Bragging and Pre-School Momxiety

The kids went to get their eyes checked for the first time ever, last week.

Since I was taking a two-year old who's been finally cutting her molars and is Miss CrankyPants-I-Will-Hit-You-Just-Because-I'm-In-Pain-And-You-Are-The-Closest-Thing and a four-year old who likes to disassemble everything she lays eyes on, I thought it best to bring along Babysitter J for back up. There are eyeglass frames laying out all over the store, many in perfect toddler reach.

So there we sat in the office, Nat up in the examining chair, J and I in the back, with Selina crawling between us.  The doctor said to Nat in a schmarmy condescending voice, "do you know your ABCs, honey?"  Nat didn't even seem to really understand what he was asking so I said "she knows them!" and the doctor proceeded to flash up the first eye chart.

The chart read "H R N"

"Hern," said Nat.

I then hastily explained to Nat that these weren't words and she should just read out the letters for the doctor.  I stood up and pointed to each one as she read.  Her eyes turned out to be fine.

Next was Selina's turn.  The doctor flashed up a chart with silhouettes of a fish, a car, a tree, an airplane.  Selina looked at the slightly curvy fish.  "S?" she asked.

I pointed to the tree.  "No sweetie, they aren't letters.  What's this?"

"T?" she wondered.

I figured she thought we wanted her to identify letters as she'd just watched her sister do.  I asked the doctor to use letters instead of pictures.  So he put up a chart that read "E S N Z"

Selina grinned, raised her right hand in the air and signed "E" then "S."  But she didn't make a peep with her voice.

"That's right!  I said, "good job, smart girl!"

The doctor looked befuddled.  "She can see them just fine," I explained.

****

But before Selina had her turn, the doctor was looking into Nat's eye with the light and he told her "Look over my shoulder at your mom and dad."  Again, Nat didn't seem to get it.

Now neither J nor I really care if people mistake us for a hetero-nuclear family.  But my mind was racing ahead to the fact that Nat will be starting at her school next month.  She is going to be hearing a lot about her theoretical "dad" from people all the time.  So I decided to let it be a teachable moment.

"Nat, darling," I asked her, "is J your dad?"

"No!" said Nat, like anyone who might think that must be crazy, "he's J!"

"Do you have a dad?" I asked her further.

"No--I have two moms!" she clarified.

"Oh! that's nice" said the doctor.

So now she knows that A) it's not a secret that her family is a little atypical B) a possible script for clearing up any confusion in that department and C) people won't be mad or freaked out or anything over it.  (I knew the eye doctor wouldn't be--he's probably gay himself and the clinic is in Lesbianville, Chicago.)

Nat's school is technically queer-family-friendly.  There are a couple of other same-sex-headed families there.  Two children of lesbians are in her age group (3-6 year-olds), but neither are in her actual class.  I have a feeling the default theoretical family teachers and other kids will imagine and refer to will be a mommy-daddy-kids family.  Nat has already internalized that norm from watching her various videos.  PBS kids may have some high quality educational shows, but they are no better than anyone else when it comes to family diversity.

And I have been anxious as heck about all this for a few weeks now.

Originally, we planned to homeschool at least until the kids were around 8 or 9 or even older, in large part to keep them from facing too much marginalization due to all their difference from the other kids--like the whole, interracial-queer-adoptive family thing, ya know?  I figured I'd teach them until they were ready to kick serious butt (intellectually that is) if needed, to stand up for themselves and feel expressive and confident.

Then we moved, and I found a school that seemed like maybe it will be a good fit and the kids won't be all that different and the school values difference anyway and yadda yadda now I'm panicking.

It's not that I don't know Nat will manage just fine.  It's just that she's only four and a half.  I want her to feel strong and confident when she's facing that kid who insists a girl can't marry a girl (however innocently).  And there have already been a couple of foreshadowy incidents on the public playground here, in which a boy about 5ish years old was judging her for her less-than-stellar performance on the jungle gym (Nat's gross motor skills are still very late, though not enough to truly be considered "delayed") and then later tried to pull her hat off to see her hair because he thought in this way he could determine her true gender, though upon being asked, she had already told him she was a girl.

