What Kind of Child Is Growing in Your Greenhouse?
Sometimes in the darkest hour of the night do you panic? Not irrational stranger panic, but the fear that comes from loving a child so deeply that you can see their personal challenges magnified beyond reason. I know every parent experiences some form of this, but for those of us who are parenting kids who are slightly-off-the-grid those nighttime skirmishes may be a familiar feeling.
Some kids seem to be more challenging than others, these kids are often seen as difficult, or as Alyson Schafer puts it “discipline-resistant”. These are kids who seem more highly sensitive to the world around them and can be discombobulated by the smallest incident and they can turn family life on its head in an instant.
As a mother of a somewhat “challenging child”, I can tell you that nature plays an important role (and yes, I realize nurture factors in here too). Our first-born is different temperamentally than his siblings, but also different than other kids. And those differences can make him hard to parent, but more importantly they make it hard to be him.
Recently, an article in the Globe and Mail details a study that recognizes “orchid children”. The researchers raised some interesting ideas that children who carry certain traits can be challenging and difficult but given the right environment they can flourish and grow into spectacular blooms. But children with the same characteristics growing up in a non-supportive home can be vulnerable to depression and other behavioural issues that can cause them to wilt. So essentially, these kids biggest challenges can also be flipped into their greatest strengths.
Dan Dobbs, wrote a fascinating article in The Atlantic magazine that divided kids into two categories: dandelions who are resilient and can thrive in any circumstance and orchid children “who will wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care.” This idea of “plasticity” -- that a genetic disposition to the dark side is also the root of some people’s incredible success -- combines the nature and nurture philosophies into one powerful parenting tool.
Parenting a difficult/high-needs/indigo/orchid – or whatever you want to call it – child has taught me a lot about what it means to be a parent and a person: how far I am willing to go to find the right way to support him; how I am willing to go against the grain of friends and family to do what I know is right; that acting as a united front would pull me and my husband together as a team and it would also challenge us; how far I can be pushed and how dark it can be when I get there, and most importantly how much I can love a child who needs so much love that sometimes he pushes it away.
So in the darkest hours, I try and remind myself that just like in gardening – those roots that you nourished, tendrils that you carefully placed, and outrageously bountiful blooms that you enjoy – it is the hard work on your knees, slogging in the dark that gets you the most beautiful blooms.
What are you growing in your home? Orchids, Dandelions or both?
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