After Christmas, my children suffered from Advent calendar withdrawal. They are feeling quite project-deprived. I have had a few things planned for January, but instead life has happened: we had a birthday and a cold and and an ear infection and baby brother has decided sleep is optional.
To be honest, I would have entirely forgotten that Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day except that when I went to pick up the books I had requested from the library (in a clearly less-congested frame of mind) there were several about Martin Luther King Jr.
As I thought about what the core take away from Marting Luther King Jr. Day should be for a five year old and two-and-a-half year old, I was reminded of a chapter from
Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman.
This secular book argues "that many of modern society's most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked."
In a chapter entitled "Why White Parents Don't Talk about Race," the authors argue that parents have accepted the myth that children are color blind. We tend to think that talking about race draws attention to differences children would not otherwise notice, so we remain silent on the topic entirely.
Apparently, children are much more observant than that. They are excellent at creating categories and tend to categorize by the most apparent feature. According to these authors, children also "are developmentally prone to in-group favoritism
." So they create the categories, figure out which one they fit in, and think that one is best.
Oops. Guess we'd better talk about race.
Since reading this, I've been looking for ways to intentionally and specifically discuss race with the kids. As I think the kids are a bit young to grasp the bigger ideas about social change, fighting injustice, advocating for the down-trodden, etc, in which one might focus on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this year we're going to focus on loving your neighbor--especially when your neighbor looks different than you do.
As I thought about talking about race, I was reminded of the VeggieTale video about loving your neighbor. It has a great song with the line: "God makes lots of people in all colors, shapes, and sizes. He loves them very much and what we need to realize is that calling people names because they're different is wrong. Instead we need to look on them in love and sing this song: I can be your friend."
To start we're going to read and act out the parable of the good Samaritan from Luke 10:25-37. We'll focus on the idea that even though the injured man was different, the good Samaritan was kind and caring. Everyone we meet is our neighbor. We may meet people who look very different from us--here we will brainstorm ways people might be different from us--but God wants us to be kind and care for everyone because He made them.
Having set this as the stage, we're going to read the children's picture book
Martin's Big Words. With bold, lovely collage illustrations and just 3-5 simple sentences per page, I anticipate that his book will hold my kids' attention well.
As we read, we'll discuss that there was a time when people were very unkind to other people who looked different because their skin was black--linking back to the good Samaritan story that God wants us to love and care for others. This book does include very simply, but plainly, that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and died. I am planning to skip that page this year.
To wrap it up, I'm going to give Sis and Big Brother each a sheet of paper that says "God makes lots of people in all colors shapes and sizes. He loves them very much!" Then I'm going to give them magazines to look through and cut out pictures of people.
As we do this we'll talk about all the differences we see, but highlight that God made us all and loves us all.
Isn't it amazing how creative God is to make so many people who look so differently? Isn't it amazing that everyone of us is special to God?
