Stereotyping and Voldemort

Speaking of little Goldums:

Her joking with Anna about our baby – saying, I think it’s going to be an elephant. No? You don’t think that could be right. Hm. I was sure it was that. Maybe a guinea pig? – made me think of the mischievous little smile she gets when she is about to tell me something she feels is rather clever.

Last night we had a little Family Home Evening lesson on stereotyping. I probably wouldn’t have used the word, “stereotyping” necessarily, but I’d overheard a few remarks by kids from their school recently that made me cringe a bit, and I thought it was a good time to make my kids aware of the need to be careful in how we group people or throw out terms that might be hurtful. Abe’s fourth grade class had recently been discussing the meaning of the word “stereotype” so I thought that might be a good way to start – by asking Abe to explain what that word meant to the girls.

He did a good job, and even gave them an example of people assuming all Russians were bad during The Cold War. Because we had several Russian neighbors up in WA, we were able to talk about how ridiculous and unfair it would be for someone to say, “Russians are bad.” We were then able to move that on gently into areas that I thought they really did need to be aware of in their tiny spheres here.

Anyway, it was cute, and we had a good little discussion that covered a fairly broad range – from different races, to religions, to Daisy bringing up the“dumb blondes” stereotype, to . . . Goldie’s cleverness:

During some of the lesson she had seemed a little disturbed. It might have been a bit old for her, and she didn’t seem to like the idea that anyone would judge someone based on any one attribute. Near the end, I said, “Goldie, does that make any sense?”

She raised her eyebrows and said, “It makes TOO MUCH sense!” As if she were saying, “Yes, I understand all too well the foibles of man and am horrified at the clear wrongness of it.” Then she got a little twinkle in her eye and said, “I know a good one, Mom. It wouldn’t be fair for people to think that all the people in the world named Voldemort are bad.”

The kids all had a good laugh as they agreed, and our lesson came to an end.