Orchid children

“If you want to have an exceptional child, you have to be willing to parent an exceptional child.”

In April, I visited the Lyman Plant House and Conservatory at Smith College — 12,000 square feet of warmth and humidity that felt like a tropical escape from the chilly Massachusetts spring. To my amazement, inside the greenhouses I discovered countless varieties of orchids, each more exquisite than the last.

Orchids remind me of my mother-in-law. In her home in Taiwan, there were always pots overflowing with the latest variety of delicate purple, yellow, and fuchsia flowers. Once they started to lose their petals inside the house, she coaxed them to attach themselves to the trees outside, where they took on new life.

Getting orchids to grow is no easy feat. They require just the right amount of water and humidity and sunlight. And when you get it right, like my mother-in-law seemed uniquely able to do, they are exquisite. One orchid growing outside her house bloomed magnificently during her final months with pancreatic cancer. I think of it as my guardian angel orchid, still watching over our family.

guardian angel

I am also growing orchids. Just not the floral kind.

Mine are my children, each one of whom has required the care and coaxing that my mother-in-law took with her plants.

Recently, at a cousin’s baby shower, I shared Thomas Boyce’s analogy of The Orchid and the Dandelion. Some children are like dandelions, whose bright flowers can grow anywhere, while others are like my orchids: delicate, temperamental, and exquisite.

As I shared my story, I warned the mother-to-be: In our family, we seem to have a lot of orchids!

I realized my oldest child might be an orchid when our second child was born. As a newborn, I would lay him down in his bed, and he would just—go to sleep! No hysterics. No agonizing baby screams. He would just lay there quietly and fall asleep.

By that time, we had endured two years of coaxing, cajoling, rocking, and hand holding to get our older child to sleep. She slept surrounded by a small constellation of pacifiers: five around her head, one in her mouth, and one clutched in each hand.

And still, even when the preschool suggested we consult with a speech therapist and the principal of the elementary school where I worked and where she was applying took me aside after her admission interview, I stubbornly insisted to myself that this was how all kids were.

Finally, when she was crying in school almost daily, I sought help from the school counselor.

At the counselor’s recommendation, I devoured Elaine Aaron’s book The Highly Sensitive Child (and then all of her other books, including The Highly Sensitive Person and The Highly Sensitive Parent – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!). Other people call them “spirited” or “deeply feeling.” I don’t object! I just happen to be obsessed with orchids and so this is the term I have stuck with.

My orchid prefers white food, hates restaurants and shopping malls, and only wears soft clothes. I have learned to cut the tags out of everything, stock the house with Greek yogurt, white bread and cheese sticks, and order take-out rather than attempt a restaurant meal, particularly at the end of the day.

And she is also voraciously curious. She went from memorizing the name of every dinosaur to exploring theoretical astrophysics, and now she studies philosophy, writing papers on the presentation of bipolar disorder in Asian Americans. Teachers and friends report that she is thougthful, sensitive, and welcoming.

A wise mentor once told me:

“If you want to have an exceptional child, you have to be willing to parent an exceptional child.”

That reframed everything. I had wanted my child to be “normal.” But none of my children are normal. They are finicky, temperamental, and utterly extraordinary. Parenting our orchids means cultivating the conditions they need: steady warmth, consistent boundaries, and the courage to let them bloom in their own time, even when that timeline doesn’t match that of their friends or cousins.

It’s not easy! It’s not supposed to be. And I have found great strength in learning the stories of other orchids (including the cousin whose baby shower inspired this essay, who was herself an orchid child!) who have grown up to be exceptional humans leading lives of vision and purpose.

Many of you are parenting orchids. I know because your stories have reassured me that I am not alone on this journey.

And a lot of us are orchids, too. Sometimes we only realize it through our children. And you orchids are doing exceptional work in the world, which inspires me to keep at it with my orchids at home.

And so I wonder:

• Are you parenting an orchid? When did you realize it? And what’s the most amazing thing your orchid has created or said to you recently?

• Or maybe you’re raising a dandelion? I’d love to hear what that’s like!

🕊️

SAM

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