(I took note recently that almost all of the girls' play clothes are from the "boys'" departments of the stores and almost all their dress up clothes are dresses.  I just tend to not like play clothes for girls and I tend to LOVE the dresses I find for them.)

Cole intervened in this stuff with this particular boy and Nat is just too naive to feel bad about it anyway.  She's all like "yeah I'm a girl, yeah, I have pretty braids, yeah I'm new to the monkey bars, wanna be best friends forever?"

And thus I see her as a lamb among, well, if not wolves, sort of overly rambunctious puppies, perhaps, who might inadvertently nip her too hard when she's least expecting it.

One thing I've been doing is teaching her language that she might hear so she can make it her own and/or correct people who use the wrong language.  I've been teaching her that "when two girls love each other and get married and are two moms with kids, that's called 'lesbians.'"  I'm also teaching her that the same re: boys is called "gay" and the same re: a boy and a girl is called "straight."

If someone says "your moms are lesbians!" I want her to know that everybody has a label of this type and if need be, she can say "your parents are straight!"

So bent am I on instilling this in her that we are going to make three collages and hang them on the bedroom wall.  One will be called "Lesbians" and will feature pictures of female couples looking goo-goo at each other.  The other two will be similar, and titled, "Gay" and "Straight."

If all of this sounds silly, well, guess what?  One of the issues that I have often read about in books on the topic suggests that even kids whose parents are 100% out and have been since the kid was born may leap to the defensive and insist "no way!" if/when some other kid says "your dad is gay!" for example.  It could be that there's never been a reason to introduce the term at home, since it is just the normative family style, just like most kids with a mom and a dad wouldn't "know" their parents are "straight."

Also, when the term "gay" inevitably gets thrown around as an insult, Nat can play Raffi to whatever Billy is up in her face.

But can she do this at four tender years?

I may never sleep again.

Comments

[Haitian American Family of Three]

Wow Shanon. This is a really amazing post. I think you are going to do a good job of explaining the terms lesbian/gay/straight (and maybe trans/bi/etc later!) to Nat, the collages are the perfect way to show her visually-and kids are so into learning from charts/photos/school stuff, its fun for them!
You said something, "PBS kids may have some high quality educational shows, but they are no better than anyone else when it comes to family diversity." Boy that is SO true. I was just thinking about that today. Its a white,white world on PBS.
Anyway, your writing made me a little teary because I worry about these kinds of things too.
However, don't worry or lose sleep because you're both doing a amazing job raising a confident and happy kid. (They both sound so freaking bright!)

[Shannon]

I don't want to sound completely obsessed, but the kids watch Sesame Street, Plaza Sesamo (Mexican Sesame Street), Between the Lions and now, Word Girl (a little). That's about it, because those shows have a decent amount of racial diversity.

The kids do also watch Blues Clues and Signing Time which are pretty white, but that's about all the video they get. I use DVDs so we can watch what we want and skip the ads.

[Shannon]

Oh--and we will definitely get to the more nuanced versions of gender and sexuality once the kids are total masters of these three basics.

We are already teaching that "MOST girls have vulvas and MOST boys have penises" to prep them for the exceptions.

[diane hogan]

