What Does 'Racist' Mean?

The other day, my 10 yr old asked me this question.

My immediate response was “When people think their skin color is better than other people’s”.

Though, now I’m not sure that I answered that question to the best of my abililty.

To be fair to past-me; we were walking into the doors of her school in the morning, after having gone to the doctor, and we only had about 30 seconds before getting to her classroom. Not a lot of time to extensively answer any loaded kid questions, such as the one she softly lobbed at me only 5 seconds before.

What does ‘Racist’ mean?

How do I adequately answer this question? How much do I tell her about racism? Is it just about skin color? Or is there more? Do I explain the long social history that comes with that word? Do I have to tell her about all the injustices that have occurred, and continue to occur, because of it…and, of course I do…but when? How? Do I tell her all at once, or in parts? How much detail do I go into, and what if I miss something important?

I am not one to skirt around hard or uncomfortable topics with the children in my care…but man, this one is a doozy.

And it’ll take longer than 30 seconds to explain.

When You Grow Up

When you grow up

the world will tell you to be smaller. 

To speak softer, to walk quieter. 

To be seen and not heard.

To look pretty, 

And speak nicely 

And 

Be as small as you can be. 

Small is good. 

Small is perfection. 

But I don't want you to be small. 

I want you to grow big and strong. 

To have muscles to throw around all the bullies 

inside and outside your own head. 

To have strong legs that can take you on adventures 

and abs of steel to protect, 

and reflect, 

all the gut punches you've got coming. 

I want you to be bold. 

To go after what you love. 

To be kind and helpful, and take up space 

and speak your mind. 

When you grow up

I want you to show the world the brilliant, 

wonderful, 

strong,

kind, 

tenacious, 

beautiful human

I know you are. 

My Kids Just Don't Understand

I didn’t prepare a snack for my kids today.

At least I didn’t prepare it in advance.
You see, the children I care for have such a nice life that when I go to pick them up at school or from the bus stop, I always have a snack of fresh fruit or vegetables washed, chopped, and ready for them to eat.
Healthy foods.
Like apples, snap peas, carrots, strawberries...foods that need some care before being consumed by small children.
Foods that are nutrient-rich, and time-consuming to wash/chop.
And, as I stopped what I was working on for this afternoon, and went to start preparing their snack (20min before I needed to leave the house to pick them up) I thought “why am I doing this?”.

Of course, on a day that we have activities immediately after school, I need to have a healthy snack ready to go when I pick them up and we’re transitioning (driving) to their lessons or after-school activities.
But, today was just a home day.
A day when I pick them up from the bus, and we go home, get homework done, take showers. Do the boring stuff of life.
I thought “today, I don’t need to prepare this beforehand, I can just cut these up at home. And, for that matter, the kids should help me!”

So they did.

As we were chopping up the strawberries together, I had one of those “Aha!” moments. One of those moments that seem like you should have thought of them so much sooner, and you’re hoping you haven’t come to this realization too late.

So many things we do for our children, we do in thankless silence.
We do without acknowledgement or even the expectation of gratitude.

We do them because they are the things that need to be done, and we do them because we love the children we care for.
But, why?
Why do we do all this without expectation of gratitude or at some small recognition for the things we’re doing?
Is it helping the children that we care for to grow up into good humans if we don’t make them aware of the things that are constantly being done for them? Shouldn’t we be teaching them be aware of, and think about, how they can be helpful to others?

So, today my kids helped me with something I do for them everyday. I made sure they participated in each step, and encouraged them to take note of the time it took to complete the preparation. I made sure they thanked me for doing this for them everyday, and I thanked them for their help today.

In doing this, I tried to bring a little more awareness into their brains. For each other, for the things that are done for/given to them, and for the life they have. I intend to do this more often, and, like all things in parenting, I hope it will help to shape them into more gracious, grateful humans.

Only time will tell.