Who I Was Then, I Still Am Now

How our behaviors as very young children are indicators for who we are likely to be as adults

This weekend I read a funny/sad piece by Medium peep Kristi Keller. Reading it brought up a thought or two about how kids’ behavior is so very honest and predictive. One part of her story reminded me about my own life, and how clearly we are who we are very, very young.

Here’s her article:

Kristi shows us a “report card” on herself as a child, and circles in red those parts that show how, very early on, we make it clear how we’re going to appear in the world. In her case, her teacher, while trying exceedingly hard to point out that Kristi is just so conscientious, effectively also says that she’s got a big mouth.

I nearly fell out of my seat laughing at that. And of course Kristi “speaks out of turn” (how rude, but look, she is making contributions) and “lacks self-control.” My favorite lines, and these are what sent me into uncontrolled laughter: Kristi still tends to be loud in class. She will shout or speak out loudly without raising her hands first. Other than that, Kristi is considered almost an excellent student. (author bolded).

God I love that “almost.” As if she would just shut the heck up, teacher sure would like her better. Yet, those characteristics are, to my mind, precisely what make Kristi such a great writer. How awful it might have been had those very traits been tamped down, and what a loss to all of us. Certainly to me, and I suspect to everyone else who loves her writing, and who loves her, because her ability to shout out truths in her own inimitable way are precisely what make her Kristi.

From early on, Kristi had something to say. Clearly she felt it was important enough to say without asking “Mother May I?” My distinct impression is that things haven’t changed much.

In such ways, our mini-me’s claim their geography early on.

I’ll bet you a dime to a dollar that if any of the rest of us were to check the notes our well-meaning teachers made about us as kids, we’d see precisely the same kind of thing. Early on we demonstrate some pretty specific character traits. Traits that become through-lines for the rest of our lives.

In those of us who have out-sized characteristics that don’t conform, particularly as women (be quiet, knees crossed, be polite, raise your hand before you speak) the societal preferences are pushed on us hard to keep us in line. Happily, that doesn’t always work.

In some ways, it’s sad it doesn’t.

At five, my brother was already stealing money from the pockets of my father’s pants, which Dad hung on the bathroom door. He never stopped stealing- from our parents, girlfriends, friends, family. I wouldn’t let him so he broke off contact. With him, love had a price tag. The last girlfriend, well, he emptied her bank account of considerable cash.

While I have my own challenges with the interpretation of this word, I was born an empath. Not in the science fiction sense, but as someone who has a heightened awareness of the emotional states of others. And who tends to absorb them as their own. These days this is called the HSC or Highly-Sensitive Child:

Back then, that kind of kid, like the autistic child or depressed child or dyslexic child, was just different. And had to be “fixed.”

That caused me no amount of grief early on. As young as three I felt the full brunt of the alcohol-fueled rages in my family. With the absolute assurance of the extremely young, I was convinced they were my fault. They weren’t, but as with many dysfunctional families, my folks were only too happy to shift the burden to the youngest family member. One my earliest memories is being on my knees, in the bathroom, my tiny elbows on the cool edges of our pink tub, praying to get away from my family.

Which I did. I was the kid who explored the woods, built sand forts and tree forts. I was the one who, once I got a horse, rode all day, only to barely make it back home by the dinner bell. I traveled as far and as wide as I could in the allotted hours. At 16 I left home, moved into a small trailer, and put myself through the rest of high school on my own. I was ever peripatetic, a wild child from the very beginning, always preferring horses and dogs and the smells of the woods to the smells of my father’s alcoholic breath and my brother’s heavy breathing as he assaulted me in my bedroom night after night. I had good cause to want to get the hell out of my birth home.

At three years old, my shoulders weren’t big enough for the familial load I was trying to carry. But that taught me that others’ loads were mine to carry, when they weren’t. I had learn how to drop that load, and it took me nearly a lifetime.

By the time I made it to kindergarten I was already convinced that I wasn’t welcome in any group, if I wasn’t welcome in my own family. I’d developed that heightened awareness of emotional volatility and rejection that exists in families affected by addiction. I simply transferred that discomfort and the assumption that I was the problem to social groups, even tiny play circles of six-year-old kids.

