Your Daughter Is Weird

I was teaching at a school here in Cambodia with my daughter in my class. One of my students was 3 and speaking in broken one to four word phrases. I asked my boss if his speech was delayed.

She said, “No, your daughter is weird.”

The director of the school holds degrees in Psychology with a clinical focus on neurological development in children, Biology, and Psychological Disorders of Childhood. I considered her an expert and that’s exactly why it stung. Someone with that much experience working with children didn’t see a child thriving in a language rich environment. She just saw weird.

I was offended and, honestly, a little hurt as a mother. I moved on but it stayed with me. A few days later I looked up the actual definition of weird and felt slightly better about her word choice. But that burning in the back of my mind pushed me to start thinking about how Cami and I got to this place.

Everywhere we went people commented on her vocabulary. It never fazed me because she was my frame of reference. She was just normal to me. It took someone pointing out what made her unique for me to realize she was different. 

In the best way.

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