Photo courtesy of Merriam Webster

There are two disgusting facts that I have recently become aware of. The first is that children all over the world try to change who they are in order to fit in with their classmates at school. The second is that their parents support it. Why on earth would you encourage your child to be mediocre and act like everyone around them? Everyone is different and parents should help their children to become whoever they want to be.

A lot of times kids feel the need to fit in because they want to be “cool” and have an abundance of friends. Parents should advise their kids that there is no such thing as “cool”, because frankly, there isn’t. The way I like to think about it is: There is no such thing as cool people, only your people. If you find your group of people that makes you feel proud, then you have just beat the system. That is the key to fitting in. It is not fitting in at all but in fact finding people you blend with.

Photo courtesy of Wayne Hastings

Let’s take this back for a moment to the root of all this evil. Popularity. What is it? What causes it? And who is lucky enough to hold the glorious title of “popular”? According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, popularity means, “state of being liked, enjoyed, or done by a large number of people.” There you have it; to be popular you must be liked. But what qualities does a person have that makes them that well liked? It may be physical appearance, but that is certainly not always the case. It could also be a person’s talents, whether it be in athletics or anything else, but again that is not always the case. What I see as a quality that most well liked people hold is their self-confidence. If a student believes in oneself, more often than not, the other students will begin to believe in that person as well.

This brings me back to my last point. Let your child be whoever they want to be! You may never know where it could lead them. And if they are getting bullied because of who they are, they need to be reassured that they will be stronger in the future because of it. Tell them to walk straight up to the bully, look him right in the eyes, and say, “You can’t change me.”

By Madeline Gadaleta’19, Staff Writer