What is your parent-child relationship like? What's positive about that and what's not so positive about that? I thought about this after experiencing an encounter with a child who was mimicking their parent's biases in an offensive, troubling way. Clearly, the mom had relayed a number of prejudices to her child, and the child was conveying those prejudices aloud to a number of people. The prejudices were offensive, superficial, and short-sighted. The prejudices were also hurtful serving to hinder a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the people in the room.
As I listened to the litany of dehumanizing words, many questions filled my mind. First, I wondered where and why the parent had come to embrace so many prejudices. Why did she feel that the traits discussed served to make some people better than others, and how did she miss the fact that people's experience of life greatly influenced those traits. It seemed that the parent valued traits related to wealth the most--it seemed she valued wealth more than creativity, hard work, kindness, love, service, and generosity. And like the parent, the child appeared to adopt those values as well which served as an affront to those in the room who were not wealthy.
What do we do when we encounter prejudice like this? I simply listened and thought about it. I thought about prejudices passed down to me from family members and others. I wondered what prejudices I still hold that were gifted to me that way, and how I might teach myself to think differently with a more open-minded perspective.
I thought about this child and how they might suffer from their prejudicial mindset. They'll clearly miss out on the joy of kindly meeting and learning about others with an open mind and heart. At some point, they'll likely understand this and hopefully move beyond their closed-mindedness. Long ago, when I reiterated a prejudice passed down to me, a cousin challenged me. It was a good challenge that opened my eyes and made me think differently. If the time is right, we can challenge the prejudicial notions that others relay, but if the time is not right, that can do more harm than good.
As our children develop, so do our relationships with our children. Rather than the hierarchical relationship of caregiver/leader and cared-for/follower, the parent-child relationships needs to become much more of a give-and-take friendship where parents learn from and follow children while children learn from and follow parents too. Our children will live their own lives, and if we take an interest in those lives with an open mind and heart, the relationships will remain strong.
When we only see our children as an extension of ourselves, we run the risk of impeding our children's healthy growth and development. I'll think more about this in the days ahead as there's lots to learn and understand in this arena.