The Myth of Normal

“Normal” is not a universal truth. It is a narrow story told so often that we forgot it was a story at all.” - Mary Coughlin

Part 2 in the 'Stop Pathologizing Being Human' Series

A Mary’s Musings reflection on who gets to define “healthy” — and why it matters

One of the most enduring myths in child development and mental health is the idea of normal.

We speak of “normal milestones,” “normal behavior,” “normal emotional regulation,” “normal attention,” “normal social skills” as if these were neutral, objective truths rather than cultural constructions shaped by time, power, and perspective.

They are not neutral. And they never have been.

The concept of “normal” did not emerge from a rich tapestry of human diversity. It emerged from narrow samples, limited worldviews, and systems designed more for order than for belonging.

Most early developmental and psychological norms were built by:

• Western institutions

• White, male professionals

• Industrial-era assumptions

• Cultural values emphasizing productivity, compliance, independence, and emotional restraint

These norms were then universalized, exported across cultures, communities, and generations, as though they represented the full spectrum of human possibility.

They did not. And yet, entire systems were built upon them.

When a single way of being becomes the standard, everything else is framed as deviation.
Not difference but defect.

Children who move differently, feel deeply, process slowly, speak multiple languages, express emotion loudly, regulate through relationship, resist unjust authority, or exist outside binary categories are no longer seen as diverse. They are seen as problems.

This is how the myth of normal quietly becomes a mechanism of harm. Because once “normal” is defined narrowly, the work of systems is no longer to understand children, it is to correct them.

Instead of asking:

• What is this child experiencing?

• What does this behavior protect?

• What does this nervous system need?

• How does culture, history, or context shape this expression?

We ask:

• How do we get this child back inside the lines?

But here is the truth we rarely name: Those lines were never wide enough to begin with.

The myth of normal asks children to adapt to environments that are often developmentally mismatched, relationally thin, culturally misattuned, and chronically overstimulating and then labels them disordered when they struggle to do so.

It confuses survival responses with pathology. It mistakes self-protection for defiance. It calls sensitivity weakness. It calls difference delay.

And in doing so, it quietly teaches children a devastating lesson: Your natural way of being is unsafe here.

This is not just about children. Adults live inside this myth too.

We measure ourselves against impossible standards of emotional regulation, productivity, resilience, and composure. We praise coping strategies that look “successful” on the outside while ignoring the cost to the inner life. We reward those who can mask, perform, and endure and we marginalize those who cannot or will not.

The myth of normal does not merely misdiagnose children. It distorts our understanding of health itself. True developmental health is not about conformity. It is about capacity.

Capacity to feel without being overwhelmed. Capacity to connect without losing oneself. Capacity to rest, to repair, to protest, to belong. Capacity that grows through relationship, not regulation alone.

When we widen our understanding of normal, when we see it as a broad, living constellation rather than a narrow path, something remarkable happens.

Children don’t need to be fixed as often. Families feel less alone. Clinicians and educators are freed to practice with curiosity instead of fear. And adults begin to reclaim parts of themselves they were taught to abandon long ago.

This is the work of unlearning the myth of normal.

Not to create chaos but to create room. Not to erase standards but to ground them in humanity. Not to abandon care but to make it worthy of the people it claims to serve.

In the next reflection, I’ll explore how this myth plays out across gender, culture, and racialized interpretations of child behavior and how early messages about “normal” shape identity, belonging, and self-worth across a lifetime.

For now, I’ll leave you with this gentle but important question: Who taught you what “normal” was supposed to look like — and what did it cost you to fit inside it?

Until next time,
Mary