Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Speaking Truth to Power for My Children

32 Days of Black History is a blogathon celebrating Black History Month hosted by Mamalicious! and Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. We are joined by WhatTamiSaid; Inkognegro; Springer's Journal; Universal Blackness; and The Dawg House. Please join the conversation!

One of the things we want to do during our 32Days blogathon is to talk about sharing Black history with our children. In the past here on SITBB I have shared my own attempts in this area, such as in 2004 when I talked about teaching my then 4-year-old daughters about the meanings of the seven principals of Kwanzaa. On the first day, I tackled Umoja:

So, December 26 and the principle is Umoja, or unity. I struggled with how to explain "unity" to four year olds. Most of the definitions just keep repeating the word, unity, instead of attempting to define what it means. This is especially problematic for me in the children's books about Kwanzaa. Does "unity" mean that we all have to be one, think as one, feel as one, speak as one? Does unity preclude diversity, disagreement, dissension among us? And who is "we" and "us" anyway?

Sidebar: Years ago when we lived in Germany my husband and I (pre-munchkins) had a Kwanzaa celebration at our home in a cozy officer Army housing apartment. One of the four couples we invited was an African American former-active duty soldier and his White German wife. We all went around at the beginning of our celebration and said a little about our reactions to the principle for that day. Most people recalled something from their past and told stories of their kin long deceased. When it was the German wife's turn she merely said that she was there to be with all of us as we celebrated our ancestors... Was she not part of the "us"?

Today began with me mostly sidestepping these questions. The girls mostly loved to say the word "oooooMOEjaaaaa" over and over again. They are at that wonderful stage in development when all language is music and poetry, and as such they did not miss a beat or question whether or not umoja needed a philosophical foundation or a comprehensible definition.

One of the most vexing issues in parenting is teaching about and discussing cultural and anti-racist issues with children, and celebrating Black History Month with kids certainly falls into this category. Where does a parent even begin?

Start with the Child?

Parents who subject themselves to parenting "experts" hear the following term a lot "age appropriateness." That means pretty much what it says: that there is some way of instruction or discipline or whatever that is suitable or fitting given the chronological age developmental stage of a child. Something only implicit in this term is the idea that part of age appropriateness involves what is appropriate--regardless of age--for a specific child. In other words, a lesson can be thought (e.g., by "experts") to be generally good for kids of a certain age, but it is up to the parent or other adult who knows the specific child to determine if it is right and good for that child. (As the parent of two same-age children I know this only too well.)

But what the experts do not often tell you--what is not even implicit in the usual discussions of age appropriateness--is that the process of determining what is a good fit for a specific child at a specific age is frequently one of trial and error. I discovered this when I was trying to teach my then 4-year-old daughters about Umoja:

We then read "The Peace Book" together. Not so sure that peace=unity, but the sentiments are certainly in keeping with the spirit of the principle as I feel it. Among other things, peace is (according to Todd Parr) "being free," "making new friends," and "everyone having a home." We also read Jada Pinkett Smith's "Girls Hold Up This World." (OK, I admit I am a sucker for celebrity children's books.) My girls absolutely love this book and its lovely photographs of girls and women of "every color, age, and size...united by beauty inside."

Pretty expansive: world unity and gender unity. All before nap.

Then after breakfast my daughters and I looked at the photographs in Chester Higgins' book "Echo of the Spirit: A Photographer's Journey." They were pretty silent as we went through the pages. So was I. It was a strange, almost reverent, approach very out of character for these two energetic kids. Every once in a while they would ask me a question: "Is she very old?" "Is he sad?"; Or they would provide a comment: "Oh, what beautiful birds!" "She's so cute" "Look, she's making a quilt, like in our other book!" "Look, it's Uncle Bebo--No wait, it's actually Dr. King!" At one point one of them asked me if I liked looking at these pictures. I said yes. My other daughter asked why I liked looking at these pictures. "Because," I said, "looking at them makes me remember people I know and used to know. People who are in my family who I love."

They both seemed satisfied with that answer.

...Or Start With the [Parent] in the Mirror?

I may have a different opinion about how to celebrate Black history and culture with my kids when they are older. Heck, I even may have a different opinion later this month. But I think the key component in this kind of socialization is not so much the child, but me--the parent.

I believe that a lesson taught from a position of my own passion and curiosity is likely to resonate with my children--even if it ends up being a little (or a lot) flawed, a little (or a lot) irrelevant, a little (or a lot) not so age appropriate. Alternately, my kids are likely to pick up on my ambivalence or feelings of conflict about a topic. Not to say I should not try to share those things with my kids. But I should first examine deeply my own feelings of conflict and ambivalence, even share my mixed feelings with my kids as I teach these topics to them. I think even the most pedagogically sound, well thought out, age- and individually-appropriate lesson will fail if I am bored or disinterested...if I am only talking about the topic because I feel I must include this as part of my Black history lesson.

My Truth to Power

All in all I have been happy with my experiences celebrating Black history and culture 24-7-365 with my daughters. In the end, much of what I "teach" is by example and is not explicit or direct at all.

But I do not over-rely on this more passive form of socialization. Often I am surprised at what I find I have assumed my kids know of history. Recently, for example, my daughters and I were discussing the historic candidacies of Senators Clinton and Obama. They had not fully realized--and were appalled--that not a single woman has ever been POTUS. But they corrected me about the first person of African ancestry. Wasn't Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, they said, president before he was killed?

(As much as we have talked about MLK and the movements of which he was a part, both my kids assumed that he must have been president--anyone who had accomplished so much must have also accomplished that. And of course, I had never explicitly said that he was not president...)

Well...no...he was not president, I replied, although that would have certainly been great.

And that statement, I recognize, was part accurate "history" (MLK was, in fact, never president of the United States) but also part values: my values, my opinions--my Truth. Hopefully my daughters will learn other historical facts from other sources, most more expert than me. But I am the one (together with their father) who needs to be responsible for making sure they receive the values about Black history that I want carried forward.

There is nothing more appropriate than that.

Posted by perry032 at February 4, 2008 12:04 AM | TrackBack
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