Shannon, I totally understand you freaking out a bit. We have two kids ages 12 and 7, and they have been in a suburban public school since kinder (after attending Waldorf hippie preschool). All the things we worried about and agonized over never materialized. The worse thing that happened was in first grade when a little girl (whose parents are lovely) kept telling my daughter that you have to have a man and a woman to make a baby, so how could she have two moms?? She wasn't mean, just curious, and Jamie just kept telling her over and over, but I do have two moms and no dad. Finally, I called the little girl's mom who was mortified. It never happened again. I think kids get teased for lots of reasons, all kids will get teased for differences, too skinny, too heavy, freckles, curly hair, different voice, the whole gamut - and the two mom thing is more of a repeated explanation than a "tease point". We were the only "out" family in our school at the time, and we have been there for 7 years now with two kids and the kids have had a great experience. I think being out is the key, if you are just matter of fact about your family, others will be too. Not to say there were not some fundie families that were probably completely freaked out - but they kept it to themselves, thankfully. Our school is way more racially diverse now, too, which has made it so much better in terms of the kids just don't question "difference", especially with familial situations - there are so many different family make-ups now - we are just one of many. This is long and rambling, but I promise you that Nat (and Selina when it is her turn) will love school. They will get teased, make no doubt - but most likely not for their families. They will get teased for silly things like not having the right tennis shoes or miniskirt or lunchbox or some other ridiculous thing that hurts nonetheless. We can't protect them from hurt, and trying to do so sometimes makes it worse! That's another lesson I have learned -a classmate's remark or teasing may hurt us a lot more than our children and talking to them about it and trying to "fix it" makes it worse. :) Your girls will be fine (more than fine), they have great parents in their corner, and that's the greatest indicator for happy, well-adjusted kids.

[Johannah]

Shannon-

(Sorry in advance for the very LONG comment.)

Thank you for writing this all out. I have been having anxiety aneurysms about my son starting kindergarten. Most of me knows he will be fine. His real strength is with his peers; he’s friendly and outgoing and plays well with others. And for all of his (ample) misbehavior at home, he has always behaved well in school settings. And really, in kindergarten, cooperative behavior and strong peer interaction skills go a very long way.

However…
We don’t live in a place with much diversity. Sam’s school has three kindergarten classes. Each class has 21-22 students. Among all 65ish kids, three are not white. When I suggested to the school psychologist that they put all three kids in one classroom rather than assigning them one per class, she thought it was an astonishing idea. At least she was receptive to it.

And Sam is struggling with academic concepts. Not enough to qualify for help, just enough to stand out if any of his peers want to notice it. Certainly enough to draw his teacher’s attention. I’m trained as a special education teacher and I certainly haven’t skimped on pre-literacy play (although I haven’t really sat down and tried to force him to learn either). Sam went through early intervention. He attended a fabulous preschool. He has hundreds of books (many self-selected) on his bookshelf and he loves to hear stories and “read” them to himself. But he does not yet know his letters. I’m fairly sure he’ll be diagnosed with a learning disability later- but the range of normal for entering kindergarten is so wide that he just tests out as low average right now.

And when I was talking to the school psychologist, I was so busy filling her in on all of his pressing issues (my concerns around his academic skills, his relevant birth history, his recent loss of his little brother, his recent evaluation results…) that I almost forgot to mention that he had two moms. At the very end of our meeting, I remembered that this may be an issue too (for the school) and mentioned it. She seemed far more struck by Sam’s having two moms than anything else I’d said. But she did mention that a third grader in the school also had two moms, so we aren’t the only ones.

Your description of teaching the labels lesbian, gay, straight, were, I think, just what I needed. We are very, very fortunate in that our family is seen as typical by my colleagues, our extended family, and most of the others we interact with on a daily basis. We’ve taught the kids (and DVDs and books have certainly reinforced) that most people assume a family has a mom and dad. We’ve also taught them that families come in every configuration- and we’re lucky that we have friends that demonstrate most of them. But I’m not sure the kids have the vocabulary to put around those concepts. So teaching it directly seems like a very good idea before the first day of kindergarten.

Also, I’ve thought a LOT about homeschooling. But the reality is that my wife has concerns (reasonable, understandable concerns) about what it would entail, and as the stay at home mom, a lot of the work of home schooling would fall on her. However, we have agreed that if we feel school is in any way damaging our happy, optimistic, cheerful son, we’ll pull him right out and make home schooling work one way or another.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts about all of this.

[Shannon]

I hear you, Johannah! Homeschool is still our ace up the sleeve if this school doesn't work out or if we find it's just too expensive.

I think the kids will like the school. And the school definitely has a decent amount of racial diversity (esp. given its location and just the mere fact that it's private). But still...

