Susan Boyle-Before               -Susan Boyle-After

                    Lin Miaoke-seen but not heard             Yang Peiyi, heard but not seen

 Ok, you can admit it.  When you saw Susan Boyle walk on stage you rolled your eyes and thought, “oh my God, what is she doing?”  Of course, that attitude came crashing down the minute she opened her mouth.  Like the judges-and everyone who saw Susan Boyle get on that ”Britians Got Talent” stage you let your pre-conceived ideas of what an entertainer looks like color your judgement. 

Ironically, we are the same people that reacted with distaste when we discovered that Lin Miaoke was actually lip-synching during the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.  Apparently, someone decided that the actual singer, Yang Peiyi, wasn’t cute enough to be seen and heard!

If, as adults, this dicotomy is diffult to grapple with imagine what it does to our kids.  We tell them not to judge people by the way they look, yet they see adults doing it all the time.  They feel our outrage when a child is penalized because she isn’t cute enough to be seen but is talented enough to be heard. Yet when Susan Boyle stands on a stage we quickly judge that she can’t be talented.

We tell our kids don’t judge books by their covers when in fact we do judge books by their covers.  If we didn’t, then publishers wouldn’t spend enormous quantities of money on designing book covers!  We also judge people by the way they look, sound, smell or other cues that may or may not indicate what they are really like or what talents lay hidden beneath the surface.  We are in fact, human.

So rather than telling our kids not to judge the proverbial book by its cover and holding them to a higher standard than we hold ourselves, perhaps we should be teaching our kids to do something that they can succeed at.  Maybe the message for our kids is to be aware of our immediate judgements-note them and then put them aside until we have had a chance to get to know the person better.

Maybe, just maybe, our kids will be able to suspend judgement-positive or negative-until they have more information.

Maybe, just maybe-we adults should try to model that behavior….or at least be consistent.  If we are appalled that Yang Peiyi didn’t get a fair shake because she wasn’t cute enough then we should be equally appalled that Susan Boyle didn’t get a fair shake initially either.

How do you model accepting and respectful behavior for your kids?

With gratitude,

Deb

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 6:28 am and is filed under China, Uncategorized, bias, bullying, children, community, culture, education, family, kids, life, motherhood, motherhood parenting, multiculturalism, parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.