Bizarre

Bizarre is not the same thing as talented, or intelligent, or creative.

I see people who seem to be encouraging their child to be weird -- not just themselves -- not unique -- just annoyingly bizarre. And I feel sorry for those children.

Children don't only know what they are taught. They know when people make fun of them. They know when they are odd man out. They know when they are different in a bad way that hurts. And I don't think any parent would intentionally set out to put their child in that position. Yet I've seen it done by well meaning people more often than you might want to believe.

Their kid is normal. He or she is not a genius, or prodigy. And that should be okay. Most of us fall into that category, but for some people it evidently is not enough. They create terrifying little creatures who are told they are geniuses and, because they don't know what to do with that they feel they must do something bizarre to prove it.

And so we lose a perfectly wonderful human being who might have done perfectly normal every day things in some beautiful way, because someone mistook bizarre for brilliant and misled their child.