"We Don't Say Those Words in Class!"

        I can remember one particular incident when my son, at the age of seven was walking in the sand on a beach.  Out of the blue, here come two men, holding hands, one of the men looking similar to a woman (lip gloss, eye lashes, short pants and plenty of jewelry).   My son looked up at me and said “mom is that two men, do they suppose to be holding hands like that?”  I was absolutely stunned and couldn’t say anything at the moment.  Once I snap back to reality, I told him they was just close friends and decided to hold hands on the beach today. I also told him there’s nothing wrong with holding hands, but some individual have disagreements with people of the same sex holding hands.  This is the reason why we need to listen and be attentive to our children at all times. Even though children may not understand the full meaning of their biased comments, these can become the basis for more developed prejudice if adults do not respond to them (Pelo, 2008).

What messages might have been communicated to this child by the adult's response?  A lot of times when children see couples holding hands it’s a sign of affection for one another.  When I looked stunned at my son, the message that probably was communicated to him was “this just doesn’t look right”.  I wanted to reply to him with a short and comfortable answer because there are so many forms of miscommunication taking place every day in the world.  We all know that children observe everything at home, school, and on outings and we love our children.  But we also know that society has changed since their upbringing, so we must be honest and open with them when communicating. 

An example of how an anti-bias educator might have responded to support the child's (or classroom’s) understanding.  Many children are unaware of the different basis of gender, but they learn from the environment in which they live.  As an educator, having an anti-bias approach help children learn to treat everybody the same and with respect.  We cannot eliminate prejudice, but we can help a child respect the ability to work together with different viewpoints and have the commitment to act against bias relationships.

                                            Reference

Pelo, A. (2008). Rethinking Early Childhood Education.  A Rethinking Schools Publication.