OmegaMom

OmegaDotter serenaded us with the “I am Special” song while we were off on our day trip.  Since Mr. OmegaMom and I were busy chit-chatting, it just glided over my head at first.  But then, during a chit-chat break, I started listening.

Oy!

Let me give some context.  The move and its attendant upheavals have left all of us in a state of perpetual flux…and I think all the Omegas are security hounds in one form or another.  The dotter’s routines are furschimmelt.  Her friends are all back in Small Mountain University Town.  Her toys and books and clothes and (most sorely missed of all) horsies are in boxes in a van somewhere in Big City.  Her mommy and daddy are grumpy a lot, because every time we turn around, we’re stepping on a dawg or a cat or a kid or one another.

Anyway, she’s all shook up.

As a result, she has been acting up.  Big time.  Tantrums.  Snotty attitude (ugh).  Many renditions of “neener, neener, neener” tones applied to many different communications to mother or father or dawg.

Right now, we’re striving–very, very hard–to not come down on her too hard, but at the same time get it through to her that it’s just plain not nice to be mean and snotty and have an attitude.  That other people count, and that words and deeds can hurt.  That if she snatches things away from other people, or sneers that the crown that mommy drew on her Ariel at her express request isn’t good enough, or sing-songs neener, neener, neener too many times, people just plain won’t want to be around her.  That doing those things can make other people (like mommy, who has a fragile set of waterworks these days) cry.

Kindergarden and aftercare come in for a smidgen of blame here, too, because she’s being thrown in with older kids and Learning New Things (not all of which we approve of).

To me, self-esteem is something hard won.  It’s not something you get just for living.  It’s something that grows, something that you feel when you’ve accomplished a hard task, something that comes from doing nice things for other people.  It’s not a given.

So when I heard the dotter singing that wretched song…well, it appalled me.

Yeah, it’s nice that kids think that it’s okay to be themselves.  It is not nice to think that other kids are bad simply because they have, say, acne, or messy hair, or stutter, or just look different in some way or another.  And I know that some kids don’t get approval or love from the get-go and may need shoring up in the area of “self-esteem”.

But “it’s okay” is a long, long distance from “I am special”.  “I am special” is a license, in my opinion, for kids to internalize a very self-absorbed attitude.  It celebrates “me, me, me” and promotes ignoring others.

To me, “special” is a B&B owner/manager who goes out of her way to rearrange accommodations for other customers because you’ve got no place to go and you’re stuck in her Shoebox.  To me, “special” is a neighbor who shows up on your doorstep with a bottle of whiskey when you’re being a single mom for a month and have gotten some shocking news, and insists you have a drink while she sits and lets you cry on her shoulder for a couple of hours.  To me, “special” is a cousin who arranges a veritable cornucopia of kid entertainment to keep the dotter busy while on an airplane for 10 hours.

“Special” is also a little girl who was terrified of skating who is suddenly soaring across the ice on her own.  “Special” is a little girl who spends an evening catching herself singing an annoying little ditty (don’t remember what it was, just that it was annoying) and thinks and stops each time, after being told it was annoying.  “Special” is a girl who got a big thumbs up after sounding out and spelling her first word (”pony”).

All of these are either individual achievements or care for other people’s needs or emotions.

“I am Special” doesn’t address any of that.  It doesn’t address the need for children to learn that they can try, and fail, and try again, and maybe–with hard work–achieve their end goal.  It celebrates just “being”, and promotes an attitude that one needs only to exist to get a gold star.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am quite aware of what having low self-esteem can do to people.  But it seems to me that the “I am Special” song is a cosmetic approach that inculcates an attitude diametrically opposed to what “self-esteem” really should be.  What good is singing “I am Special” to oneself if it makes one feel entitled to the good opinion of others, without striving and achieving?

Donna, in a comment on yesterday’s post, recommended a book, “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young People Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before”, by Jean Twenge.  I suspect I’m going to be reading that one very soon.