One Little Perfectly (Obvious) Amazing Question

Nancy M. Thurston:

Jennifer Harvey and, today, her 5 year old daughter, ask the right question. Something shifts when we can open challenging conversations in clear, respectful ways.

Originally posted on formations. // living at the intersections of self, social, spirit.:

We’ve been fighting song #19 ever since we got Mickey Mouse’s greatest hits CD. No matter how quickly we hit “skip” when song #18 is over, I should have known it was inevitable we’d lose at some point.

But when I heard our five year-old singing “one little, two little, three little indians” my heart sank anyways. (Yes, “indians,” not capitalized on purpose. Let’s be really clear: the song’s not about actual, real Native peoples or Indians, not about real people.)

I waited a bit to engage her. I wanted to think it through. Besides trying to figure out (or try anyway) what to say that a five year-old’s conception of the world would actually understand I didn’t want to embarrass her, or make her shut down because what she mostly heard was that she’d done something wrong.

(One thing I learned from The First “R”is how young kids…

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