When It Comes to Syndromes, Dogs > Ducks

I don't have anything against ducks. As a matter of fact, I like ducks. When I'm having a stressful day, watching them glide placidly across the pond at my local park immediately lowers my blood pressure. But did you know that just beneath the surface, their little webbed feet are paddling furiously?

Thanks to some Stanford undergrads, Duck Syndrome has come to mean a person (usually a young person) who is working furiously behind closed doors while maintaining a cool and calm exterior. I periodically ask the teens I coach to rate their stress levels on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 = not stressed, and 10 = stressed to the max. They'll look at me calmly, with a smile on their face and say "12".

Why? Because they've been socialized to hide their stress. It's way more "chill" to be chill. Or when they do talk about stress with their peers, they're doing it as part of a secret competition - seeing if they are, in fact, more busy/stressed than their peers. Because if they're outdoing their peers, then it means they might have a shot at getting into Yale.

But this unwillingness to be vulnerable leaves thousands of teenagers suffering silently with stress and anxiety. They don't talk about it because, as many of my former students have told me, "that only stresses me out more!" and perhaps more importantly, it would expose their insecurities, which they're not allowed to have.

I say this is bull-honky. So instead of ducks, let's be dogs. Dogs don't give a hoot what you think of them. Have you seen the thousands of viral videos of dogs being, well, dogs? Because if you haven't, you should stop reading this immediately and watch a few. Dogs are the most WYSWYG animals in the world. They don't know how to be anything other than what they are.

I wish humans could be more like that. Could we let go of being perfect? Unabashedly ask for love, companionship, and reassurance when we need it? Could we all just let down our guards and say, "I'm not okay," "I don't know," and "I need help"? We don't because we don't want to burden people with other problems; we don't think we're worth the effort; we believe we can "fix" it ourselves.

If you have a dog, you know they are experts at getting their needs met (#noshame). If you don't have a dog, maybe you can get one (yes, that's a plug for your local ASPCA), so you have a daily reminder of what it looks like to be unabashedly trusting and vulnerable.

But back to my point. If you have young people in your life, let them be vulnerable, let them be flawed, just like our beloved doggos. That means that YOU have to be vulnerable and flawed. Admit when you're having a hard time or have made a mistake. If you're a parent of a toddler and you're having a bad day because your boss was an a-hole to you during a meeting, you can say, "Mommy/Daddy is sad because a friend was mean to me today." If you're a teacher, it's okay to say to your students "Hmm...I’m not sure about the answer to your question, let’s look it up together." And if a young person comes to you with their struggles, you can validate their feelings by telling them it is totally normal to feel the way that they're feeling and share an example of a time you felt the same way.

There are so many reasons we're afraid to show our true selves. But the next time you find yourself acting like a duck, remember that dogs > ducks.