Differentiation

I spend a lot of my professional time thinking and talking about "differentiation", specifically as it can play out in foreign language classrooms. Although differentiation is a current buzz word in education, it is so much more than a classroom issue.

On Sunday the children of our church put on a musical. Yes, children in costume sang and told a story but it was so much more than that. Non-singing younger girls got to wear pretty outfits and dance. A pre-teen who obviously has dance talent, had a solo role that highlighted her skills. A boy who literally marches to his own drummer played his beloved drum set! A girl who has Down Syndrome and loves super "girlie" clothes had a featured role waving a banner that matched her pretty gown. The pre-schoolers got their moment on stage, each holding hands with an older child. Non performers were ushers or had their paintings featured on the walls. I was struck not so much by the play or its message, but by the stronger message that all these kids are God's creation, that they were all created differently, and that we can celebrate the varying gifts that each has been given. Powerful!

When my kids were young, it was presumed that all children love to sing, act, and wear costumes. Not our kids! In fact, the "pressure" to be part of Christmas programs at church and musicals at school caused a lot of stress and unhappiness in our house. Fortunately, our sons were rescued by nurturing church music directors and wise school music teachers who gave them the roles that suited their gifts.

My niece is currently concerned about her toddler's speech development. As happened with our boys, number two son follows a very verbal and early-speaking brother. Number two's totally normal speech development therefore seems slow. From my perspective as a mother of two adults sons who both have prodigious vocabularies in spite of very different speech development as toddlers, I can tell her to relax.......but I know that huge stress caused by comparison and that my words won't help much.

As parents we compare one child with another, we compare our kids to our friends' kids, we compare our kids' preschool (elementary school, high school, college, graduate school, job, choice of spouse, decisions on where to live, hobbies.........) with our friends' kids preschool ...........hobbies. We compare our houses with our friends' homes. We compare our job and recreational choices with those of our friends. I actually can't think of anything that doesn't at least sometimes get compared.

I know that's a human trait that's been around forever. In fact there are two commandments out of only ten that deal with coveting. At 20% of the commandments, I guess that's a bigger issue than murder and lust!

I know we can't make comparisons and coveting other people's whatever won't go away, but I hope that just for today I can look at those I love (and even those I don't love) and really appreciate their differences, those gifts from God that make them unique incomparable individuals.