When We’d Least Like Them To

 

I overhead a teacher telling a mother that her son made a little girl cry on the playground. Apparently, the little boy was making fun of a differently abled child and throwing wood chips at her. He was told to stop twice before he did.

He was a kindergartener.

The mother didn’t have a response for the teacher, at least not one that I could hear. No abject apology, no horror (feigned or otherwise), no calling the son out for his behavior right then and there. I obviously have no idea what later occurred between parent and child, but I know what my reaction was.

I wanted to tase mother and son and then put that child in my trunk and ship him out on the first plane bound for Singapore. (Anyone else remember the caning incident over vandalism?)

But most of all I wanted to wring my hands and cry. Where did a five-year-old get the idea that was okay?

We all know this, but it bears repeating. Our kids are listening and they are watching. Now obviously none of us would never condone or encourage this kind of blatantly egregious behavior. (We’re above it, of course.)

But do we sometimes convey that people can be treated with contempt?  That at certain times and under certain circumstances, it’s acceptable (and even understandable or expected) to act like certain people are less than we are? Remember that bumbling checker who put the eggs under the canned goods and you mumbled that she was an incompetent moron? Or remember those teenagers standing on the street corner Tuesday night, did you call them lazy fools when you drove past? 

Do you shout at the TV about the right-winged Fox News watcher or the agenda of the liberal media, about the anti-American ACLU-er or the woman-hating prolifer? Did you have a mouthful to say about Chick-fil-a that was commentary on more than just waffle fries? Post Newtown, did you rant to friends and family about card carrying members of the NRA or conversely about the people who want to destroy the Second Amendment? After the Trayvon Martin verdict, did you have a few choice words about one or more of the following: Zimmerman, the judge, the jurors, the lawyers, law enforcement, rioters, the President?

Have you run down the politician, the picketer, the preacher, the Facebook poster that you don’t agree with?

No one is saying you need to go around linking arms with those you disagree with and singing Kumbaya or that you shouldn’t speak to your kids about what you believe and why.

We should be a people of outrage and indignity at injustices, wrongs, complacency and moral morass. We should be impassioned by our beliefs, principled in our convictions, diligent in our duties to ourselves and to our families. 

But there’s a way to call a spade a spade without denigrating him and ourselves in the process.

Our children are listening and learning when we’d least like them too.

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Feeling a little demoralized? I was. Then a friend sent me this video. I love his and his parents’ ingenuity. Then there’s this quote, “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot in life, period, that I would say I can’t do. Just things I haven’t done yet.”  Cheering madly for you, Richie Parker. Cheering madly for you. Thanks for making my world a little brighter, a little better.