You Labeled Me, I Label You

I was thinking about our daughters tonight. Danielle from the blog 6yearmed, which I eagerly follow, told another touching and poignant story about young twin sisters, one of which is dying. She changes the names when she tells her stories and the names she chose caught me off guard and made me think about my daughters. More specifically, it reminded me of the belief my wife and I hold that children these days are too often labeled by the adults in their lives. You might have noticed it, too. If you weren't so lazy you'd be done by now.

How could you get poor marks on that exam, are you stupid?

You're doing this to me because you hate me.

At the end of the song The Unforgiven by Metallica, the narrator says, "You labeled me. I label you. And I dub thee Unforgiven." And this is exactly how it happens. We as parents label our children. The way we form our words. The frequency with which we use certain phrases. The ratio of praise and encouragement over scorn and disappointment. Sometimes, with no words at all even, we can say to them...

You're a failure.

You're a disappointment.

You're not good enough for me.

But it doesn't stop with our children. Like the song says, if you label someone, especially a child on a long enough timeline, you train them to label others and to label you right back. 

It is for this reason Dewdette and I took care in selecting names, middle names actually, for our daughters. We searched for nouns that are also character traits. Before our girls could even understand a word or a facial expression from us, we decided to choose names for them to help set a foundation. Before they ever had the opportunity to disappoint us, we wanted them to know what we inherently believed about them. Like Babe Ruth stepping up to the plate and pointing out to left field so that God and everyone will be certain about where he intends to send the next strike that crosses the plate, we too have pointed our fingers out into the distance towards the words Grace and Faith.

But it doesn't stop there. We exercise our use of labels constantly. And the terrific part is, they're all true! It's not like we're lying. Dewdette and I are really expressing how we see our daughters. The point, the hard bit, is to make the time to actually do it. To get the ratios right. To jog back the frequency on some phrases. To jog up the frequency on others.

Look how lovely you are today.

Good morning, Beautiful!

That's using your noodle! You're such a smart girl.

Did you notice how thoughtful she is all the time?

You are such a good helper!

Today would be an excellent day to make a list of labels that you would like to pin on the subconscious mind of your children. Write down 3-5 character traits you want them to grow up knowing about themselves and extending to their fellow man. The above phrases are the actual ones we use in our household. If you don't want to take the time to make your own list, you can borrow ours.

When we label our children we do two things. First, we convince them that what say about them is true about them. Second, we teach them to label others in the same manner.

So I ask you, what labels have you been giving your children?

Inauguration Day, Expletives, and Racial Slurs

My formative middle and junior high school years were woven together against the backdrop of several USAF communities in the United Kingdom. Quite simply, I loved it there. I missed it after we left, but it wasn't all moon pies and snickerdoodles.

Occasionally the British youth would pass the time by shouting insults out of cars as they passed. Or spray painting "YANKS GO HOME!" on the sides of our houses. Or throwing pebbles at our windows at night and then calling us wankers as they ran off into the dark. I remember loving it there, but it was not my home. It was impossible not to notice a cultural us-versus-them undercurrent. I was young, but I still remember missing my country, my America.

She and I were reunited again in 1990, at the start of my sophomore year of high school. My Dad received his relocations orders and our new home would be in South Georgia. I didn't realize it at the time but I was about to move from one foreign country to another. I had constructed an America in my mind that the real America had no inclination of honoring. This new America, this real America, was going to be unsophisticated, Christian, and racist.

My new town had two public schools. The inner city crowd went to one. The country folk went to the other. The school I attended was approximately 80% black. In this environment white kids did not verbally or physically assault black kids. It was the other way around. For the most part I stayed out of trouble, but it did give me a front row seat to some of America's more pronounced blemishes.

Our school had a giant white dome over the gymnasium which was prevalent regardless of where you stood outside. One morning, as I approached the school, I realized that someone had vandalized this dome the preceding night. Someone with very poor orthography and/or a severe falling out with Nigerians. In large black letters I read, "F*CK ALL NIGERS."

I remember stopping, staring, and then thinking, "This is not my America."

The real America, it would seem, had its own us-versus-them undercurrent. My wife, who went to the country school, has told me similar stories. She recalls one incident where a white girl was harassed in the hallway by a couple of black guys. The next day her father was arrested for patrolling the same halls, during the same time, with his shotgun. Spewing and shouting that he was going to "Kill him some niggers." She also recalls, as if perfectly scripted from a movie, a high school football game where a cross, which had been secretly positioned outside the stadium in a field past one of the goal posts, was set ablaze to the surprise of the students, faculty, and spectators.

I think most of us can agree that today's presidential inauguration shouldn't be a big deal. Our new president went to Columbia and Harvard. He was an attorney, a constitutional law professor and a U.S. senator. It shouldn't be a big deal that this man was elected president.

But it is.

It is because he is black. Because of the sorts of things I know to have happened in the early 1990s, when President-elect Obama was 29 years old and graduating from Harvard. It doesn't seem that far away to me, really. The teenagers who grew up with me in these environments are, naturally, my age, in their early thirties. These are voters. And maybe it is because of, or in spite of, these environments that today we swear in the first black president of our country.

I didn't vote for President-elect Obama and neither did I vote against him. I fully intend on holding him accountable for the content of his character over the color of his skin, like I have with President's past. But as I think back now on the day of the inauguration, I can not help but appreciate my lady, America, for the woman she is becoming right before my eyes.

UPDATE 2/1/2010: I chose to censor my own post and remove the expletives.