Before any one of us has kids, we generally dream of our future offspring wowing the world with their talents. We picture them winning Nobel prizes for their breakthrough research in curing deadly diseases. We see them waving to the crowd from the top of the pyramid and receiving accolades in academia, athletics, ground breaking inventions and the introduction of cutting-edge technology.

But then one day, a baby arrives and those dreams (our dreams) are set aside as we watch these tiny miracles grow, learn, develop, create and become their own people. Some of whom have a personality poised to set the world on fire, others who are happiest collecting ants and eating them when they think no one is watching.

I quickly realized with our first child after spending hours and hours at local parks, playgroups and community programs, the most coveted personality trait any parent could ask for in a child is simply this, to have a child who is “normal” both by the way they are perceived by the rest of the world and the way they feel about themselves, so simple and yet, so complex.

I met one woman when Hanna was less than a year old in our Sea Turtle swimming class. She was the only Mom holding her baby standing alone on the pool deck while the other moms had paired off and were encouraging the children to become fast friends. No one made any effort to welcome this woman over to the circle of mothers/tots so I wandered over to say hi. When I met Maddie (her baby) she was happy, giggling and couldn’t wait to get into the water like all the other kids. She had a serious problem with her eyes that made them appear to be bulging completely out of her head. I think the other parents worried she was different and kept their kids away from Maddie, a sweet little girl with an eye problem who simply wanted to jump in the pool and sing the little green frog song like everyone else.

Maddie’s mom and I would talk each week and would sometimes meet at the park and go for walks together. I learned about Maddie’s eye problem and the scheduled series of painful, lengthy and expensive surgeries that were planned for the months and years ahead. Why would Maddie’s parents have gone to all of this effort if her eye problems weren’t going to hinder her eyesight and were for cosmetic purposes only? It became rather obvious that first day on the pool deck. They wanted a sense of normalcy for Maddie and hoped these surgeries would help to achieve that for their sweet little girl.

A few years later, I met a mother whose son was reading the classics while enrolled as a JK student at our school. The books he was reading were some of the same texts I read (sometimes by force) for my third and fourth years of University. Her son was turning five years old that year.

Later I heard this same little guy, in addition to reading and writing at a level beyond his years was also the school track star, chess champion, last boy standing for any game of dodge ball and rarely made an error on a math test. He is musically talented and has lots of friends. This sounds like the child everyone would hope for and yet, he struggles with the same problems Maddie does. Some days, he just wants to be normal, like “all the other kids.”

He sits bored in his classroom knowing the answer before the teacher has completed the question. He isn’t challenged when running around the bases against the slower kids. And something I hadn’t considered, he has nowhere to go but down. The pressure from within that he feels (whether warranted or not) and from parents, teachers, parent’s friends and mommy bloggers must be enough to keep him awake long after all of the normal kids have fallen asleep for the night.

When my daughter brought home her first ever math test last week her score was 24/30. She asked me why I kept saying how proud I was of her and why I told her grandparents all about her achievements when her score really wasn’t that great.

When I reviewed her test, I realized she understood the concepts, which was really all I was hoping for. Her errors were easily corrected with a little extra time going over one or two key areas as well as slowing down and taking a little extra time to read over her answers before quickly handing in her paper so she could climb the monkey bars.

Her grade wasn’t perfect which is what I thought I would always want for my child. It also wasn’t 2/30 which might have meant a learning disability or greater problem involving her nerves, her level of focus.

Being the parent of three normal kids is more than I could ask for. They’ll find their passion, the top of their pyramid in time. For now, being normal is the greatest gift this Mother could get. Who knew?