Kid Considerations: Did I Say That?

Kid Considerations:

Did I Say That? Being a Role Model, Whether You Like it or Not

I recently saw a video that had gone viral, in which a white woman launches into a vitriolic, racist rant aimed at an African-American man who may or may not have said something that upset her. Besides the horrid nature of her words, equally disturbing was the casual demeanor of her two young children, who were hanging around in the background, acting as though this was business as usual for a day out with mom. Watching them, you might have thought she was simply chatting with a neighbor.

This reminded me of another incident with a child in my class a few years ago. This child was almost four, his social-emotional maturity was delayed, and had a behavioral issue that he sometimes expressed through intentional toileting “accidents.” One day, when he had wet his pants, we went into the bathroom, and I made sure he had a change of clothes and a plastic bag to put his wet clothes in. I then told him to change his clothes, something that he was perfectly capable of doing himself, but on this day, he wanted the attention of having someone else do it for him. When I declined and turned to leave him to his task, I heard him mutter, “f---ing b---h.” Since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I heard him right, I turned around and calmly said, “what did you say?” He looked at me and, matter-of-factly, repeated it. I looked him in the eye and said, “you know, we don’t call people names here, and I expect that you won’t call me or anyone else that again. OK?” He said “okay...”, then proceeded to change his clothes. He seemed a little confused that my reaction wasn’t stronger. When his mother came to pick him up, I told her what he had said, and suggested that she and her husband might want to be a little more careful about the language they use around their son. I also explained to her that he used it perfectly appropriately in relation to the context in which he had learned it. What he had learned listening to his parents was that, if you are a boy and you are mad at a girl, you call her that. He was mad at me, so that’s what he called me.

By the time most children are two years old, their receptive language (the vocabulary that they are able to understand when they hear it) far exceeds their expressive language (the words they are actually able to produce). Even though we don’t hear young children immediately repeating words we use, rest assured they are acquiring them. By the time they are three, they begin to develop a clear understanding of the emotional context in which language is used, and will begin to experiment with using the vocabulary they have been building in what they think are socially appropriate ways. In other words, if they hear words used in anger at home, they will use those same words in anger in other social situations.

And those children in that parking lot in the video? Even though they didn’t seem to be listening intently, you can bet that they were hearing every word, the same way that they had heard every word every other time their mother reacted to some social slight. But instead of just picking up profanity, they were picking up something much more devastating: specific hatred directed at someone because of his skin color. The woman’s insistence that she’s “not a racist” is meaningless when she uses the language she was throwing about so comfortably, and that’s what her children will take away. Not just her words, but also her attitude and her actions.

And THAT’S the other side of the language coin. Children learn not only words, they also learn attitudes and actions from the significant adults with whom they interact. If they see and hear violence, they learn violence; if they see and hear compassion, they learn compassion; if they see and hear hatred and intolerance and fear, they learn hatred, intolerance, and fear.

One of the most difficult social equations to navigate with young children is the expression of emotion that is honest, yet developmentally appropriate. As much as I feel pain when I witness examples such as the woman in the parking lot, I also cringe when I see a teacher who is constantly bubbly and never expresses frustration or anger. If children learn their emotional responses from adults, how can we expect them to learn appropriate reactions if they never see us model them? Calm discussion and gentle demeanor is important to model, but if children who are making hurtful or disrespectful choices never see a teacher express aggravation or negativity in an acceptable way, they will never learn those acceptable reactions. Children hear and learn words, but they observe and practice actions as well, and need to be able to connect those words and those actions with specific emotional contexts.

When that young boy called me that name, I was sad for him, not particularly angry, and I think that is what disrupted his expectation. I would guess that, at home, when his father called his mother that, she responded in kind. When I responded more calmly, and stated firmly that the problematic part of his behavior wasn’t the specific words, but was the fact that he was using name-calling to be hurtful, it re-framed his emotional context for that interaction. Had he persisted in this behavior, he would have seen me express my frustration with his continued hurtful choice, the same way that he had seen me express my impatience with his toileting defiance, or my anger with his occasional physical aggression. In these interactions, “frustration,” “impatience,” and “anger” as I modeled them were firm, fair, and reasoned responses. I never yelled, I never called him names, I never responded physically...I named my emotions, I explained the reason for them, and I demonstrated rational, constructive reactions for each.

The takeaway? Whatever age your children are, remember that they are listening, watching, and learning from what they see and hear you do. A little modeling goes a long way.