I have two behavioral reports very similar to Kristi’s, dated 1959 and 1960. Both contained the uber-kind voice of kindergarten teachers trying hard to give a parent encouragement about their kid, while pointing out what’s “wrong” from the standpoint of acceptable societal behavior. In both these cases, my teacher noted that I wouldn’t join groups. Rather, I would stand nearby, and wait until I got invited. If the invitation wasn’t forthcoming I would go play by myself. No different from at home. Or now, for that matter.

Anything that makes us different, makes us a threat to established norms. Each culture and society has its own set of normative behaviors. For example, I’ve never been accepted into groups of married friends. Not on your life. I was ostracized when living alone in a neighborhood full of couples. I have always been viewed with suspicion for the choices I’ve made: Army, no kids, adventure travel. A few years ago I was accused of sleeping with an old high school friend, whose wife was sure that I’d bedded her man while she was traveling one weekend. Nope. But how much easier to blame the single woman.

I’ve been able to turn the tendency to sense what others are feeling, to take the temperature of a group or organization to my advantage. It has taken years. But the better I got at it, the worse my own dysfunctional family treated me.

My father was frightened of what I saw. What I could feel, and what I called out. He felt naked around me. That got me kicked out of the family. Outsider.

This NPR article touches on some of this, but also the fact that childhood development is deeply complex:

Some kids are just more sensitive than others. That’s neither good nor bad, any more than being autistic or dyslexic is good or bad. Simply set me on a path to work with it as best I could.

Different scares people

There’s a great line out of the movie The Accountant. The hero is a high-functioning autistic whose military father is forcing him to learn to protect himself. In one scene the boys are getting prepared to take on a gang of bullies, and the father says, “Sooner or later, different scares people.”

Which is precisely, to my mind, what Kristi’s report card says. What my card days. Different is uncomfortable to a teacher, who fears nonconformity. It has to be controlled. My brother’s art teacher yelled at him for coloring outside the lines. He was a genius. He hated art class. A lot of very, very bright non-comformists hate school because of the forced conformity, of feeling like who they are is wrong and needs to be corrected.

We show up as we are, in full

While you can, and many do, argue the whole nature-nurture piece, what is true for me is that we slide sloppily into the world with our own hot messes perfectly in place. While we most certainly pick up plenty from our caregivers, we are already stamped with Jungian personalities and preferences such as aversion to detail, love of bossing others around or the preference for silence.

None of this says that we can’t learn to manage, negotiate terms with or find ways to maximize our proclivities. That hot mess is what I sometimes call my Smaug, the demons in the dark.

Being something of an empath cost me until I learned to better manage it, which for me means spending most of my time alone. When I’ve spoken at conferences, I’ve felt the need to hide in my room and just shed for a while (not virus, thanks, just people’s feelings and their terrible, aching needs). That hardly makes me a snowflake. I would argue strenuously that growing up ultrasensitive is a nascent superpower, if we learn how to use it to serve rather than allow it to abuse us.

At times I feel like the great giant John Coffey, in The Green Mile, who picks up way too much from those around him. While I’m not likely to revive a dead mouse or fix someone’s urinary tract infection by grabbing him in the crotch, I do absorb more than my share. That has made me a very good consultant, speaker, writer, and friend. However I am lousy at intimate relationships, to which I happily cop, recognizing that living together really is impossible for me. I knew that very early on, but tried hard to adapt to a societal order to which I do not belong.

We show our super powers early on

Which is precisely what I see with Kristi’s report cards. That “speak the truth super power” showed up young and strikes me as a powerful current in how she sees and writes about her world. At least that’s how I experience Kristi’s work and words.

If you wonder sometimes where you “picked up” certain habits, you might ask your parents or caregivers if your kindergarten or very early report cards are still around. My guess is that you didn’t pick anything up per se. Chances are that who you are was already pretty obvious before you got out of diapers.

For my part, that was a gift. I no longer feel the need to apologize for what I sense, feel and pick up around others. If nothing else, that’s a gateway to deep compassion.

What are the super powers you were born with? Did you have to hide them? And is it time to let the world see you in the fullness of your individuality?