In the fresh bloom of the pre-school years, I agreed to become a member of the Board. The school was everything early education should be: they played music, hatched butterflies, went on small expeditions, little hands in little hands, a long caterpillar of wee ones in boots and coats undulating slowly along, noticing every leaf and stone.
She was the sunny cherry tomato to my shy string bean. She drew pictures, I wrote stories. We found the same things funny, but she delivered the punchline and I was the fall guy. We were a secret club of two, both of us in terrible glasses and kitchen haircuts. We were each other’s safe place throughout elementary school and beyond.
One sleepless night during my third trimester as dawn crept slowly over the mountain I was facing a chilling truth: I going to have a baby. Worse, one day I was going to have a teenager.
He stood at the street corner with his back to the traffic. It was cold and raining and it was dark, the late afternoon in November dark that arrives in BC like a rock rolled in front of the sun. I was wet having only left the shelter of my car one black ago. He was asking for money, shoulders hunched against the weather. Across the street there were two more men. One man was sitting on the ground with his back against a bike rack, a sign laid on the sidewalk in front of him. He looked both resigned and angry and was talking to himself or passersby, I couldn’t be sure.
In her opening keynote speech for Blissdom Canada '11, Catherine "herbadmother" Connors challenged the audience to come up with answers to four questions. It has taken me longer than it really should to come up with those answers. Though I understood what Catherine was after – intellectual curiosity, both humble and rigorous, is the key to true wisdom. Applying the same models of scrutiny to connect with honesty and integrity is the key to social media – I felt squeamish.
What would you say if your child came home from school and told you a group of girls had been repeatedly picking on her?
What would you tell your boy if he came downstairs and told you cyber bullies have been harassing him?
What happened when you encountered injustice, cruelty, harassment, or bullying? As a child? As a teen? As an adult? What are you modeling as you help your kids navigate these stormy waters?
I’ve been asking myself the kind of questions I prefer not to poke at very often. The kind of questions with answers that feel rather like looking at myself under fluorescent lights. In a full length mirror. First thing in the morning.
