Thursday, June 16, 2016

Feeling helpless about the Orlando massacre? One thing we can do


In my twenties, I used to go dancing with friends at a gay bar in New York City on Saturday nights. We found it both fun and freeing. We could dance our hearts out without getting hit on. We felt unscrutinized. We felt welcome.

I thought of those days as I read social media messages sent from Orlando's Focus club on the night of the massacre. They've been one of the most haunting things about the tragedy. Unlike 9/11, when Facebook and Snapchat weren't around, this time we could read plaintive texts from a young man who saw what was coming. We could watch a video taken by a 25-year-old woman minutes before she was murdered. They died in their safe space.

Like many, I've felt helpless these last few days, and angry. Helpless because there is nothing to do for the victims, other than donating money to their families. Angry because I feel powerless to do anything to prevent this from happening again. Like many, I've found myself ranting on Facebook about the need for gun reform and by that I mean an all-out war on weapons, as the problem is hardly just about making guns less easy to get; stolen ones are widely available on the black market.

But as I read and re-read the stories and stared at the victims' photos, I thought about one thing that we, as parents, can do: teach our children tolerance.

I didn't grow up with an abundance of it. My father had certain antiquated p.o.v's, and that's as much as I'll say because he was a wonderful father. Becoming a parent made me extra-conscientious about prejudice, especially as Max's mom. I quickly realized the discrimination and intolerance children with special needs face, sometimes through painful experiences.

I'm relatively liberal-minded, and assumed my kids would turn out that way. But as I've sat and pondered what I can do in the face of the Pulse killings, it's occurred to me that my children won't simply pick up tolerance and acceptance through osmosis. I need to make more of an effort.

I know that, as with most things, children watch and imitate our own behavior. This means being aware of how we talk about people who are seemingly different than us. Sabrina and I have had conversations about what's more alike than different about people with disability, and that everyone has their own unique abilities, but I have not done enough to address that about people of other races and ethnicities.

Raising tolerant children also means discussing differences that exist in our own families, and how we value them. Again, we've talked about this with Sabrina here and there, but come to think of it, never with Max. Who needs acceptance as much as any of us do.

Raising tolerant children means that when we talk about hate crimes, like this one, we address the why. Max still isn't aware of such events. Sabrina and her friends tend to text about them. I've talked with her about people hating others merely because of their skin color, religion, ethnicity, size and their choice of loving women or men. I've explained that people who hate are often very unhappy themselves. We had a good talk about this on Holocaust Remembrance Day in May.

Raising tolerant children means breeding confidence, as kids with low-esteem are the ones most likely to treat other people badly. This, I regularly try to do, ditto for the schools my children attend.

I recently read a great exercise for teaching kids about diversity, suggested by the Anti-Defamation League. Gather lemons in a basket and hand one out to each child. Ask them to examine their lemon and note how it's shaped, its size, its markings. Have everyone puts their lemons back in the basket, then ask them to find theirs. Usually, the kids are able to do so. Exploring how they recognized their lemons (whether because one was big, say, or had discoloration) can lead to a discussion about the variety that is humanity. And then, you peel the lemons, put them back in the basket and ask kids to find them gain...at which point they will discover that all the fruits look alike. Which can trigger a discussion about how people are similar on the inside.

I am not standing here on a soapbox. I am looking up to the heavens, aching for something concrete to do in the face of a mind-boggling tragedy. Instilling tolerance in our children is one key way we can better their future and this country's—and pay tribute to the Pulse 49.

Image source: Flickr/Joe Piette

21 comments:

  1. Good post, but I would be really careful about saying things like "who people choose to love." Sexuality isn't a choice, you're born that way. Please don't imply it's a choice people make. Most of us would not have chosen this

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    1. I meant people who choose to be open about being gay but you're right, that sentence would be best as "whether they love men or women."

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    2. Or both women and men (bisexual), or everyone (Pansexual), or no one (like me! Because I'm Aromantic/Asexual!)

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    3. Yes! That's just beyond his comprehension right now.

