Dear Reader,

When my oldest children were in elementary school, my husband was stationed in North Carolina. Rather than living on the military base, we lived near a rural town, surrounded by pine forests and tobacco fields. I loved that our children were growing up in a place where the pace of life was slow, where they could roam and play as I had as a child, and where the people were hard working and family-focused.

It seemed idyllic. Until one day at the community pool, when I overheard a neighbor talking to her sister. With that distinctive down-east twang, she said loudly, “It’s not that Aah’m prejudice. Aah don’t mahnd if he’s friends with him! Aah just don’t want him going to his house.”

I think my jaw actually dropped. My recall of that moment is still crystal clear, because even though I was in my thirties, it was the first time I realized that prejudiced people don’t necessarily realize that they are prejudiced. I’d always thought it was something you knew about yourself, like an aversion to seafood or not being able to sing on key. But she clearly thought that the line she drew wasn’t racist, while I clearly saw it was.

That line between Us and Other seems to be growing every day. As grandparents, we have the opportunity to make sure our grandchildren grow up understanding how destructive prejudice and racism are. They are still forming their view of the world. The younger they are, the greater our chance to help them develop a wide, inclusive view.

One of the things that we, as grandparents, can do is to be mindful of the messages we are sending them. Are we emphasizing that line by buying the doll that “looks just like her!”? Are we reading them stories that expose them to different ways of looking and living and thinking? Are we careful of comments we make that point out the differences in people we disagree with, rather than the things we have in common? Are we aware of what’s being said as the TV or radio plays in the background while they are with us?

As I shared in our most recent blog post, our grandchildren are learning from us all the time. The more intentional we are in the lessons we teach, the greater opportunity we have to guide them towards believing that everyone has value, even those who are different from us.

Next time you are with your grandchild, play a game of Same and Different. You can do it with blocks, pictures of animals, donuts at the donut shop, or a basket full of laundry. Take two items and talk about what’s the same about them and what is different.

Introducing them to the idea that things can be both different AND the same is a lesson we can't teach often enough!

Warm regards,
DeeDee

DeeDee Moore | Founder, More Than Grand LLC | morethangrand.com

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