Awareness

We do our best to be very sensitive and careful in how we handle and discuss race, class and gender in our family. We work on our use of language, our interactions, our alterations of existing materials, our own internal, built-in biases. We work on them, attempt to work them out, and be in a place of natural equilibrium and equality in our daily life. We are not by any means perfect, or even always good, but we are always working to be better.

With class, we have a very strong awareness of our privilege and success. We are also super aware of the fallacy of class as a means for stratification, but understand the vast reality that is does segment society dramatically.

At this point, Kyle and Owen know the word "Money" but don't understand the concept much at all. They don't get it that you have to pay for things, or that you have to have money to pay for things. They are starting to have some awareness of it, but their understanding is still very limited.

And, when it comes to our children, we put in extra effort to overcome external influences. But, as any parent can attest, there is much that is just simply out of our hands. And, as we near K & O turning 5, and Meera turning 1, we're so poignantly aware of how quickly they are growing and changing - and becoming people with their own thoughts, feelings and intellect.

This morning on the way to school below was the dialog with Kyle that he initiated out of the blue. It was non-judgemental, just observational:

K: "Papi, do you like big houses or little houses?"

B: "I like houses that are just the right size. Why do you ask?"

K: pauses... People who don't have a lot of money have little houses, people with a lot of money have big houses."

B: "Oh, that's interesting, who told you that?"

K: "Nobody, just me."