[deb]

Thank goodness for D2WOF, right!
Your Raffi is going to be able to kick Billy's butt any day....I mean... solve all tiny conflicts nonviolently....
xoxo

[mijk]

Your post reminded me of our sesamestreet. Opening marriage for samesexcouples gives great songs. This is about a queen who can't decide which king she wants to marry and in the end the kings decide to run of with eachother. at that moment I worried about gay being projeted as second choice and then I decided it is verry funny and the possibility of marrying a boy is brought up in a fun way!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORZZZd85SEM

[Shannon]

Mijk, you have made my week--if not my month! I'm putting that on Strollerderby for sure.

[AJW]

Shannon
My partner and I are the dads of a cuddly bright biracial 3.5 year old daughter. We live in an extremely rural area where the only diversity is in our little Montessori school. Since we are so isolated, we started Cate there when she was 18 months so she could be with other little ones. (She is now moving from "toddler" to "primary"!)
When we were filling out the first papers for the school, I became concerned that everything said "Father/Mother" so I sent off a quick note to the Head of School which said "I hope that these forms will not be indicative of any confusion that you intend to foist on Cate." The phone call we got the next day convinced us we had made the right choice. He said: "You are the first gay or lesbian couple to ever have a child in our school in 16 years (imagine!)so could you please come in and help educate me and Cate's teachers-to-be." We went in and answered all the basic questions about how they should refer to us (Daddy-A and Daddy-T), should they acknowledge the fact that she has a mother (yes!), etc. It was a great moment.
So for Mother's Day we get a Double Daddy card, and of course, my partner ended up on the board of the school.
Long story short -- it was a great teaching moment (although we get a bit tired of being the gay poster children) and Cate's school mates all have seen some true alternatives (and I got to read Tango Makes Three at parent reading day)....
If we can do it in Back Mountain, PA, you can do it in Lesbianville, Chicago....the love that we radiate for our children is reflected back in so many known and unknown ways.

[Haitian American Family of Three]

AJW you sound like a wonderful dad!

[SalomeM]

Shannon,

I have been lurking, reading your site for a while now. I love your way of thinking, the pride, thoroughness, and rigor you use to approach all of your parenting.

I just wanted to write a personal anecdote by way of reassurance: I recently pulled my son out of his preschool. For him, the school wasn't working. We have planned on homeschooling too, but I thought preschool would be a great fun experience for a year or two before I left my full time teaching job. Sadly, the school we chose wasn't as careful with him as we required and he was coming home complaining of teasing and cliques (yes, amazingly! This can start in preschool if the socialization isn't closely monitored by the teachers).

Anyway, I just wanted to say that you are so in tune with your girls that if it's not working, I'm sure you will know it and will deal with it brilliantly. I understand your anxiety, but just wanted to state the obvious: if it's not working, you can always make a change.

I have a feeling you will handle your daughter's transition and experiences in school with the same incredible intuition and determination you have written about over the past few years.

Warmly,
Salome

[Shannon]

Thanks Salome, I do think we will be able to gauge how she's doing and act accordingly. I am so sorry to hear about your school experience.

I really don't think this school will have any issues with race, queer family, etc., but the school can't totally control what happens between children. I like the multi-age classroom approach at this place because one thing I don't like about most schools is the unnatural age-segregation of the classes. But on the other hand, it means Nat will face older and more socially sophisticated children sooner than she otherwise might.

We will see what we will see!

[caro]

It makes me sad that this is such a worry, and makes me feel even luckier about our awesome co-op day care, where at least 1/3 of the families have 2 moms or 2 dads. We are a one-mom, one-dad family, and I love that my kids are seeing so much family diversity so early on. They don't learn lesbian/gay/straight, though, and it's smart of you to teach that. For now, I think "Do you have two moms, or a mom and a dad?" Is a perfectly good way to put it, but as they get closer to public kindergarten we'll start working on the vocab too.

[Lori]

Great post.

It is important to me that my kids have the language to defend their peers. I would love to see more post dealing with this issue.