Take Time to Modify Your Example

Children that learn at home instead of school spend almost twice as much waking time with their parents. That’s a lot.

It means more time to see Mom and Dad interacting with family and friends, strangers and neighbors.

And more time to notice things going on – a Meter Reader? Someone keeps track of how much water we use? Why do we have to pay for water? Why isn’t it done electronically? Who else comes to our house to check on what we’re doing?

Choices. You can be dismissive and get back to your lasagna recipe, or briefly explain what you know, or defer to the utility worker who may or may not be interested in enlightening your student at that moment, or ask your smart speaker, or have your child do some research and tell you what they found out.

You may do all of the above. You may even have them write a report and create a notebook tab for “Environmental Studies” if they don’t already have one.  Nothin’ wrong with that, once in a while.

Which you choose probably depends on how interested you yourself are in the topic, and all the other things going on at the moment, including that dinner prep.

Capitalizing on an interest is important – hey, maybe Junior will go into civil engineering or solve global warming - but it’s likely that the water meter thing is not time-sensitive.  On the other hand, the news is. That’s why it’s news.

Forest fires, elections, pandemics, rallies, etc.

Busy or not, we can be tempted to defer on issues that are uncomfortable, or that we think don’t touch us personally, or when there seems to be nothing we can do about them.

Inequality fits in there. Gender, race, faith, national origin, more.

And when those things are in the news, put down the box of noodles, listen and talk. Hear what your child knows and thinks, answer to the best of your ability, admit what you don’t know, overcome your apprehension, be honest.

The lessons your kids will learn from seeing you manage an uncomfortable topic, or hearing you consider the experiences of people that are different from you in some way, or finding out what you can do about an injustice, are more important than dinner being on time.

Now the doing part. Yes, there is always something you can do, or something you can stop doing.

For example, it bothers me to hear someone recounting a story using descriptors that are not germane to the story, like race, ethnicity, body type, age, etc. Often, it subtly conveys a presumed like-minded bias, whether the person is aware of it or not.

So be aware.

There is no need to modify the subject in a sentence like “The man in front of me almost forgot his change.” with information that he was white or black or Asian or Hispanic or elderly or wearing a yarmulke or whatever. Doing so gives the idea that it has something to do with the story, when it often does not.

My family and I have decided to make a concerted effort not to do that. You can too.

It’s a small thing, but really not.

Maybe we can’t right all the world’s wrongs, but we can change ourselves.