Manners not Morals
July 16, 2009In the evenings at the triplets’ house, we sometimes have three adults and three kids, and I find myself working with the NT brother, Aaron. While the other two have goals for the summer such as: Learn 15 new signs (Josh), or Learn greetings and farewells (Lawrence), Aaron’s main goal for the summer is to learn to be more polite. After all, he is six, and the world of the six-year old revolves around farts (“tooting”), silly faces, and a need to always have the ear of whichever adult is currently busy talking to someone else.
But sometimes this can be difficult to work on. A major difference between the triplets’ parents and I are our morals. I’m from the north-east, they’re from the mid-west. We might as well be from two different continents. I’d never seen a gun before coming to their house, and they have moose heads on the walls and take Aaron hunting every weekend. They are strict Catholics, while I was raised Protestant but am no longer a Christian. So I have to be careful about what I say, because much of what comes out of my mouth is influenced by my upbringing which is naturally very different from Aaron’s. I remind myself before I work with Aaron that the focus is “manners not morals”. We stay away from topics like gun control and hunting, and on topics like tooting and discussions of bowel movements.
But in some scenarios, I’m not sure whether or not I should make a comment about his behavior or speech. For example, last night Aaron and I were (with his mom’s permission), playing the Sims. It came time for Aaron’s character to choose a wife, and I asked what he wanted his girlfriend to look like. He replied, “I don’t really care as long as she isn’t black.”
I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t decide whether or not the statement was rude, or whether it needed reprimanding. He wasn’t being racist; he was simply stating a preference. If he had said “all black people are dumb”, I would have told him off in an instant. But all he really said was that he found white women more aesthetically pleasing than black women.
I opted for a middle ground, saying, ‘Dude, that remark surprised me,” and then informing his mother of it when he was out of the room. If she decides to say something to him about it, I fully support that, and if she doesn’t, I have to respect that as her parenting decision.
After all, my job there is to teach manners, not morals.
But something about it just feels wrong…
That must be quite uncomfortable. I do think it’s helpful (perhaps not essential) to be on the same page “morally” in these situations. When I was hiring Rocky’s film mentor, for example, I interviewed one guy who was well-qualified in all ways, but he was also extremely active in his church. Given our family’s lack of religious conviction and strong belief in gay rights, separation of church and state, etc., I just knew this guy wouldn’t be a good fit.
As to Aaron’s racial preference, I don’t think this is uncommon in kids, particularly with spectrum disorders. My son Taz went through a phase of not liking “kids with dark skin” (I still cringe just thinking about his insistence on using that language to describe people of color). Now he’s gone the exact opposite way, wanting all his friends to be African-American because he loves rap music and figures that all AA kids will share this love. It’s hard to modulate that (no pun intended) black-and-white thinking, but if anyone can do it, it’s YOU.
I think you did right informing his mother. I would want someone to tell me if my son said something like that. Who knows what it means, but I would like to know so I could discuss it with my son.
Great job as always, Cale!
P.S. I guess Aaron has never seen Halle Berry. LOL!
wow this is really interesting. It’s really hard when you are working so closly with a family to be on different pages with moral issues. The statement about the girlfriend surprised me for sure. At least with the kids I know at that age, skin color isn’t an issue at all. So it seems it would have come up within their family. Daniel at that age might have said (and did) to some people statements like “you have dark skin” but it wasn’t an aversion. It intrigued him because it was different from what he sees. I think the statement was a reflection on the families values
That must have been a really tough situation to be in. And I think you handled it well. The family probably doesn’t want you to be their moral filter.
I learned the hard way that you can never assume a family shares mainstream beliefs. When Philly had a mayoral election a few years ago, everyone raved about what a wonderful and intelligent minority candidate we had. He was overwhelmingly popular, and then there was the “other guy”. I tried to have a discussion about the election and the kids all told me their parents would never vote for a minority. (Did they not see that I was Asian and they were telling me this?) Like you, I was dumbfounded. You did the right thing by reporting it without implying judgement.