Jackie and I were watching �Bringing Down the House� yesterday. There�s a scene where Betty White tells the little boy, �We got to find another way to comb your hair; you look like a fag!� Ooh. I hate that word. I opened my mouth to tell Jackie that I don�t ever want to hear her say that word when she surprised me by looking at me and saying, �I know, I�m not supposed to say that word. It�s just as bad as the n word. Mom, I don�t forget what you tell me! Geez!� (She unfortunately is familiar with the n word because one of her little friends said it. However, the fit I pitched convinced her that is indeed one word I will never hear from my daughter or so help me she�ll be grounded from anything until she�s a freshman in high school.)
I remembered now that the last time we watched the movie and she asked me what the word meant. I told her it hateful and was a mean name for gay people and it was just as bad as the f word and the n word. I told her that we do not make fun of people for things they can�t control, that its stupid to make fun of a person because of who they are, that all people are different and we should never make fun of people who are different.
I told her it was a hurtful word and that only ignorant people say it. I told her that the lady in the movie said it because she was ignorant.
I�ve made it a point to explain to Jackie what gay means. She�s seen women being affectionate with each other at the mall and restaurants, and she saw two men holding hands at Union Station. I�ve explained to her that when someone is gay, it means usually that they love someone of the same sex. Sometimes these people get married and spend their lives together; sometimes they adopt children and raise them together. They�re people just like us.
I�ve told her this because her godfather is gay. I want Jackie to grow up seeing people that are different to still be �normal� and thus take away the need to trivialize and make fun of differences with people. Just because I�ve told Jackie what gay means doesn�t mean that she will grow up to be a butch lesbian.
However, I will still love her, because duh, she�s my child.
I only wish I had that sort of acceptance when I was growing up and in the throes of my Alice Cooper craze. People thought that since I was listening to Heavy Metal I must surely be into doing it with lots of guys, drinking blood and thus cool with animal sacrifice.
Not.
I was only exploring the darker side of human nature.
So now, of course, the tables turn and I�m tasked with shaping my daughter into a loving, open-minded, tolerant person. I�m going to keep this dialogue open with her because as she moves on further into childhood, she will surely have questions about things she sees. I need to keep my ear to the ground for these disturbances in her life, so that I can anticipate certain conversations, and since I�m sort of prepared for it, I can conduct myself with confidence. Kids don�t have a lot of confidence in people that act unsure. So they go ask their friends, who think they know EVERYTHING because adults are so stupid. That�s where all the misinformation starts.
Our gerbils had 6 babies yesterday. Crap. These things multiply like rabbits. I�m so sick of gerbils. Make sure you have two of the same sex if you get them, because if you don�t, you will have babies every month, I promise.
Jackie fed the gerbils, and then sat back on her legs for a moment.
�Mommy, why do they keep having babies?�
�Because we don�t have enough cages to separate them.�
�How do they have sex?� Crap, I wasn�t prepared for that. I swallowed hard and without looking at her, �I�m sure they do it the same way that adults do, honey.�
�Oh, okay!� And the conversation was over. Whew! Even though I subscribe to the honest parenting technique of talking to your kids about the big nasty, it�s still a bit uncomfortable at times because no one ever talked to me about it when I was a kid. I learned everything from encyclopedias. And to this day, I have some major hang-ups.
And yet I have to be open and honest with Jackie. She doesn�t have the luxury of two parents, and probably won�t have her Dad to talk to if she doesn�t feel like talking to me. He�s the kind of Dad who thinks if you talk about something with kids then that will make them want to try it. Yeah, he�s one of those.
Criminy, we got ten year-old�s doing it. I mean, I have to talk now about it as openly and honestly as possible. I don�t want to make it a forbidden subject, which makes it instantly something kids want to do just because it�s forbidden. I want to give her a sense of value and modesty about her body and thus something to respect. This is so hard.
We can�t expect our children�s school to do all the teaching. We must encourage curiosity, open-mindedness and yet discernment too, tolerance and love at home. It all begins at home.
I believe Mother Teresa said, �If you hate someone, you don�t have time to love them.� I wonder too, what four-letter word will you teach your child: love or hate?
I choose love.
Choosing love means that sometimes its better to walk away than to fight. Choosing love means that you may actually have to put in an effort to get to know somebody. Choosing love means that you have to not be a coward and hate people because of some cosmetic and shallow reason. Choosing love means you have to be the bigger person and realize that not everyone is a mean jerk and to not judge a group of people by a few bad apples. Choosing love may be harder, but it�s the right way to go. Choosing love means that you have to wake up and realize that all people are different and that we should celebrate these differences.
It�s so much easier for a coward to hate a whole race than to recognize the deficiencies in their own character.
I see people who hate a race and make ignorant sweeping judgments about people but don�t recognize they have the very traits they despise. It�s easier for a coward to hate than love.
Love opens you up in this world to new things. You have to be brave for that to happen.
You have to teach your children to choose the right. You have a part in your child shaping what he thinks about the world. Are you going to teach them to be negative or positive? Of course, us parents also realize that we teach our children by our own example.
I wasn�t mad at the little girl who said that N word when Jackie heard it some months ago. I was mad at the girl�s father, who throws it around all the time. I was angry that this child learned the filthy word from her dad. After all, the child is only 6. She didn�t know any better. Her dad did. I did teach Jackie that if she hears the word again for her to say, �Please don�t say that word around me. I don�t like it.� I want Jackie to stand up for the right.
The best part is, we don�t have to always agree with other people. We don�t have to go along. We don�t have to be a doormat either. Sometimes, we just have to know when it�s a lost cause and move on. Some people will always be hateful mean angry folks and we can�t change them. That�s something I�m trying to teach her now. What a job!
10:40 - Thursday, Jan. 22, 2004
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