"You Are Not Special" ... (Just sayin')

Our parents lied to us. And we lied to our kids. But becoming something special is possible ... with the right guidance.

Oct 07, 2023

**You’re special!** **… “Well, that’s just your opinion, man.” The Big Lebowski (1998)**

I am a Baby Boomer, the post-WWII progeny of the Greatest Generation.

You know — my parents — the people who survived the Great Depression, defeated the Nazis, sailed the Moon, unlocked DNA, spawned the Civil Rights movement, and championed the virtues of personal responsibility, duty, honor and faith.

They also gave us Tang. Oh, and velcro. Think about life without velcro.

For these things alone, we should be forever grateful.

However, it took this Boomer the better part of six decades to realize my parents, our parents, lied to us. The pretense has carried on for generations.

They weren’t being deceitful. Quite the contrary — the deception was unintentional, cloaked in unconditional love. They meant well.

But it was a lie nonetheless.

The Lie: “You Are Special!”

I’ve always detested clichés. They are products of a lazy, infertile mind. Any writer worth their quill would sooner crawl naked over 10 miles of broken glass before applying these lingual hacks.

“You are special” counts as one. It rests somewhere between “Love Conquers All” and “I Believe I Can Fly” on the human Trite-o-Meter.

As I aged and realized life wasn’t a Hallmark movie, I began to see "You are special" as patronizing — verbal saccharine — universally expressed by doting parents who view their offspring as a celestial gift from the heavens.

It’s also a fallacy.

Hate to break it to you, parents, but unless born in a stable 2,000 years ago somewhere in Roman-occupied Judea, your kid ain’t special.

I wasn’t. Mom and Dad lied. I had three sons. I said the same thing to each of them.

I lied, too.

Hate to break it to you, parents … but your kid ain’t special.

I know. Context. I seem to be stomping on every parent’s deepest, most emotional instinct. I get it. Your kid is special ... to you. In the eyes of the rest of the world, however, not so much.

I’m not an agent provocateur, nor do I troll or shitpost for kicks and giggles. (OK, maybe sometimes I do). But bear with me. There’s a backstory behind this term of endearment.

And my thought experiment has a positive ending.

Please allow me to elaborate.

Unique? Sure. Special? No

Your kids mean the world to you. You created them. They’re your legacy. They share your DNA, have singular fingerprints, and may possess a sunny demeanor and well-placed dimples. Be honest. When you look at them you see a part of you. A gift to yourself and to the world. Unique in every way.

But uniqueness doesn’t make them special.

**Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) from** **Fight Club** **(1998)**

Snowflakes are also unique. They're beautiful. But they’re just snowflakes — tiny little bits of frosted magic endlessly heaped upon each other until they’re unrecognizable.

Consider this: About 21 million people worldwide share your kid’s birthday. Roughly 3 million teens will graduate from U.S. high schools the same week as yours, most with roughly the same mean GPA.

They mostly like the same music, wear the same fashions, and use the same slang. All have smartphones and are on social media way too much.

Now, could you pick them out in an assembly?

Kinda like pulling a snowflake out of a drift.

"Everyone is special, just like you."

— David McCullough

Growing Up

Hopefully, your kid gets into a good college and is not broken by academic zealots hellbent on deconstructing their identity. They might get married … have kids (special, of course) … struggle with finances … build careers … buy homes … join the PTA … tend to gardens … go to Little League and soccer Saturdays … and hopefully claw their way through the challenge of adulting.

Not special. Unless they invent a better iPhone.

Somewhere along the way, amid the prosaic reality of everyday life, the underlying meaning of “you’re special” dissipates, as does a shadow into shade.

Self-Esteem Movement

Sometime in the mid-60s social psychology embraced self-esteem as a utilitarian tool for social progress.

The premise was that instilling self-esteem and generating positive feelings about oneself would foster a happier, more productive populace. Society as a whole would reap the benefits of improved academic performance, lower crime, greater employment, (presumably) lower budget deficits, and a higher quality of life for all.

