- introducing kids to the big stuff -

 

I recently saw a Paul McCartney interview where he said something unforgettable. I’ll paraphrase: we want to help the world to heal but we get paralyzed when faced with choice of which cause to champion -- peace, ecology, hunger, human rights -- but making the right choice is not what’s important because all of these human causes meet up and join together at some point. What is important is to start devoting your time to making a positive impact, to join in and help the big cause of making the world better.

 

 

An even more challenging problem, however, has been finding a way to introduce Zoe (now three and a half) to the concept of the huge world outside of our family, our neighborhood, and our town. Stickier even still has been how to properly introduce Zoe to ideas about diversity without making her overly sensitive to people’s race, sexual orientation, disabilities, or appearances.

 

First, the world at large. We bought Zoe a globe when she was about two so that we could show her where our friend was traveling in Europe and we also used it to show her where her Grandparents live (Michigan), where our family friend was born (Costa Rica), where my Grandparents came from (Eastern Europe) and where KC, my wife’s grandparents came from (Mexico, Western Europe, and Oklahoma). Of course, the idea of us all living on an enormous spinning ball didn’t sink in for Zoe immediately, but the framework for understanding the big idea was laid, I think. That is my general philosophy on teaching kids the big ideas; lay the framework for understanding and the details will fill themselves in over time. This strategy has paid off in countless ways for us and I recommend the approach in general.

 

Now, along with the globe, we bought Zoe some inexpensive paperback books (colorful pamphlets, really) on a few different countries (Japan, Mexico, Australia, and Canada) and they supplemented her understanding. Conveniently, it also introduced her to the idea that different people have different cultures, which brings me to the sticky problem of teaching diversity without teaching race-consciousness (for instance), or worse, racism and other forms of prejudice.

 

As Zoe develops, it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep her innocent (read: ignorant) to the world around her. I wish that there was a magical way for Zoe to leapfrog to the way we adults accept people’s differences without much of a thought but, unfortunately, the journey to that liberal, accepting place requires that we teach kids about racial differences, religious differences, and issues we’d rather keep from their innocent minds. What did we do to help solve this problem? We sought help. Luckily, we are friends with the head of Zoe’s preschool, Margaret, a highly educated, very bright and sociable woman who has been educating preschoolers for over 20 years. Her advice was to teach youngsters differences between people, but in the very same breath explain how we are similarly all alike in important ways. I thought, wow, that’s good advice, so I wanted to share it with you all.

 

Our hope is that Zoe and will develop an abiding love and understanding of the interconnection of all humanity. That’s a big, complex compound idea for a three year old to grasp, but I think the framework is already laid and now all that’s left to do is for her to fill in the enormous mosaic of details.

 

I took the title for this entry from my own song, Favorite Son.