DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My sister and I are fraternal twins. I was born first, by six minutes, so she always introduces me as her older sister. We look enough alike to tip people off to our being twins, but I am taller and we have different colored eyes but the same hair.
The biggest difference is that my sister is popular with everyone, including our teachers, and I am happy being in the background. She likes school, is on student government, the track team, the drama club, gets invited to most of the big parties, and still gets good grades all the time.
I am more of a quiet honor roll nerd, with only two people I consider as really good friends.
I am happy with who I am, but my parents, my mother especially, get on me to be more like my sister. They want me to hang out with more people and get into extracurriculars other than National Honor Society and chess club. They say it will look better on my college applications, and give me more self-confidence. But there isn’t anything else I have any interest in. They say I need to be out more with other kids besides my two friends.
I tell my parents I don’t want to do these things, that I have no interest in being a superstar like my sister.
Why don’t they just let me be who I want to be? --- JUST LET ME BE
DEAR JUST LET ME BE: It’s possible that your parents share more of your sister’s personality and outlook than you do. If that’s the case, then they’re measuring happiness and success in terms of what they believe can contribute to those goals.
I think you’re showing strength of character by sticking to your assertions that you’re happy doing your own things, especially if you do them well. National Honor Society and chess club are certainly not going to play against you on a college application, and it sounds as if you have as much social satisfaction in your two friends as your sister does in her wider circle.
By staying your course, without doing it in an angry way, hopefully you’ll persuade you parents to accept that you’re as bright a star as your sister, just in different ways.