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Illustration by Scott Drummond
Teaching tolerance learning patience Sometimes the process is different from the plan.
My daughter is playing in the park with another little girl. They're chatting in their little toddler voices, my daughter in Englittle toucher voice, lish and her friend in Spanish. Both understand the other, but neither will leave the safety zone of her native tongue. I'm desperately hoping my child will make the leap to the less familiar language I have worked with her so hard on, but she can't be bothered. And both are too busy digging in the sand to care or even notice.
to care of even hostess. She's living much differently than I did. I was raised in a small town in rural Kansas. Growing
town in rural karawang up, diversity consisted mainly of a white middle class and white trash. Politically, we had Republicans and those who didn't share their opinions. The only homosexuals I'd ever known were friends of my mom, and even they never formally came out, at least not to the rest of the town. The way I saw most adults treat something new and uncomfortable was to ignore it. If something or someone is different, we should just pretend they're
By Misty Huber Jayplay writer
not. I truly think they thought they were doing us a service, repeating the mantra, "everyone is the same; treat everyone the other hand, did
he is the same, trust me,
same." I, on the other hand, did
not want to pretend everyone
was the same. I was fascinated
with other cultures, religions
and lifestyles.
When my daughter was born, I was set on making her a citizen of the world. My aspirations were high. I was determined to make her bilingual before she turned three. Hello World! -Greetings in 42 Languages would be her favorite bedtime read. We looked at books
and watched videos in English and Spanish. When she was a baby, she would sit in her walker and coo to the sounds of "vacas" mooing and "ovejas" baaing. I would smile knowing she was secretly formulating a plan for world peace. I wanted to teach her more languages, and my husband was worried I might be putting a little too much pressure on a six-month-old. But teaching a child another language is the easy part, getting it to
speak it is much more difficult. At two years old she would sit and watch a thirty minute foreign-language video,but afterwards when I would ask her to use her Spanish words she would refuse indignantly.
Not to be discouraged, I wanted to teach my daughter about different religions. I wanted her to have the information, so that when she was older, she could follow the ideas that made the most sense to her. But I soon realized how difficult this would be when I ventured through Borders and could not find a single children's book or video about Hinduism, Islam or Buddhism. My daughter already had a few books about Christianity and a couple that qualify as Jewish, but because I didn't want to tilt the religion wheel in any direction, I started making up stories about the little I knew of other faiths. And what do you suppose my ungrateful toddler asks me with wide blue eyes after I begin one of my well-researched stories about a young Sidhartha Gautama? "Mommy, can we be done with that story? Let's read The Poky Little Puppy."
Naturally curious, my daughter is not afraid to ask me, loudly, why someone doesn't have an arm, has tattoos, or as she asked me recently at Pet World, why the lady standing next to us is made of chocolate. But at her age, someone having two mommies seems no more radical an idea than when she asked me why her male classmates had penises.
male classmates had perished. I will continue to expose my daughter to new types of people and give her what ever information she wants to know that I think is appropriate for her age. I hope she continues to ask me questions about our differences, and I hope I can always answer them. I will tell her that not everyone is the same, and that's wonderful. But I will also tell her everyone deserves love.
I will also tell her every time. Admittedly, I'm not a perfect mother. As you read this, I may be causing serious emotional damage by using the wrong potty-training method. And not long ago my daughter used a well-placed explelive at school. But I am proud of how I'm raising my daughter, and when people from my hometown comment on my "out-there" parenting methods, I smile and thank them.
9,14.04 JavplaY
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