"You're special!" became a mantra of the feel-good movement. Over the decades, self-esteem practices were ingrained into parents, promoted by therapists, politicians and teachers and instituted into educational policy.

Not a bad idea, really. Positivity is a good thing.

However, good intentions don’t always lead to optimal results. Some basic rules of life had to be tweaked to make “feelin’ alright” work for everybody. A few traditions — like the values of work ethic and self-responsibility — were, consciously or not, deemphasized or tempered.

"If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless." — David McCullough

First came the practice of "grade inflation" for underperforming students to make them feel better about their lack of achievement. This later gave way to No Child Left Behind, the one-size-fits-all approach to education. But that eventually went away when it was discovered that everybody couldn’t be special.

Want to see more of Quoth the Maven?

Youth sports began handing out "participation trophies." Rewards without merit. Trivial homework was assigned — "Five things I like about myself." Even mediocre academic achievement was celebrated. Remember the "My Child Is an Honor Student at Whocares Elementary School" bumper stickers?

Expectations were diminished. Standards were quietly lowered when goals weren’t met. School administrators spoke to teachers of academic “rigor” out of one side of their mouths, but “pass them” from the other. Technology made everything easy and convenient. Work ethic waned. Entitlement and BMI went up, personal agency and resilience went down.

Then along came the “helicopter parents” of Gen Z (1996-2012). When their kids learned to walk, it was the first and last thing they did on their own.

Basically, they went on lockdown at birth. Risk aversion took priority over healthy growth. Free play was prohibited. Parents became Centurions, guarding them from any possible harm … physical, mental, and emotional.

The insular upbringing had dire consequences.

It’s no surprise when Gen Z hit college campuses in 2013-14, they were ill-equipped to handle any adversity or challenge. Words became violence. “Safe Spaces” and “Trigger Warnings” sprung up as new students developed a need to be protected from ideas that they deemed hurtful or unacceptable.

Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff documented the phenomenon in their groundbreaking best-seller The Coddling of the American Mind (2018).

We Went Soft. And Crazy.

For the lack of a better way of putting it, we went soft. And batshit crazy. We went from "you’re special" in the 70s to settling for mediocrity in the ‘90s to near social dysfunction today.

What’s happened to the “special” kids? Have you read the news today? Oh, boy!

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 42 percent of Americans are obese (it was 10 percent in the 70s)
Over the past decade, teen depression/mental illness among girls has risen 90 percent, for boys 40 percent. (Pew Research)
Young adults under 25 spend an average of more than six hours a day on their phones. Many adolescents check their phones more than 100 times a day. This includes in-school hours. (Common Sense Media)
Suicide is the No. 1 killer of men under 35 (Medical News Today)
In 1995, about 3 percent of teens said they had no close friends. Today, that number is 25 percent. (Psychology Today)
About 15 percent of all Americans over the age of 12 are on anti-depressants (CDC) — the chemical alternative to building self-esteem.

Not so special, is it?

You're not special. But you can be!

It turns out merely feeling good about yourself doesn't mean diddly squat unless you have a good reason to feel good.

But there’s hope. As parents, you can provide your kid love, support, direction, guidance, and most importantly, the space to become special.

It turns out adversity is actually useful and necessary for building strong-minded, successful adults. Work on weaknesses while building strengths. Failure and rejection are good things. They tell us how and why we screwed up, and how to do better. The same applies to your kid.

Parents would do better to teach children resilience and grit. Emphasize that self-esteem is not built-in, but scaffolded, that developing social skills, practical smarts, industriousness and backbone gets special shit done.

And that will make them feel good.

Here's a better mantra for parents …

"Fall down seven times, get up eight." (Confucious)

As a parent, if you can instill this — you’re special.

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In deference to David McCullough Jr., an English teacher at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts. whose commencement speech graduating seniors — “You Are Not Special!” — gained worldwide notoriety in 2012.