When you've been spending all of your time at a place where everyone can creep up to paying 20K a year for elementary school tuition with apparent ease, I can see how it would be surprising to share a table with 2 homeless kids. In fact, I can see how that would be surprising for lots of people in lots of different situations.
So, when my 8 year old daughter came home chattering about her new table mates ("the janitor helped move the desks around, I didn't get to move my own, Mom") I asked the natural question "who's at your table". I learned their name, rank and serial number as well as the fact that two of them aren't particularly good at getting "points" (whatever those are useful for) and that they often have to "move down their colors" (which sounds dirty but I believe refers to the aforementioned humiliation of changing your color depending on your ability to comply with many and varied rules).
So, the next logical question for a kid in a new school involves "are you friends, does s/he ride your bus, do you want a playdate, where does s/he live?" Usually a chat ensues but this time my daughter clams up. "It's a secret".
Oh - a secret. I convince her that I am an incredible secret keeper and that I would never reveal her secret. And I will take this one to my grave with me. Suffice it to say that my case is compelling and the secret is that these classmates live in "the shelter". Don't tell her I told you, OK? It would be a hit to my credibility.
One of my big anti-private school things was the lack of diversity and the lack of exposure to the real world, but somehow this secret jarrs me. How is my daughter equipped in any way to sit at this table when every other table she has sat at contained affluent mainly caucasian students who's parents lean on X3s with keys to million dollar mansions? So now I see what they mean when they say "careful what you wish for".
Turns out that she spends some time with one new home-challenged friend and that friend is completely horrified by her living situation. She'd hate for all of you to find out, in other words. My compassionate daughter went quickly through a very mature and impressive decision making process. She decided not to "help" her new friend. She decided not to "feel badly" for her new friend. She decided that the best thing to do would be to respect her new friend by treating her like any other kid and by down-playing the homelessness and up-playing the kidishness. "Mom, she's just a kid like me - except she's 2 years older so lots taller".
True diversity requires tough choices, open minds, and fresh perspectives. As it turns out - my girl is pretty good at those things.
No comments:
Post a Comment