Home » Partners & Parents » Multicultural Family » They Learn What We Teach Them

They Learn What We Teach Them

©

A thousand different emotions rushed over me in front of that classroom that day, with anger being the first. I so wanted at that moment, to shout at that child, to take my hand and turn his face away from my daughter, to take Alia and rush from the room. I wanted to weep from the cruelty that came from the mouth of such a young child, and a child I had known for most of his seven years. But, as I struggled for words before a class that waited to hear my answer, the teacher lept from his seat.

"Why would you ask such a thing?" The teacher asked the boy. "What would make you say something so cruel?"

This boy was now the one on the spot, and the spotlight shifted from my daughter to him. He rocked back and forth from one foot to the other and inspected his fingernails while the teacher repeated the question. "My daddy..." The little boy began. "Me and my daddy saw Mrs. Culver and her baby uptown the other day. My daddy said that the baby wasn't pretty, and that the Culver's shouldn't have brought her here because she wasn't like us."

And then, as though in defense for words I might have said but had only thought silently to myself this boy looked into my eyes and added, "My daddy, he doesn't lie. He's big and strong and he knows everything and he says I'll grow up to be just like him."

Children... they learn what we teach them. From the time they are very small, they mimic our movements, our expressions and eventually our words. If our words are of intolerance, they learn prejudice. If we hate, they learn hatred. Life, it seems, is an imitation of actions practiced to art in the days of our youth until those imitations become our own responses and the imprint they leave is etched on our hearts.