Being a kid is incredibly hard, even under the best of circumstances. But when you’re different and struggle socially, it’s a whole different ball game, and it can be heartbreaking to watch kids navigate this minefield.
One mom on Reddit was deeply worried about her “weird” daughter, but her concerns turned into reasons for hope after her fellow Redditors shared their own experiences, both with their children and as former kids themselves.
The worried mom asked parents to share stories of their ‘awesome weird kids who turned out OK.’
Most of us struggled socially at one time or another as a kid, and some of us even got ostracized or bullied along the way.
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Most of our parents and teachers dealt with these issues in very different ways than they do today. The conventional wisdom was that this was just part of growing up, and learning how to navigate it on our own was crucial to our own self-sufficiency and resilience.
But today, of course, we know orders of magnitude more about how social issues, ostracization, and bullying can affect kids — often for the rest of their lives. Add in the ways complex mental and neurological issues like ADHD or autism can impact a kid’s social development, and it becomes even more complicated and often more worrisome.
Such is the situation for this momwhose 10-year-old daughter is struggling to make friends at school because she’s the “weird” girl who is the “odd one out.”
Her daughter’s ADHD gives her a big personality that ‘takes up a lot of space’ — and turns off her classmates.
This mom’s description of her daughter will instantly resonate with anyone who grew up as a similarly outside-the-box kid, whether because of conditions like ADHD, autism, or other forms of neurodivergence or simply because they went against the grain by having an LGBTQ+ or other marginalized identity.
She wrote that her daughter is “very much the weird girl and regularly excluded from girl groups at school” because her ADHD means she “takes up a LOT of space.” She’s got a big personality but, in many ways, has the maturity of a child much younger.
As often happens with neurodivergence, this has made her truly special, gifted, and interesting. “She’s AWESOME,” the mom wrote, explaining that she “can ski and bike double black diamonds without hesitation, rides a horse, plays forward in soccer, is kind and funny.”
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She added that adults love her because she’s so “chatty and entertaining.” (Sound familiar, weird kids who were always hanging out with the moms at the birthday parties? No? Just me? OK, never mind.) Her peers, however, are a different story.
“She has one friend,” the mom added. “She’s confident and her shoulders are back, but I fear the teen world will crack her for her weirdness… I’m terrified for her and what’s to come.”
So, she asked her fellow Redditors to “share with me stories about your awesome weird kids who turned out OK” to ease her mind, and boy, did they deliver.
People shared stories from their own ‘weird kid’ childhoods as well as how they’ve helped their ‘weird kids’ flourish.
The mom’s fellow Redditors had all kinds of ideas, including teaching her daughter about the concept of the “conversation pie,” an analogy many teachers, speech therapists, and others who work with neurodivergent children use to teach social skills like how to carry on a conversation — basically, that everyone should get an equal share of the “conversation pie.”
But just as impactful were people’s experiences from their own lives.
One Redditor shared that as the “weird girl,” her mom was blunt with her about what sorts of reactions she should expect to receive from others — but that she shouldn’t take them personally. “She never let me feel bad for myself, just ‘yup, you’re weird, keep on keeping on,'” she wrote, adding, “I love her for that.”
Another shared that while her “weirdness” was hard, her inability to fit in filtered out a lot of unsavory people and situations in her life and hence led to her finding her groove a lot sooner in adulthood than most — and has made her a more “interesting” person. “If you keep being a loving parent, all your daughter’s hardships will mold her into an amazing adult,” she said.
Another shared that she tells her “weird” kids, “You just need a few people who get you. That’s it. You don’t need 100 ‘friends,'” — advice that several others echoed.
“I grew up to be a weird adult, I met and married a fellow weirdo and we had three weird kids. We now have a weird little grandson and we are all very happy,” one woman wrote. “She will find her people. Please allow her to be her weird self and embrace her. She’ll be fine.”
There’s perhaps no better advice than that.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.
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