What is more important to impart in children’s literature than this? Your unique individuality, your creativity - your difference - is a mysterious and wonderful thing. When we suppress it in children or make them feel strange for their ‘difference’, we are withering children’s souls, stripping their very identities before they can begin to bloom.
When I was still a child, I read a beautiful book called I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Hannah Green. It’s about a young woman who is institutionalized for schizophrenia. I must have been about twelve. And the one sentence that I have never for a day in my life forgotten is when she says to one of the psychiatrists: “Please, doctor. My difference is not my sickness.”
Her differences were manifestations of her strength and health! But the doctor, intent on succeeding in his rigid goal to make her conform to normality, could not hear her words.
Let’s hear and affirm every child just as they are. Accept and celebrate their uniquenesses, understanding that it is part of the unfolding of a unique, complete human being. It is a privilege given to us to nurture the process of self-acceptance and pride in children. And an awful loss when we let them down. There is just too much to lose.
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