently, that's what we are looking for.

Let's start at the beginning. You were born at exactly the right time. Not too early, not too late. You came into the world without a fuss and the doctors immediately put your parents' minds at rest. You were the right height, the right weight and sitting comfortably where you should be on the percentile chart that tells us how you compare with everyone else.

You were normal.

You slept through the night, because that was what babies were supposed to do. Someone had decided that approximately 7pm until 7am was the right amount of sleep, and thankfully you fitted the schedule. You ate the food you were given, walked when you were supposed to walk and said your first word at approximately the right time. Nothing too early, nothing too late. You were doing just fine.

Then you went to nursery. A strange place, full of unfamiliar adults and lots of other little people, and when your parents left you, you were fine. You didn't cling to their legs or look back as they walked away. You went in, played, made friends and eventually came to love your teacher. You quickly learned to sit and listen to whatever somebody else had decided was interesting that morning. You took the information in, remembered it and moved on to the next thing. You weren't confused by the instructions. You didn't need to get up and move around. You didn't need to ask why. You listened, you learned and you fitted in.

Normal.

Then you grew up a little more and somebody decided that you were now old enough to sit in a classroom for approximately seven hours a day, five days a week. You sat in rows, listened to adults, absorbed thousands of pieces of new information and were expected to remember most of it. And you coped. Because this is what normal children do. Of course, things happened around you. Maybe your parents argued. Maybe someone you loved died. Perhaps your family separated, you moved house, you were bullied or something happened that completely changed the way you saw the world. Perhaps there was a pandemic. Perhaps there was a war. But it was okay. You got on with it. Normal people cope.

You accepted the uniform, even if the shirt was uncomfortable and the tie felt ridiculous around your neck. You accepted that this was how children were supposed to dress. You accepted sitting down when you were told to sit down and standing up when you were told to stand up. Then came different teachers, different classrooms and different expectations. You had to move around a building, find the right room, remember what you needed, sit with thirty other children and then do it all again when the bell went. No problem. Normal children cope. And for a while, you did.

Then something started to change. You started to discover who you were. You had a favourite colour. That's fine when you're three, but what happens if you decide you want to keep that favourite colour when you're thirteen? What if you want your hair to be that colour too? What if you don't want to dress like everyone else? Suddenly, we become a little less comfortable.

Mum and Dad can use certain language, but you can't. They can behave in certain ways, but you are told that you should know better. You listen to the music that everyone else says is normal, but then you discover something different and suddenly your taste becomes strange. You like a sport nobody else likes? That's unusual. You think differently? That's difficult. You don't want to do what everyone else is doing? What's wrong with you?

It is interesting, isn't it, how quickly the definition of normal seems to change when you stop behaving like everyone else?

And perhaps this is where I have started to question things myself. We actually love difference when it is somewhere else. We love the rainforest because everything is different. Different trees, different plants, different animals, different colours and different ways of surviving. We marvel at the tropical fish tank because no two fish seem to look or behave in exactly the same way. We celebrate nature because of its incredible diversity. But when it comes to human beings, somehow we want something different. We want structure. We want predictability. We want children to move through a curriculum at roughly the same pace, learning roughly the same things, sitting roughly in the same place, for roughly the same amount of time. And if you struggle with the pace, you are behind. If you find it too easy, you're exceptionally bright. If you can't concentrate, we need to work out what's wrong. If you excel, we identify you. If you struggle, we identify you too.

There is nothing inherently wrong with identifying where a young person needs support or where they might benefit from greater challenge. Of course there isn't. The problem, I think, comes when the label starts to become the person. You have been measured and compared since the day you were born. Height, weight, development, reading age, grades, attendance, progress, performance and behaviour. We constantly compare you with the person sitting next to you, and sometimes we forget that the person sitting next to you isn't supposed to be you.

I've spent 25 years working in education, and the older I get, the more uncomfortable I become with the idea that there is some perfect version of a child that we should all be trying to produce. There isn't. There is no such thing as normal. There are just people.

People with different brains, different personalities, different experiences, different interests, different strengths and completely different ways of seeing the world. Some people need routine, while others need freedom. Some thrive in a classroom, while others find sitting still for seven hours incredibly difficult. Some can absorb information simply by listening. Others need to move, touch, build, create or experience something before it makes sense.

Some people love numbers. Others see the world through art, music or sport. Some need more time. Others need more challenge. Some will flourish at ten years old and struggle at fifteen. Others will barely seem to get going before suddenly finding something that changes everything. None of that makes them more or less human. And I think this is where we need to change the conversation.

Instead of constantly asking a young person, "Why can't you be more like everyone else?", perhaps we should ask something much more interesting: "Who are you?"

What makes you tick? What are you good at? What makes you curious? What do you care about? What makes you feel successful? What makes you feel connected? What makes you want to get out of bed in the morning? And perhaps most importantly, what happens when we stop trying to make you fit and start trying to understand you?

I've seen incredibly capable young people begin to believe that they aren't capable simply because they haven't fitted comfortably into the system around them. I've seen children who are labelled because they are struggling and children who are labelled because they are excelling. I've seen young people who know exactly what they can do, but have slowly stopped believing in themselves because the things they are good at aren't always the things school measures best.

Maybe you've seen it too.

Maybe you've got a son or daughter who is completely different at home to the child their school describes. At home they are funny, caring, creative, full of energy and brilliant at talking about the things they love. Then the school phone rings and suddenly you're hearing about behaviour, disengagement, lack of effort or another incident.

And you sit there thinking, Are we talking about the same child?

Or perhaps you've sat in the car after another difficult day and your child has said, "I hate school." And you've tried to reassure them, but somewhere inside you're wondering whether they have started to hate themselves a little bit too. That is the bit that matters to me. Because a young person can struggle in a particular environment without being a failure. They can take a different route without being behind. They can need something different without something being wrong with them.

Maybe the question isn't always, "How do we get this child to fit the system?"

Maybe sometimes it should be, "How do we understand this child well enough to help them find where they can thrive?"

Being different isn't a deficit. Being different isn't broken. Being different isn't something that needs to be fixed.