The Dopey One

Parenting today has become all about comparing your child to other kids.

First after the child is born, you take them to each doctor visit. The doctor tells you where your child’s height, weight and head size is relative to other kids. You’re given a percentile and a curve where your child is relative to other kids.

If your child is on the higher end, you feel great. On the lower end you feel miserable and wonder what more you can do. Most times there is nothing else you can do.

Then the child gets older, you’re given milestones they should be hitting.

All the feedback is putting every child into a box. Looking at kids against a majority and saying this is how all kids should be. Then making parents feel alarmed if their child is anything different from the normal ranges.

At the same time, everyone preaches individuality and letting the kids be themselves. But we all want our kids to match the standards that society is telling us.

Now picture this:

What if you had a child who could barely speak until they were 2. Is so slow that people labeled them as backwards. Eventually having people call them the “dopey one.”

How would you feel if that was your child?

You’d probably feel like the world is ending. Trying to do everything in your power to get your child up to speed. Feeling embarrassed and going to special doctors to help. Constantly trying to do more to help your child catch-up.

But what if you fast forward to your child as an adult and realize that child became a genius.

We can do that easily, because this story actually happened and this child became Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein as a child could barely speak and his parents were worried. They consulted a doctor who didn’t know what to do to fix his speech problems

Eventually they stopped trying to fix him and let him develop at his own pace. He was nicknamed “der Depperte”, which meant the dopey one.

His parents feared that he would never learn anything.

Eventually when he did speak, he was still nervous. Before he would speak, he would whisper the words to himself to practice. Then once he got it right, he would say the words aloud.

His family thought he was crazy for talking to himself.

But what if this delayed speech actually helped him?

Einstein famously said he didn’t think in words, he thought in pictures. Because he had such a trouble with words, it helped his thinking.

This visual thinking helped him crack relativity. He approached the problem differently than scientists who thought in equations and words.

Einstein later said his slow development meant he kept asking childlike questions about space and time well into adulthood. Questions other scientists had stopped asking years earlier.

Einstein's parents did what modern parents resist: they stopped trying to fix him. His speech delay wasn't a deficit to overcome, it shaped how his mind worked. What looked like a problem was actually his advantage.

The traits that make your pediatrician concerned, might be exactly what makes your kid extraordinary. Stop trying to fix what isn't broken.