Most children are not socially graceful. “Tact” is not something they come by naturally. It’s one of those areas that most parents don’t think to provide instruction for until the opportunity presents itself. And, unfortunately, when confronted with the urgency of teaching children how to say something in a graceful way, an uncomfortable situation has usually already occurred.
My children do not merely lack social grace, they are, at times, just plain socially awkward.
Today, while jumping around at Monkey Joe’s, Jrod made a friend who he thoroughly enjoyed playing with. After a while, he lost his little buddy, so he asked if I would help find him. I didn’t know who in the world I was looking for, so I told him to spend a few more minutes looking.
He returned discouraged and told me that he “looked in every possible place there ever is or was.” So I told him that his buddy probably went home. Jrod then pointed to a family sitting a few feet from us:
“That’s his mom and dad.”
“Then ask them where your friend is.”
So Jrod meandered over to the couple and stood right in front of them. “Excuse me. I’m looking for your boy. The one in the orange shirt, with brown hair, yellowish teeth, shorter than me, and he is of colored skin. But he’s not of the black kind, he’s of the white kind.”
It was one of those moments in life that you wish you could just pause and rewind. I saw a commercial recently that portrays people in awkward situations. They don’t know what to say or do, so time freezes, they have a bite of a particular candy bar and, BAM! The light bulb comes on and the situation is resolved in a smooth and satisfactory way.
If only candy bar freezes were real in life. But they are not. So there I was starring at my boy confronting the adults, and I was desperate to think of a good way to explain my son’s interpretation of their flesh and blood.
I thought of three things I could do or say, knowing none of them were truly satisfactory. My first option was to tell them that my son was definitely talking about another boy in an orange shirt. Secondly, I thought I could just laugh and say, “Oh kids.” Pathetic; there’s no doubt.
I watched my son turn and skip away when he received no response from the adults. So I went with my third option: I pretended that I didn’t know my child. I walked in the opposite direction beckoning Lily to come and “jump over here” as if she was the only blood connection to me in the entire facility.
Who would have thought that I would have to teach my son to not describe another child as having “yellowish teeth.” And when would I have ever considered to instruct him that it’s not necessary to refer to races using the phrase “of the kind.” We’re human beings, for heaven’s sake, not aliens.
None-the-less, the opportunity awkwardly presented itself this morning, so I did some instructing on the way home.
