Ninjas do not want to be noticed

Recently I have participated in several discussions related to the appropriateness of children dressing in costume that is not necessarily part of their cultural heritage. My friends asked thoughtful questions. Is playing ninjas culturally insensitive? Do cowboys and indians reinforce harmful histories and stereotypes? Do we cheapen or exploit traditions by trying to act them out before we know them fully or when we recreate them out of gleaned artificial and often cheaply made materials? Does multi-gender role-play nurture identity confusion and foster ridicule? Are we learning empathy or permitting mockery? For how long should we, as parents, allow the lines of fiction and fantasy to blur with often painful historical realities?

Playing indian. Oh wait, I actually am two kinds of indian.

Perhaps your house too is frequently filled with the antics of ninjas, indian braves, historic soldiers, and knights of the round table who parade as anachronisms (in the wrong time) or anatopism (in the wrong place) alongside dragons, leprauchauns, mermaids, greek gods, and fairies. Perhaps you too find yourself correcting and saying frequently, "but wait...let me tell you about this other part of the story", or "actually the way it really happened was...", or "let me tell you about the Geneva Convention and why you should not be allowed to openly torture your prisoners" (Okay, maybe that one was just me). But at some point we have to stop moralizing play. S-T-O-P.

It is generally so much simpler and paradoxically infinitely more complex then we grown ups assume it to be. Some of the loveliest things about childhood are the abilities to imagine ones-self to have the strengths or character of any persons or creatures past or present. I think having a broad base of imaginative allows children to build empathy by imagining life through a different lens.  As parents we can expose them to as many lenses as possible. Read big and broadly, celebrate cultures and differences, nudge a bit, but only gently, and then respect their abilities to develop and formulate their own compassion and empathy for others.

Bastilla, the girl elf

A lighter cultural satire that my family has enjoyed is Wink, The Ninja Who Wanted to be Noticed. When the directives are to be silent, bland, and unmoving he is opposing, floral printed, and acrobatic- and a far cry from culturally sensitive.  Wink wants nothing more than to stand out and go against the flow. (Interestingly, my five year old Connor changed the title of the book to Wink, the Ninja Who Always Did Not Want to be Noticed. Despite my silly grown-up attempts to try several times to clarify the differences, I think he said exactly what he meant. He wants to be able to assume different identities but to be noticed and scrutinized less. To him, acting out identities is not morality play. It is not a statement about colonialism, or racism, or gender identity. It is trying to make sense of a multitude of stories and cultures and having no preconceptions about how they should be interpreted; or interrupted. As Antoine Saint Exupery's Little Prince so poignantly says, "grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to always and forever be explaining things to them."

We have an aunt who is Japanese, dad, and grandma have traveled to Japan and taught cultural awareness classes of this culture, and my sister is living there for 2 years. My husband has also studied martial arts and Japanese history extensively. So while we are far from experts, there is always the urge to explain and enlighten. But for now, sometimes there are three ninjas living in my house and their names are Sodan, Wink, and Shadow.

Ichi, Ni, San...Ready or not here they come!

Yes Mother and the Milk Mischief

"Yes, Mother!" It is a lament, dripping with sarcasm, that is usually uttered by Connor whenever he is annoyed at what I have asked him to do. But I have decided I am also trying to make this my new parenting mantra. I want to be a "yes" mother. Not because I think that my kids should be able to have a carte blanche to do anything they want, but because I feel as parents, and as a society, we spend a heck of a lot of time and energy stiffeling kids' beautiful enthusiasm by attempting to force them to behave "properly"; to not embarass us. Don't make a mess. Don't go too fast. Don't take that chance. Don't eat that. How many times have I told you...

In the photography class I have been taking one of the prompts was to photograph a mess. One day sitting next to the boys, while my out of town relatives were visiting, they started to blow bubbles in their milk. I caught myself about to say "Don't..."this is embarassing" and then I stopped. I looked at those sparkles and shimmers. How beautifully they stuck and stacked together. I thought about how enticing and fun that was to do as a child- even when we got caught.

I didn't really care what the others thought. In fact, perhaps I changed my mind, just because of what they might have thought. Because of the many things I never got to do. Because of the many things kids never get to do, mostly for inane reasons having merely to do with inconveniencing grown-ups. As so wisely stated in The Little Prince by Antoine Saint Exupery, Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications. (Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.) So tiresome.

But this was a mess. A mess in the making. A beautiful mess. A silly-fun-giggle-till you fall over-kind of mess. A memory making kind of mess. So instead I grabbed my camera and I said, "Do it again". They delightfully obliged. These are now two of my favorite photographs of all time.

 

One of my favorite graduate education professors, Dr. Kathryn Castle, once said, "you know a child is most able to learn and having fun when they are so intent on doing something that doing that thing becomes more important then the risk of getting caught". Indeed. 

So here are some things I'm trying to more consciously say yes to:
-To slowing down
-To going fast
-To doing it again and again and again
-To experiments
-To inventions
-To recipes
-To messes
-To mistakes
-To being loud
-To acting our age
-To making a scene
-To being seen
-To seeing
-To being heard
-To hearing

Prisoners, Princes, and Patients

Perhaps one of the most perplexing, but also amusing, things about little boys is their need to be using their power to conquer evil. They are constantly at war, or running down hall screaming in capes and masks to ward off bad guys. Lately they have taken to tying grandparents up. First they strapped grandma to a chair and then last weekend they had my grandparents in handcuffs, which they told me was the direct result of him robbing a bank. Geesh.

Connor with Grandpa Dewey in handcuffs, March 2012

For the longest time I tried to eradicate this kind of play. It just seemed too violent, too domineering, too gory; too embarassing. Since I consider myself more of a pacifist this is particuarly distressing. But no matter how I drew the boundaries my kids still found/ needed creative ways to include this kind of play. We'll just use rubber bullets mom, Cris says. This is my spy detective equipment it shoots: bombs, dirt, bullets water, love, silly string, and everything else. Connor is not quite as creative. His pursuits still often begin with chop head off and then he completes them by coloring all over himself and tell me it is blood. Gross.

A nanny friend of mine reminds me that to the children it is not real. They know it is a game and feel exasperated when adults are constantly trying to get them to dumb down their pretend. They know that they can't actually shoot anyone. Sylvia, you are quite wise. It reminds me much of a marvelous quote from The Little Prince by Antoine Saint Exupery: (If you have never read this book, do yourself a favor and start it tomorrow.) "Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

On the flip side of the war and gore play one of my favorite things is when little boys take on the task of being sweet caregivers. Especially when they are gushing with demonstration. Then they are constantly bringing me little trinkets of affection- flowers for my hair, locks of their own hair! (Ahem, Cristopher), love notes, and objects/junk they have found around the house to wrap. Equally charming is when they play doctor. Cris has been playing doctor a lot after they had doctor week at school. We all get to be his patients.

Dr. Cristopher gives Calyn a checkup

Apparently these skills can also be transferred to animals. Last week they had taken all their stuffed animals out and bandaged them all over with masking tape. They informed me that they were doctors and that these poor animals had all been in a fire. They even wrote them lots of prescriptions! How I love these samples of sweetness!