This week I learned some amazing things--about you, about myself, about our society. Your spring break was different from my school's, for the first time. This, your kindergarten year, was our first to take you to the local science center's "school's out camp." You had anxious thoughts about going, wondering whether kids would like you. Worried because you didn't know anyone. Saying out loud every day how much you wished the place would close, so you wouldn't have to go. Every morning, waking up first thing telling me you'd like not to go. So we talked. We prayed. I encouraged you. But more than ever, I listened. See, I had checked out a classic book from the library and had been learning. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen in School had been speaking to me. I had actually only read a little bit of it! But what I had read had convinced me that somebody owes you--particularly you black children, particularly you black boy children--an apology. This society owes you one for fostering an environment where black children were used as chattel, advertised as alligator bait and have generally been deemed a problem from the start. But we still owe you, because generations after the horrors our forebears experienced, you still are owed a debt of childhood. Let me explain:
In the How to Talk... book, the authors write about how often it is that adults dismiss the real thoughts and feelings of children. A child may express sadness, and instead of helping that child to voice, and then transcend, the feelings of the moment, we adults want to "help" the child to quickly get away from that feeling, and we try to help through verbal persuasion. We'll tell you in nice terms not to feel what you feel--that it's not that bad, you'll get over it, here's why there are worse things...and on and on. They suggest, though, that the most powerful thing we really should do is to let you feel, express and be in those feelings. After we've heard you, actively listened and tried to draw out what your root struggle is, we can offer suggestions. But not until we've heard.
I had to think on that. I have heard plenty of similar thoughts about how to be a good listener for adults--paraphrase, restate, listen actively, etc. But for some reason, I have to admit, adults have not thus far seen it as very important to hear the thoughts of young people in the same way. Or maybe we have? In the general American population, I think we've been moving much more towards child-centeredness in terms of letting our children make choices and make decisions. But honestly, that's not a phenomenon that some of us older-school thinkers have embraced. We've seen how it's resulted often in spineless parents who feel powerless to ever assert themselves in their children's lives or be the boss. And we see how that turns out in the end! More importantly, many of us as educators see how it practically plays out. We see those kids fail miserably at navigating school, and we want no parts of that parenting or teaching style. But what you've taught me this week, son, is that it's not really about being at the extreme of child-centeredness or adult control. It's all about the middle!
You see, parenting African American babies--and I use "babies" loosely, affectionately--is not for the faint of heart. Historically, we have understood the very real dangers awaiting those who live in skin like yours--even children. We knew in slavery and Jim Crow what could come of very innocent behaviors that your white peers are allowed. So our goal was to protect you as much as possible from the sting of that. We wanted to be the rough and tough ones in your life, kindly giving you balance and resistance so that it would not feel foreign or overtake you on the outside. This just is what it is, and there's a strong element of wisdom in it. But some of what we continue to do, we do not because it has proven to serve us well; rather, we do it because it's all we know. And one of the "all I knew" categories involves my way of listening to you.
I decided this week that you deserve to be heard better, and that I would actively listen. To be silenced does not help you process your emotions, any more than letting emotions rule helps you to be self-controlled. You deserve the chance to be 6--to be nervous, scared, unsure. You deserve to have my comforting words of affirmation and recognition of your feelings' validity. You deserve my help processing challenges and overcoming them. And why should kindness be an earned privilege?
And so, this week you've gotten a different mama. A mama who is wanting to deliberately flout the traditional style of unintentional dismissal from adults. A listener seeking to unsettle the practice in my community of encouraging kids like you to be silent. Your silence services no one. And so, my sonny, I've come closer to you this week. Learned more about your psyche, and discovered that what calms you is my presentness, and sureness...and assurance that you are allowed to feel. What a simple but revolutionary conclusion! Little black boy and little black girl, I start with me in encouraging you to do your best in life. Do your best to be aware of who you are and to be as adept as possible at identifying where you stand emotionally, mentally and spiritually...and when you're not where you want to be or should be, I commit to helping you be your best at recalibrating. But for sure, I'm done with shutting down your experience You get permission to be whole human beings. It's the least we can give you...
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