Conversations with my daughter.

[rivka]

The thing about conversations with Alex at almost-four is how quickly they can change from normal little-kid topics and silliness to big issues that I have no idea how to handle.

Alex: When my ear hurt at school, I was wearing my shirt with red and green apples.
Me: Oh, that's right, because remember what Dr. Fragetta said?
Alex: He said my ear was as red as my shirt.
Me: Yep. And he also said you had the reddest eardrum he'd seen all week.
Alex: How did Dr. Fragetta see my eardrum?
Me: Well, your eardrum isn't very far in, so it's easy for him to see it if he shines a light in there. That's why you have to be so careful not to put anything in your ear, because it might hurt your eardrum.
Alex: [quoting her teacher] You should never put anything in your ear that's smaller than your elbow.
Me: Should you put a pencil in your ear?
Alex: No!
Me: Should you put a crayon in your ear?
Alex: No!
Me: Should you put an ice cream cone in your ear?
Alex: N- ...It's bigger than your elbow, so you can.
Me: It's probably not a good idea, though, because you'd get ice cream all over your eardrum.
Alex: What if your eardrum was much too hot?
Me: That would only happen if you had a really high fever.
Alex: What if I had a really high fever and my eardrum was much too hot?
Me: I would give you some medicine to bring your fever down.
Alex: What if there was no medicine?
Me: But there is.
Alex: Some places, there is no medicine.
Me: [recognizing the reference] Is that from the book you read at school?
Alex: For Every Child, a Better World.
Me: The places where there isn't any medicine, that doesn't usually happen in our country.
Alex: Why?
Me: Because we live in a rich country that has a lot of resources, a lot of things and money and medicine and people who went to college to learn how to be doctors. Some other countries are poor and don't have as much of those things.
Alex: Maybe before you were born, there was a race for all the countries and our country won.
Me: I don't think that happened.
Alex: Then why is our country rich and other countries are poor?

...Go ahead. Tell me how you would answer that question in a way that is honest and yet age-appropriate for a four-year-old. It's not like there's a pop-up book of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

I told her that it was a hard question with a lot of answers. When pressed, I mentioned that since people first started living here the US has had a lot of natural resources, like good soil for farming and metals to make things from, and that meant that we could make a lot of things and have a lot of things. She asked for another reason, and I said that a lot of people want things that come from our country, like listening to our music and watching our movies and wanting to use good ideas that people in our country have had. She asked for another reason, and I mentioned that some countries are not rich because of bad things that are happening there, like if there is a war there and a lot of fighting it is hard for people to have jobs and make things, so those countries might be very poor. She stopped there and so I did too. My next example was going to be that people in rich countries have sometimes taken things from poor countries, and that makes it harder for those countries to get rich themselves.

But seriously, what would you say? If you had time to prepare, which I didn't?

Comments

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

I probably would have just nodded and said, "Well, roughly, yes." Your answer is more informative, though.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

My own parents' response would probably have been something like, "When you grow up, honey, if you can figure that out, you'll win a Nobel Prize."

[ailbhe]

I'm still trying to explain to my in-laws why Ireland's poverty and Britain's prosperity are not unrelated, and not wholly down to the moral superiority or greater intelligence of the British.

Not often, but sometimes I can't help it.

This stuff is hard.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Well, some grownups have blind spots that render them, in those areas, a little less smart than a four year old. :-/

[browse.livejournal.com]

Some countries have things that a lot of people really need to buy, like oil. Other countries are very good at making things people really need to buy, like food and medicine and cars. Those countries can get rich from selling those things.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I like this.

I was going to say something about how we might want things to be fair in the world, and a lot of them aren't fair. Some people as they grow up try to help change that.

[melebeth]

Keeps you on your toes, doesn't she?

And... I have no idea :)

[ailbhe]

Hah. As an Irish person living in England, I'd say "Wow, hon, I don't really know. Cake?"

