Category: Elena

My Daughter the Racist

.Reading time 6 minutes.

I downloaded & read the NurtureShock book recently, and found it fascinating. A lot of the chapters weren’t anything hugely significant or shocking, but one chapter especially had me absorbed.  It was the chapter concerning race and how we teach our kids about race.  More specifically, how we don’t teach our kids about race.

                Now, race and prejudices, minorities and the equality of all men, have always been a hobby horse of mine that I climb aboard and can go on and on for quite awhile.  So it’s been kind of a big deal to me that my kids are color-blind.  Since I don’t notice those things, and certainly don’t draw attention to skin color, my kids won’t either.  Logical, right?  I really thought my kids would absorb my color-blind attitude.  I really thought they wouldn’t notice that a black or Asian person looks different than them.

                News flash!!  They do notice. It is naïve to think that they won’t.  And if they are living in a parent created “race- free vacuum” they are quick to improvise their own conclusions.  This book says that 80% of white parents do not talk to their kids about race. They are afraid of saying the wrong thing.  I can so identify with that.  NurtureShock also surprised me by saying that having a multi-cultural setting has little to no effect on small children’s attitudes about race. 

                I was reading the book during the Winter Olympics.  So, drum roll please….Elena & I are watching figure skating… and if you followed it at all, you know where this is going.  We watched Kim Yu-Na. She is adorable. So graceful.  So beautiful.  

And Elena goes

“No, no, not her. I don’t like her at all.”

We watch Mirai Nagasu, and Elena goes

“Not her again, I’m so tired of her.”

As a light bulb flashed in my head,  I say,

“Duh my child, that is not the same person”.

  So I pressed her, and fished from her why exactly she didn’t like those figure skaters.

                And profoundly she said:

“Because I don’t like their faces.  Or their hair.”

So that, my friends, is when I was humbled to discover that my own daughter, through no fault of her own, is an anti-Asian racist.  I didn’t flip out.  It actually made me smile and think “OMW the book is right! She is totally rooting for the people who look like her.

But the book did inspire me to boldly go where white parents don’t go, and talk about race. Not vaguely as in “God loves us all the same” because kids are not going to connect the dots and realize we are talking about race if we don’t tell them.  Get over trying to be politically correct.  Get over the fear of saying the wrong thing.

I don’t have a neat and tidy ending.  But the new and improved mom tried to tell her daughter that she has a black cousin through adoption.  All in the name to bring about racial awareness, to break down those walls!

E: “No Mom she’s not black.” 

Me: “Yes, Elena she is.”

E:  ”No”

Me: “Yes”

E: “Look here’s a picture and I told you she’s not black.”

                Gene walks through the room while we’re arguing, with a peculiar look on his face, obviously thinking I’m losing my marbles for making an issue out of this.  So I let the matter drop, feeling insecure again that maybe I have lost my marbles, even if the book says we should talk about these things.  But I’m thinking that Elena’s need to have her cousin white just proves my point.

For the record, I have no fears of her being racist in the long-term. Not on my watch.

Kids and information

.Reading time 4 minutes.

Here’s a question for you.  As a mother of a preschooler, and a tragedy strikes (i.e. Haiti ) do you:

  1. Not mention the catastrophe for obvious reasons.
  2. Try to explain what happened in an age-appropriate manner.
  3. Let them watch and see for themselves.

Back when I knew it all, or didn’t have children, I thought the sooner a child understands that the world is unfair the better.

Since then I have been blessed with two ultra-sensitive children.  Swiper, from Dora the Explorer, sends them shrieking from the room and shaking in terror. (On certain episodes only, strangely enough)  Most evenings they beg for us to lay with them in bed because their room is so scary.  (FYI – Gene always does cause he’s a giant teddy bear)

Naturally, I did not mention the earthquakes in Haiti to my kids.  Until….last night at snack time Elena threw a fit because I cut her bagel in half. I was mad, because somehow I produced a spoiled brat, who dared whine about the slicing of foodstuff.

            “Mom! I wanted a whole bagel. I’m not even gonna eat it because you cut it.  Why did you cut it mom? I wanted a bigger bagel.”

It was not cute whining either; it was a screeching, yelling kind of whining.  Then, I let her have it with both barrels.

            “Elena there are children far away, whose houses fell down and they do not have water!  They do not have food! They do not have houses anymore.  And I never, ever, EVER want to hear you whine about bagels again!”

  I ended my tirade by sticking my finger in her nose and shaking it vigorously.  And then we had water works.  She meekly ate her bagel while she cried, and I tried to salvage what was left of our evening.

           

            “Why did their houses fall down, Mom?” Will our house fall down? Mom, you shouldn’t have told me about that, now I will just cry and cry.”

I managed to leave her feeling a little secure. (Pa doesn’t have a history of earthquakes that I know of –whew) We had a simplistic little talk about how God is with us when bad things happen, and He will help us somehow.

According to a book I read recently (referenced below) the human psych was not created to handle knowledge about all the suffering going on in the world.  Thanks to technology, we now have all that information at our fingertips constantly.  Information that previously was held back for those more mature is now blasted to our children.  The day of naivety in childhood seems to be gone.  I mourn that loss.

So on the tight rope, trying to balance between isolation and over-exposure, how do we raise kids in this information age?  I want to get it right, but it’s a tall order because it seems we’re in the first generation to have this specific problem.  I bet there’s an answer to my question somewhere on the web.