Effects of an Excluded Childhood
Why being a weird kid means I can't respond to text messages in a timely manner
It’s tough out there to be a kid. It’s particularly tough for some kids. Kids who are weird.
I do not believe all kids have to be friends with all other kids. Adults don’t have to be friends with everyone and kids shouldn’t feel like that either.
Some kids just aren’t going to fit in very well. I did not fit in very well. I was also terrified of being called out for being annoying or weird.
One of my earliest memories is my family all sitting on the couch watching television. No idea how old I was. For some reason I decided it would be fun to bop the back of everyone’s head and say ‘doot’. I’m guessing I was 3ish? That sounds like something a 3 year old might do. Someone - I honestly can’t remember who, turned around said “STOP doing that it’s so ANNOYING” and then turned back around watch TV.
Now, I don’t blame my family member for doing that. What I was doing was annoying. I’m not saying that this memory is some kind of great trauma or something that was a totally unacceptable moment. But I also never forgot how it felt to be admonished in that way and wanted to avoid that happening in the future.
I decided it would be good to stay away from people and stay quiet, because if I wasn’t totally sure what would set people off, I couldn’t trust myself to behave in an acceptable manner around other people.
Now, I’m sure I didn’t really decide this at 3 years old. But that experience stayed with me every time I entered a room full of people, started a new year at school, or went out to the playground.
Don’t be annoying.
Ironically, of course, policing my behavior every second made me an uptight weirdo who just wasn’t quite….normal. I didn’t want to play with other kids because it felt like I was performing a role of “normal kid” in a theater production, but I didn’t know my lines or how the scene was supposed to play out.
So then I didn’t get experience for how to handle social situations. I froze up when people talked to me. I misunderstood their questions. I got awkwardly told “Actually, I was talking to her” (gestures at the person next to me).
I was also ‘gifted’ (read: out of sync with my peers, using words kids thought were bizarre, and generally preferring to read books over playing at recess) and had ADHD so tended to be disorganized, messy looking, and forgetful (about people’s names, what they were into, and social norms generally).
Over time, I decided to exclude myself as much as possible, which of course, led to me being further excluded. I really can’t blame other people - I did this to myself; but I can forgive myself because I know did it to protect myself.
Weird kids and mean kids
This is only coming up for me now because I have a weird daughter who is entering the age where rejection feels especially hard, and kids seem so incredibly mean. She’s putting on the armor, just as I did when I was a teenager, of “ugh, I hate people” and dressing like a tiny goth kid to make sure it’s abundantly clear that she’s fine if you think she’s weird.
Kids ARE mean. Super mean. I’m blown away by what I overhear kids say to each other. I actually don’t think this is a new phenomenon, though people like to bemoan ‘kids today’ being so much worse. Watching 90’s movies as an adult - movies I don’t even recall having ‘mean’ kids in them - is pretty astonishing.
This kind of peer judgment, I think, can be positive. It encourages messy kids (like me) to takes showers, wear clean clothes and brush your hair because you care what people think of you. It encourages a level kids to think about what their identity should be, how they should portray themselves to each other. And this does allow most kids to sort of team up with the kids who are similar; it ultimately allows the weirdo kids to find each other.
But what happens when kids don’t find their people? What happens when, to protect themselves from rejection, they decide they just don’t need friends or anyone in their life at all?
I’m not responding to your text messages because 20 years ago I had no one to hang out with at lunch
I was surprised recently to discover that people genuinely expect people to respond to messages within an hour or so. Do I have 100+ unread text messages at any given time? Yes I do (though to be fair most of them are 2FA texts).
Why is it so hard for me to respond quickly? Because I can’t respond in the moment - I have to be somewhere quiet / away from kids so I can think about how to respond, to make sure I don’t come off as weird.
The effect of this, of course, is that people know I’m a flake. People stop texting me. So not only do I come off as weird, I’m weird and a jerk who doesn’t get back to people. I learned recently that sometimes people interpret lack of responsiveness to mean that I think I’m better than other people. If I could even just think for a moment I’m just as good as other people, that would be a complete transformation of my life.
Here are some other ways I have found being excluded is affecting my adulthood:
I DREAD things like 4th of July BBQs, even with people I know really well. I’m not sure what I’m going to do once I can’t use the excuse that I have to hang back because my 2yo is napping
I have absolutely no clue how to effortlessly chat with other moms at sports practices and games, which means my daughter doesn’t get invited to other kids’ houses and we’re not going to hang outs, which means my daughter is all up in my business 24/7, which means conflict
I waste money and accumulate clutter buying games and activities that we can do at home, because we’re with each other so much (due to lack of friends)
I have nothing to chat about with other people anyway, because one thing people love to talk about is other people, and I don’t know any other people to gossip about
I literally wouldn’t even know how to talk about something that wasn’t going well in my life. I’m in the middle of divorcing, for example, and our neighbors, who we see almost daily, have no idea. How would I even bring something like that up?! Friendship requires vulnerability and I have no clue how to talk about the monumental stress in my life with other human beings, even people who easily talk about that kind of thing with me
I’m exhausted when I’m around other people, because I’m still in performance mode, and I still don’t know my lines.
Now, if I didn’t have kids, I would just… be an introvert. I truly am never lonely; I love alone time. But I don’t want my daughter to grow up agonizing about how to respond to text messages because she’s afraid people will think she’s weird. I want her to have friends, because I genuinely think she does want friends. I think kids need to spend time with other kids and make mistakes and learn how to get along with people.
I’ve decided to stop giving a crap what people think. I remember I had a real estate agent who would send messages immediately with words misspelled and I honestly wasn’t really sure what she was trying to say half the time. But I was just like, shrug, she’s busy. She’s not weird or annoying.
I am likely to come off as weird and possibly desperate trying to make friends at my kids’ sports games. Do I care? No. People can either think I’m weird and anti-social or weird and too much / annoying, but I’ve just accepted I’m going to be weird either way.
Maybe I’ll meet another weirdo, and we can be friends.
I just hope they’re ok if I still suck at responding to text messages.