I’d just come in from the kitchen to put my lunch in my bag when I heard it. It was soft, so much so that I almost couldn’t make out the words. I placed the tune immediately, though, and the words became clearer soon afterward.
“When the sharpest words wanna cut me down… I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out…”
E was sitting at his table, building a Lego set or drawing a picture or working in his summer math book. He was completely engrossed in the task at hand and didn’t even notice that I had come into the room, let alone that I was listening to him singing to himself. He worked quickly, his eyes darting back and forth from the instructions to his manipulating fingers, his voice lilting ever so slightly as he sang each line.
“I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I’m meant to be. This is me.”
I smiled broadly and returned to the kitchen so I wouldn’t interrupt him.
We had watched the movie, The Greatest Showman, the source of the song E was singing, the night before. T had set up a picnic in our living room so that we could watch together as a family. S’s interest in the movie was predictably inconsistent for a two-year-old; she danced with the music and pointed out the flashy colors but was just as content playing with her toys during the rest. T and I had seen the movie already, at least, which meant that we could fill in the blanks and explain the scenes for E, either because he didn’t understand the plot or because S’s hammer had made it impossible to hear the dialogue.
The cast of Showman is made up of characters of all shapes and sizes; they tell the story of P.T. Barnum and his original set of sideshow acts, including the Bearded Lady, Tom Thumb and the Dog Boy, among many others. The movie may not be exactly historically accurate – very little emphasis is placed on the idea that Barnum was basically a con artist when he started out, for instance – but it is certainly entertaining. Plus, its message of celebrating individuality and uniqueness, as opposed to ridiculing and ostracizing those who look different, was a perfect vehicle for illustrating the importance of treating people with respect, regardless of their physical appearance.
T and I had agreed after seeing it the first time that we wanted to watch the movie again with E. We knew that he would enjoy the music and the costumes, regardless of the story or the characters, but we also wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to teach acceptance of others. E has never had much difficulty with inclusivity but I have wondered at times whether that is because he’s just a wonderful, caring child or because he hasn’t been exposed to enough situations where inclusion would be necessary.
E and many of his friends are largely similar; most are native English speakers, many are Jewish and, most importantly, all of them have fairly light skin. Going to public school this year exposed E to people from other nationalities and cultures more than he had at any point previously1 but, aside from certain facial features, it felt to me like all the children in his class looked the same. In fact, I remember asking E at one point early in the year if he had noticed any physical differences between himself and his classmates and he could not come up with anything.2
It’s not necessarily a negative thing that E isn’t yet tuned in to some of the differences in physical characteristics between people. Being “colorblind” at his age means that he doesn’t see people with prejudice, that he does not make judgments about others simply based on the way that they look. If he sees another child playing on the playground, he will focus more on the child’s behavior than their looks when he is deciding whether to approach them. But, as he grows, I want to make sure that E realizes the importance of not only tolerating the physical and cultural differences between people, but embracing them.
T and I have discussed the fact that we want E to seek out different opinions about the world and to look for people who have different perspectives. We want him to understand the value of diversity and the importance of stepping outside his comfort zone in order to avoid the echo chambers that so many of us find ourselves in on a daily basis. And, until he’s old enough to understand those concepts, we want him to remember that every person he comes across deserves respect and that physical differences do not detract from a person’s humanity.
After all, watching the same people retreading the same plot-lines over and over again gets boring; variety is what makes the best shows truly great.
1. It’s hard for me to count our trip to Singapore as exposure to other cultures for E. It was, of course, but it’s hard to know just how much of it he internalized and remembers, since he wasn’t even three years old at the time.↩
2. I had asked because we had just read the book, We’re All Wonders, which sends a similar message about respect for others regardless of appearance.↩
