The Kingdom of Weird

When I went to school, there was only one way to do something, to learn a new idea, and definitely only one way to be.

This post is about to get personal….

Where I grew up was very rigid. In the buckle of the leathery Bible Belt, there is, or was, one right way. There was no room in classrooms, nor hearts and minds, to be any other way but the right way. I can still hear the echoes of the very phrasing, “ya’ll better act right”, “you better get right with God”, and the omnipresent condemnation “that ain’t right”. I didn’t know that my brain very literally processes information and senses the world very differently from others.

If you budged even a little or bent even just the tiniest bit, you were ostracized from every corner of applicable society that fully entrenched its residence at present.

There simply wasn’t a nook or cranny that was underground or undercover for us weird kids. The notion that we’d find our hive simply wasn’t a material reality.

Without support, without others to look to, and with very little representation of the only people and ideas who could potentially infiltrate our homes via the television who might share in belonging to the Kingdom of Weird, it just felt like I lived on the outskirts really far away where no roads even traveled.

Today, there seems to be not only an awareness, but community for us, and to a degree, a celebration of our diversity. Instead of being a disposable weirdo who gets chucked away, we now have a better understanding and frankly, less rules of how to be. We even have titles for our place in the Kingdom of Weird.

However, I am still seeing a trend at the base of it all. That being different is essentially weird and weird is essentially bad…or at the least, unsettling and in need of fixing.

I am saddened when I see other neurodivergent people, adults and kids, treated with paternalistic “help” because in the mind of others, we are deficient.

It is upsetting when teachers, parents, and other adults “accept” their child’s or student’s diagnoses, but still attempt to control their behavior. And it is supported by greater society under the guise of “well, I understand but they need to be able to function in societyyyy” without once questioning the very mores and codes of society that are dubious, at best.

Why is complete stillness important when stimming affects nobody else at all? Because it makes us uncomfortable? We don’t need to send a child for punishment for how they sense the world.

Why is looking directly in your eyes the focus when a child can focus on your words in ways that they are comfortable with and helps them learn while being respected? Because it makes us uncomfortable?

Why is the way a kiddo laughs a point of contention? What does it say to a kid when we tell them their laugh is wrong? Where is the need for control coming from? Discomfort?

I think like all areas of discomfort, this need for control of neurodivergent, ADHD, and Autistic kids comes from a deep-seated fear of possibilities. Possibilities that show how we can be but more deeply, possibilities that scream loudly in our faces how the world can be and maybe should be. And that causes fear because it means letting go of things that do not work but that we know. Things that we have told ourselves, our kids, our grandkids that’s right.

Accepting that there is no one right way means we have to accept that we have to change the way we teach, discipline, talk, and interact with kids and with each other. We have to go from “this is normal and now there’s x,y,z way to live” to “there is no normal and now there’s options for how we can live that works for us”. Just think of how that impacts your students and your kids. Especially your neurodivergent ones.

But here’s the thing, if our society is unwilling to accept possibilities, it has to accept that we designated weird folks will always be here challenging the ideas of “right”. We will always be here seeing the world with different eyes. We will always be here possibly causing discomfort unless…we all scale the walls and join the Kingdom of Weird.