He doesn’t seem to hear me when I tell him to pick up his socks, but on the bigger issues…
- My child asked another if she was Korean or Chinese, because, as he said “I didn’t want to assume.”
- He asked if you could tell someone’s race from their bones. (Specifically, would people be racist if we were all skeletons?).
- He ‘called me’ on my gender biased commentary (When I suggested something might make him ‘scream like a girl’ he wondered why that would be more like a girl).
- When a kid at camp said “you all look funny because your heads are big” he asked me if that was racist since the child had based his opinion on how the kids looked.
- He’s pointing out TV ads “I have to see” because they are really good, or even really bad, in how they represent people and products.
Granted, there’s a lot to learn to understand the depths and nuances of the concepts, but our children do listen, and do parrot back what we model and teach them. He’s taking concepts and examples we’ve seen and discussed together (on the news, TV, Internet, books, movies, etc.), and using them as a lens to view and understand the world around him.
My dad used to joke and warn me about my child growing up and being smarter than me. But that’s what I’m hoping for.