We've tried to talk about slave labour, child labour, and sweatshops, but it's hard.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

I don't really know what's age appropriate for a four year old, because I don't have access to one on a regular basis... But I think I would mention an element of luck. I know it sounds simplistic and like a fob of, but it's really not; it's quite important to understand that things like oil, or uncontested borders, or a long and uninterrupted national tradition and identity, are often elements of pure dumb luck. Otherwise when you say "our country is good at having ideas other people want to borrow" etc., it's very easy to make the misstep into "our country is just better".

[ailbhe]

Heh, I'm inclined to phrase it the other way around, with "where we live is full of people who don't care about the exploitation of the third world so they abuse other nations to get rich" which isn't appropriate either. Luck is a good get-out that doesn't involve giving all my guilt to teeny weeny children. Ta.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

It's not just your children that deserve a get-out. Feeling guilty is like worrying - do it by all means, but do recognise that it's like trying to solve quadrilineal equasions by chewing gum.

It's not about "getting out" anyway. It's about recognising that nobody gets a choice about which country they're born in, which is a good reason to feel both humbly thankful and warily responsible (especially if you happen to have been born in a part of the world that's relatively priviledged).

If anything, this is a get-in rahter than a get-out, because once you start down that road you're five minutes away from someone as awesomely precicious as Alex asking "so why do people at school say we should be proud of our country and salute the flag?" (if they still even do that, I'm not sure). So it's not some kind of soft option.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

It's not about "getting out" anyway. It's about recognising that nobody gets a choice about which country they're born in, which is a good reason to feel both humbly thankful and warily responsible (especially if you happen to have been born in a part of the world that's relatively priviledged).

I think this is an excellent point. The reasons are multi-fold, and yes there are things we can do to address the inequality. But part of overcoming privilege is identifying and acknowledging it (and its limitations - we ain't all powerful nor all responsible just because we have more privilege than others), and being grateful that that privilege gives us an opportunity to do something to help others attain basic human rights.

I think the core of the question is the difference between what *is* and what *should be*. And this is where the parents core values/ethical systems come into play.

If it were me, I probably would have talked about all the programs the US and other rich countries are involved in to provide children like her in poor countries with medicines, clean water, etc. But then my mom worked for Unicef for 20 years - I was raised on "3cents a day can save the life of a child" and I current work for USAID. The US - along with other rich countries - has done a lot to change the face of poverty around the world.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think you did awfully well. Not sure I could do as well. I suppose I'd have tried to craft an answer around the ideas of peace and prosperity, both of which the US has had more of than the average country in the last few hundred years. (And then there's that whole exploitation thing... )

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

But seriously, what would you say? If you had time to prepare, which I didn't?

"I honestly don't know, for sure. A lot of people have a lot of different ideas, but I don't really know which ones are true. Maybe it's just good luck."

[selki.livejournal.com]

I think you gave good answers.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Hm. I suppose "Because I said so..." wouldn't be good, even as a last resort... :-)

However, maybe a well-placed, "What do YOU think?" might work. Never know. She might figure it out. I wouldn't put it past her. :-D

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

"There was a race and our country won" is actually not a bad metaphor.

Maybe I'd say "I don't know, but it isn't very fair, is it. Sometimes we talk about that in Sunday School. Can you think of something we could do to make it a little more fair?"

[laurent-atl.livejournal.com]

I think my mother gave me a quick history of colonialism around the age of 3 as i was asking that kind of question.

[firecat]

I would probably say that sometimes even though people would like things to be fair, things aren't fair. Your answer is a lot better.

There's no popup book for GGS, but there is a PBS series based on it, available on DVD. I watched the first episode and thought it was pretty good, and simpler than the book, although probably still a little too advanced for Alex.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It's not about a four-year-old, it's about your quite bright four-year-old, and thus "age appropriate" isn't the right question. What she's mentally able to take on isn't something I have any idea about, so I don't know what I would have said to her.

I think I would have recognized that this moment is not the only opportunity you two will have to talk about these big important questions, and that lots of follow-up can happen. I'd probably start with her book and enlarge on those "complex humanitarian" themes, and I'd ask her to explain what she was thinking about.

