The Importance of the Weird Stuff

Madeleine Thompson - 8 Apr 17

Being Easter holidays, we hosted a sleepover this week for some of the cousins and had two of our nieces to stay.  Size-wise they are the same ages as our two children so it was a mix of adorable and chaotic and funny and at times a bit weird.  I use the word weird in the nicest way, because I think that it is a characteristic that goes hand-in-hand with parenting young children.   You can have very strange moments, that in the context of raising young children actually seem quite normal.    I love the intricacies of pre-schoolers and the fact that their natural quirkiness means you never quite know what to expect next.  Whether that is an action they might take or what the next words out of their mouth with be.  It’s never dull.

Sitting at the table eating tea on sleepover night, we had the radio on in the background as we often do in our kitchen.  Being well into our thirties, my husband and I listen to BBC Six Music because it lets us have a little bit of the cool that may have alluded us the first time around and occasionally they throw in some weird shit like a two-minute medley from Nashville or a piano jazz song.    It isn’t uncommon at our dinner table to occasionally start dancing if there is a song on.   And this happened at the table on sleepover night.   First, my daughter started dancing.  Then my son.  Then me.   And so on.   I think my nieces had a moment of whatever the kid version of WTF is, and then they joined in.

I did have a flashback to watching a film with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in, Notes on a Scandal, where Dench visits Blanchett’s family home and judges harshly the fact that they do family dancing around the lounge.  And to anybody looking in from outside, we probably also looked weird dancing at the table.  And just as weird when we stopped and carried on eating dinner as before.

Point is, I think it is important to do things that are different, do the weird things, the random things, and not to worry what people on the outside looking in will think.

I remember a time, probably in the 90s, when it became cool to be ‘random’ and do ‘random’ stuff.  But it became so normal that those random things became distinctly un-random.  I think we should celebrate quirky, celebrate difference, and let our kids know it’s important to be yourself and not be afraid to be different.

Madeleine Thompson

I am mum to my little chicks, Aisha, 6 and Abel, 4. Originally from Yorkshire, UK, I now live in a little town in the North West. By day, I work for myself as a freelance PA. By night, I indulge my passion for writing.

View profile for posts, events and more info