Flowers Versus Weeds: How Were You Raised? What Are You Raising?

So much of this comes down to where you're standing. Somewhere along the way you probably absorbed a list of which plants in your garden count as weeds, the ones to pull, and which count as flowers, the ones to feed and protect. People plant a garden expecting flowers. The seed doesn't always agree. What comes up may be nothing like what you pictured, and it may be nothing like you, and suddenly you're holding a plant you have no idea how to raise.

That's the real question: do you treat the surprise as a letdown or as something worth discovering? Blaming the plant makes no sense. The work is on your end, learning a new set of methods. One plant wants more water, another wants less. Some crave full sun, others wilt in it and need shade. Different feedings, different protection against whichever insects go after that particular species. A few need more room than the rest, or they shoot up tall and throw shade over everything around them, including your own view. You can read all of that as a nuisance, or you can read it as a chance to learn how a plant you've never grown before actually works.

The Kennedys offer a hard example of getting it wrong. Their developmentally disabled daughter was given an operation meant to fix behavior the family found difficult, and the surgery failed her. After it, her behavior got worse, not better, and she was placed in an institution because they decided they couldn't manage her and that she could no longer gain anything from life alongside her siblings. Could she have been raised at the family compound anyway, in a way that worked for her even if it strained everyone else? They believed they couldn't handle how she behaved or how little she seemed to take in from what surrounded her. The decision proved disastrous. No one knew at the time that the operation wouldn't help and would instead do her further harm.

Turn the same question on yourself. Did you get what you specifically needed to come up as the flower you really were, or did somebody decide you were a weed and treat you like one? And go back a generation: what were your own parents labeled by their parents, their teachers, the kids they grew up with? Flowers or weeds, and how were they handled? Noticing those differences, along with the things that carry over, matters when it's your turn, whether the child is yours or a student, a niece, a nephew, any kid you spend time with.

Try to meet the unexpected one as a pleasant surprise and a way to see things from an angle you hadn't considered, rather than as a pest or, at kindest, an inconvenience. The danger in the second view is that it follows the child for life. Mark someone early as a failure, or as the lesser option next to a brother or sister who fits your style and meets your expectations, and you've set the terms they'll be measured against long after the comparison stopped being fair.

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