K.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

She knows about slavery. So I'd have said "About four hundred years ago the white people in Europe were ahead of all the other countries, as if it was a race, but a race for who had the best technology. And those people had the best technology and they thought that meant they could take whatever they wanted from the rest of the world. They took America from the Native Americans, and they took people from Africa to come here and be slaves, and they went around the world taking what they wanted, and the countries they had in the first place, and the countries they took are the rich countries today, and the countries they took things from are the poor countries."

Because really, Africa has some of the best resources on the planet, just seen as resources, and similarly, Canada has more than the US, but that doesn't say much in terms of wealth creation.

And how Europe got ahead does need Guns, Germs and Steel, the pop-up book, but the civilization belt idea and the animals thing seem well within her likely comprehension levels.

And "Why don't we give them back?" which is another likely next question gets "It's a lot more complicated than that. We can't give those things back, because we used them already. Like we can't send the slaves back because they're dead, and their descendants live here now, it would be as bad as the first thing to make them go back. We can try to help those countries, and we do..." and point out some tangible ways she may have seen where you do. And next time you're buying something from one of those countries, chocolate, wine, whatever, point it out and explain how buying that helps their economy, so your money is going to help them.

I had this sort of conversation with Z all the time. I'd ask him if he wanted the long answer or the short answer, and surprisingly often he wanted the long answer.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Italy is almost as wealthy as the rest of Western Europe, and they generally speaking have done really badly at the colonialism thing for the last four hundred years; and, contrawise, Russia has done the "steal and subjugate" thing pretty ruthlessly and is noticably poorer.

Without putting aside the questions of colonialism completely, it's worth explaining that the British (more or less) invented factories and that the Americans and Western Europeans borrowed the idea. Factories can generate a lot of wealth--more than just stealing land and enslaving people do.

A Coyote Columbus Story

[(Anonymous)]

I also have no idea what you'd say to a 4 year-old to explain this history - I'm studying it right now at the university level and can't say that I fully understand it, either!

But "A Coyote Columbus Story," by Tom King, is an illustrated children's book describing the arrival of Columbus in North America from a very different perspective. If you can find a copy, it might offer some ways to discuss colonialism and exploitation with Alex.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I spent a lot of time with my kids saying "I don't know, sweetie. That's a really hard question."

what would you say?

[(Anonymous)]

My kid's intellectual curiosity often outweighed what she could emotionally handle. With trial and error I tended to say something here like, "A country race before I was born would be cool!" If I left her to set her own limits? Talks that she initiated about things like health, social justice or safety could quickly resurface as worries.

Book read at school may have led to questions

[(Anonymous)]

Partial review for "For Every Child, a Better World:
"But while the characters are in a cartoon style, they express real emotions, and their settings are composed of realistic elements: a smoke-spewing city where the air is too dirty to breathe, an orderly classroom, an ineffective shelter in a rainstorm, a battlefield with shattered household goods (including a toy bear and the wounded in the background silhouetted against yellow flames)."

conversations with my daughter

[(Anonymous)]

This conversation is very interesting. "Some places there is no medicine." I would tell my daughter that if there is no medicine, I will introduce the concept of alternative medicine and "natural" remedies, e.g.,will look for plants that would be able to help, or would find non-medicinal ways to bring fevers down, e.g., lots of fluids, icy cold baths, sponge baths, chrysanthemum tea, etc.
"Maybe before you were born, there was a race...Then why is our country rich and other countries poor?" This is a tough one. I would relate the situation to a situation that she is familiar with, one in which she experiences daily, e.g., the classroom. For example, at the play dough table. Some children might have more play dough than others. How did that happen? It could be that the child with the most play dough was the first one at the table and got to most of the play dough before another person came along. It could be that the child took the play dough of another child when that child was not looking or touching it ("I thought he/she was not using it"). It could be that someone had given that child his/her share of the play dough when he/she decided to do something else - a gift, a windfall. It could be that the child had bullied other people to give them their share of play dough. It could be that the child had traded with another for more play dough. Putting it in the context of a situation familiar to children can help children understand complex concepts such as why there is inequity in the world. Also, letting the child figure out what might have led to the current scenario based on her own personal experience (instead of adults telling about all the possibilities) would be a good way to make sure that the conversation is kept age-appropriate.
comments from a mom who is also an early childhood educator