STUPID WHITE BOY
‘You’re homophobic’.
‘You can say you’re gay. I don’t care.’
‘You’re homophobic’, he said once again. And kept repeating the same words. Then he said something in Spanish.
‘Huh?’, my son replied out loud, and thought the boy must have been swearing at him.
‘You’re a stupid white boy!’ retorted the boy. ‘You don’t know Spanish!’
‘Du bist eine Scheiße’, replied my son in German. ‘You don’t know German. Exactly!’
‘Well Germany is across the world and Mexico is just beneath us’ replied the boy.
At that point my son simply got up and moved to another table to get away from the boy who keeps annoying him day after day in his Academic Study Lab class.
I would have given the boy a gold star for even knowing that Germany is across the world and not somewhere close by. But that is just my sarcastic nature at play. Something my son has inherited as part of my Croatian upbringing, which includes a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Besides the reply in German, I agree with the way my son handled this exchange. This is certainly not an isolated incident and is disheartening as a parent to hear. But these kinds of exchanges happen in the adult world as well, my having had unkind words thrown my way.
As we sat at the dinner table tonight discussing these events, it gave me a chance to explain to my son how best to react in such situations and why people might do the things they do. I told him to be kind and let him know that there is always a reason to such actions which we might not always see at the outset.
Most of the time it has something to do with the lack of attention one gets at home or some bad experience an adult has had as a child. In general, a person is lacking something in their lives. They are unhappy and want others to experience more misery than they themselves have experienced. A sort of justification for how they have been treated. The person wants to be heard and to feel important, so the only way they know how to get what they want is to put other people down so that they themselves appear more important.
Sometimes, walking away is the best answer as it gives one the chance to escape the rising flames of anger that are prevalent. You cannot control another person’s actions, but you can control how you react. Unfortunately, both my son and I have experience dealing with an angry narcissist, which is the reason my son now chooses to live with me full time. Being told you are ‘stupid’ and that ‘it’s freaking embarrassing to be related to you’ is not something than anyone should have to deal with, especially a young child.
Understanding why people do what they do and say what they say is interesting to ponder. All of this starts in early childhood with the experiences that children encounter and the tools they learn to use in order to fight back to protect themselves.
Parents have the responsibility to teach their children how to behave in various circumstances in life and the best way to teach them is by example. Words are empty unless they are followed by strong examples. Children model themselves after the people they spend time with the most. Which is why it is so important to watch how we conduct ourselves, as somebody is always observing our actions.