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  2. You've had some amazing posts lately about addressing challenging issues with children! The one thing I'd love to say is that acceptance, not tolerance, should be the ultimate goal. This post is great, though. :)

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    1. Thank you. I tend to use the words interchangeably but, yes, acceptance is the ideal.

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  3. I'm sure you are doing great at talking about the tough stuff with Sabrina and Max. With Max- would it make sense to approach the fact that people are different through his own differences? Like saying "Max you know how you have CP and that's makes you different? There are lots of ways people can be different. You have white skin and (someone you know) has brown skin. You are Jewish and (someone you know) is Christian. You have a Mommy and a Daddy but some people have 2 Moms or 2 Dads. Differences are good but there are sometimes people who don't know that and they do bad things to people who are different. And that's sad."

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    1. Kathryn, that is excellent advice. I will put that into effect at some point. Right now, Max doesn't see himself as different from everyone else. He is still wrapping his head around the fact that he has cerebral palsy (the other week, he asked if I had it and if Ben had it).

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  4. People do this because they're lonely and the bitter taste of envying the love others exchange becomes unbearable. Loneliness is not a thing to be taken lightly. Loneliness kills. The gun is a means of forcing empathy. With each gunshot, these thoughts resonate with them:

    "You killed me a thousand times over."

    "How is it that you can love when I am hated?"

    "You never cared."

    "Where's your (popularity/money/academic record, etc.) now?"

    "Why should I show mercy to the very people who tore my soul to shreds?"

    I'm not trying to justify shootings, but it's important that these people are still seen as human and not just violent monsters. To be honest, I resonate with the stories of perpetrators more than victims. I hate intolerance, but I hate having loneliness brushed to the side even more.

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    1. The shooter doesn't need more attention for hatefulness. The victims need your compassion. There is NO WAY to justify what he did.

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    2. The shooters need it even more. Forcing pain onto others is like vomiting.

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    3. You are insinuating that the people in Pulse were responsible for the shooter's intolerance and hate and that the shooter is somehow the victim. Just stop. This is obviously an issue you don't understand.

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    4. They were not. Hatred was, Loneliness was. These things build up as layers.

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  5. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Ellen. This was a horrible, senseless, hateful tragedy.

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  6. When I hear about other people's 70+ year old parents, I am struck again by how remarkable my own have been. They grew up in tiny villages in India, in world where all marriages were arranged, where boys and girls didn't kiss before they married. But they are among the most tolerant people I know. They've always been and continue to grow their circle of acceptance.

    That lesson has certainly lived on in our family (which is inter-racial, and interfaith (and not christian; spouse is of Jewish descent) where tolerance has always been part of the discussion. We started with race and religion, since those are our differences (in addition to being generally odd). We have raised a daughter who proudly stands out and celebrates her differences and a son who loves to belong but stands up without hesitation if he sees intolerance happening around him (we worried about whether he would have the courage, but he does).

    Our two kids are two different models (one celebrates her differences, the other likes being part of the crowd) so they give us different models for teaching tolerance and acceptance. I think it's important to work with the personality of your child -- I'm like my daughter, so that model was easier for me to understand, but everyone can stand up for what's right.

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  7. You've touched on a topic close to my heart, because I believe in the power and responsibility of bystanders. Sometimes, las with race for me, or disability for you, we are fighting for ourselves; but often, the greatest courage is required to fight for an allies, to wear our tolerance and acceptance on our sleeve.

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  8. Tolerance is not enough. You wouldn't want Max to be "tolerated" - tolerance is the neighborhood boys sighing when he walks through their game, but just continuing to play around him. Acceptance is inviting him to join.

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    1. I used the words interchangeably here, but I will be more careful about that going forward. Thank you.

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  9. I enjoy your posts at times, even though your experiences don't align with my child (much more involved physically). However, please focus on your area of expertise instead of preaching a gun control agenda.

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    1. I'm surprised that my one sentence on the topic of gun control, which consisted of expressing my opinion and not "preaching, made you uncomfortable. That was clearly not the purpose of this post. In any case, a blog is a spot where people express their opinions, and that is not something that can be dictated. I sincerely mean it when I say that you should find a blog where no opinions are discussed that disturb you.

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Thanks for sharing!