Another Topic Tackled

When I picked Ladybug up from school yesterday, I didn't even have to ask how her day was and what she did. She jumped in the car and I got a 10 minute narrative of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. She told me all about the bus and his dream and how he got shot. After catching my breath and realizing that yes schools teach about the holidays and no a public school is not going to call me and tell me they are getting ready to teach my 5 year old about racial issues and civil rights I let the conversation pass until later that night.

I had time to ponder what a different world it is even from 15 years ago when I was in high school. Growing up in the "north" I can't remember race ever being an issue. At the time I moved to Mississippi in the 90's one of my very good friends that I hung out with in band, rode the bus with and played with after school was black and there was nothing unusual about it. Then I moved to Mississippi and I got a culture shock. I was shocked at the words southerners used, the implied segregation in the schools. Most blacks hung with black and whites hung with whites except one very neat black guy that was a exception.

My husband grew up in the South. He had heard it all his life. I heard it in his circles after we started dating and it was still a very real part of life there.

Luckily for our kids it has never been an issue. I assumed we would tackle the subject one day and I assumed it would be when she came and asked me. But in her mind there has never been the question of "why". She knows that God created us all and that each person is special. We have friends with different nationalities but she had never questioned why their skin was different. But yesterday at 5 she lost a lot of that innocence when she began to recognize that some of her friends are "dark skinned" as she called it, learned how people because of the color of their skin could not sit in the front of the bus, or go to the same school or even drink from the same water fountain. She learned words like segregation and boycott and civil rights and she learned that someone who had a dream was killed because of the color of his skin.

I love scholastic and I love books (even though some unnamed person sometimes doesn't understand why I buy so many books lol) so after Batman went to sleep, I pulled out some books I had set aside, some kids biographies I had already purchased and I had Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King's and we sat down and spent probably 30 minutes reading through and talking about it. Once again I am very impressed with her teacher because from all the information she had taught Ladybug, she was very thorough and explained it very well. But it was something I wanted to make sure we went over together. She still had lots of questions and we went through time lines and how old Rosa was when she got on the bus and she asked a lot about the trial and how she was guilty and about the boycott and why they didn't ride the bus for over a year.

Ladybug is very intuitive and for her it was all matter of fact. She knows that was a long time ago and in her mind I don't think she can completely comprehend the significance of it but to me is was one of those big issues and teachable moments for my daughter.