“What would you like to eat dear?” the waitress asked.

“Pancakes and eggs please,” my 6-year old daughter replied.

“And you?” she asked, looking at my son.

“Yes ma’am. The same, with apple juice please.”

“Oh my goodness, your manners! What sweet kiddos you are!”

This conversation is a regular occurrence at restaurants with my children. The truth is, they do have great manners. They have been blessed with a father who values habits that many believe are from a different era, my New Jersey-self included. Eye contact. Hand shakes. Clear responses that include ma’am and sir. As soon as my children blurted out their first words (Lydia’s was “Dada” and Trey’s was “more”), he began training them in this way.

We don’t get this feedback about our children just at restaurants. We hear similar comments at parent teacher conferences, at church, in the grocery store, from surprised bus drivers, from random moms of children in the preschool parking lot whom I’d never met. Both children have earned the nickname “The Mayor” at completely different schools from completely different people.

Are you rolling your eyes right now about my perfect children?

Don’t.

The truth is, when I hear these things or am given such compliments, I smile politely and say thank you. But inside, those comments fill me with fear. A gripping, punched in the gut, shock wave through the body fear.

Kindness is king in our family. This doesn’t mean we’re kind to each other all the time. FAR from it. Sometime I’ll tell you the story of our emergency ophthalmology appointment due to one child poking the other in the eye so hard that the child had to wear an eye patch for days. Anyway, I digress.

Kindness in our family shows up in moments like when we tell Lydia how beautiful she looks, or when she runs in to show us a dress she’s picked out to wear. In those moments we are always sure to follow our praise with “but what truly makes a person beautiful?” And like clockwork she responds, “being kind.” When we see someone in a movie or show being hurtful or rude, I look at the kids and ask what they would do in that situation. And it’s always something wildly heroic involving swooping in and saving the day, in true childhood fantasy style.

So why all the fear?

I have started to see glimpses of the downside of kindness. Of raising your children in a manner that seems contrary to the world around them. This world has a me-first, survival of the fittest, put others down to lift you up mindset. And I’m fearful of what this means is ahead for my against-the-grain children.

I was recently picking Lydia up from a birthday party at a painting studio, and watched as the gaggle of little 6 and 7 year old girls jumped up and down, pleading to play Dance Dance Revolution (or something similar) on the large-screen TV before leaving. The studio leader agreed to one song, and when the game came on, to my surprise, a scantily clad woman walked onto the screen and proceeded to teach these girls moves that ranged from air humping to twerking.

Yikes.

As the song began, I watched from outside the studio as my daughter sized up the situation, and retreated to a nearby table to watch her friends learn the moves while she sipped on a juice box. Later, one little girl asked my daughter, “Don’t you want to be in the sexy girls club?” I didn’t hear how my daughter responded, but whatever it was, it was polite and quick, and was met with a disgusted look and an eye roll from the girl.

And I hurt for my daughter in that moment. Because I know this is just the beginning. Later in the car I asked my daughter if that little girl had an older sister.

“How did you know?” she replied, her eyes getting wide.

Because 6 year olds shouldn’t know what sexy means I wanted to say.

“Just a hunch,” I replied. We talked a while about why she didn’t want to dance, and she really didn’t seem phased by the whole thing. But it’s only a matter of time.

My son recently had show and tell in school, and the night before he prepared his favorite pretend lizard. He wrote his three required clues to help his classmates guess what he brought. He tucked the clues and lizard neatly into the brown bag the teachers provided for him, and practiced his presentation to the class. He bounced all the way into school, so excited to share with his friends. But when I picked him up, his teachers were annoyed and told me he didn’t present. They went on to say he told them he didn’t bring the right show and tell and would present tomorrow. He could not be convinced otherwise.

When I asked him about it, he told me that another little boy in class was having a hard time. This little boy didn’t want to present his show and tell, and was melting down in front of everyone in the class rather loudly. The other kids were starting to whisper and make comments. My son apparently told the boy he understood, and that he didn’t want to present either. He said they could both wait and present tomorrow, when the boy felt better.

A weird hybrid of fear and pride washed over me. Those two emotions feel incredibly strange when experienced at the same time. Like chills when you have a high fever kind of strange. I never explained to the teachers. But I better understood my son, and learned that there are always two sides to every story.

My fear for my children is rooted in the knowledge that my husband and I have chosen a harder path for them. A rockier path. A more challenging, more annoyed-teacher-face ridden path. I know that this life and this path mean a life of eye rolls and annoyed expressions and sipping juice boxes at the table by themselves. I know it will be hard.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re doing this intentionally and with great effort. If you were to say to my children right now “Hey, you’re a Fitzgerald and that means…” They’d smile and say, “It means we’re weird. But we’re a LOT of fun.” We’re preparing these kiddos to be different and to be ok with it, because I know that it won’t be long before they are feeling strange, different and alone. Feeling left out, irritated by the path we’ve chosen, and frustrated with their weird parents. I see it coming. Part of it will be normal childhood stuff, and part of it will be due to the choices we’re making.

But all of this intentionality doesn’t mean that I don’t doubt our parenting decision every moment of every day. It doesn’t mean I don’t anxiously wait for the moment my children get home from school to see what happened in their days. It doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder if I’m doing my children a disservice, or even putting them at a disadvantage in a me-first world.

What keeps me motivated to stay on this path is the certainty that the world needs more of what my children have so much of. The world needs more of the kind of people my children are and will be. The kind of people who will create a world where #metoo movements and bullying awareness aren’t necessary. Truthfully I don’t know how they’ll do this. I don’t know if they’ll be doctors or teachers or fish aquarium cleaners at PetSmart. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care, as I really do want my children to work hard in whatever they choose to do and be successful. But wherever they end up, what they have to offer through abundant kindness will make them an invaluable asset to the world.

There’s a quote from the recent Julia Roberts movie Wonder that I love, and it says,

“The things we do outlast our mortality.”

What if the things we teach our children are what will save our angry and divided society? What if character traits are the things we leave behind as our legacy, instead of just recycling regulations and gun laws? What if the greatest gift we can give future generations is teaching this generation, our children’s generation, to be kind?

I don’t know if any of this is possible, and I’m terrified that it’s not. But I’m sure going to try. And I hope and pray I’m not alone.

Cheers to kindness,

-Lauren