The Artist Battles with the Parent

Internally there is a constant battle.

You'd think that one could be both and artist and a parent without having the two clash. It seems that they would be loving, compatible pursuits. Yeah. Not so much.

In the past week my first grader went on a field trip with his class to see a play that takes place in France in 1942. Yes. You can see where this is going. The play is about two young girls who develop a friendship -one Catholic and one Jewish- under the threat of the Nazi regime. The play was based on a children's book and was produced by a company here in New York for which I have a lot of respect. I'll admit that I was worried about the subject matter and my son's developmental readiness. However, I have also seen this particular company's work both in the classroom and on the stage for the last 3 years and I have a lot of faith in their mission and their sensitivity. I white knuckled it, signed the permission slip, paid the admission price and let him go.

Now, let it be said that there were notices coming home about the subject matter of the book they would be studying through this artist residency. There was open time during an evening family workshop to ask questions and raise concerns about the upcoming performance. Then there was the permission slip and admission fee... my point being there were plenty of times that the parents were alerted to the sensitive nature of the material. If there were concerns or misgivings, the parents had ample time (in my opinion) to talk to teachers, the principal and/or the representatives from the program. However, the majority of the parents didn't say a peep until the "damage was done" and the children had already seen the performance.

Early this week the parents' Yahoo group was ablaze with controversy- railing about developmental appropriateness and pointing fingers at the principal for allowing such a thing to be in the lower grades at all. I was stymied. After all- I took issue with it as well but I recognize that I made a conscious decision to allow my child to participate and if there was any blame to be laid it must be laid on me- as the parent. The following was part of my post in that group:

"I do think the subject matter was pushing the envelope a little for these guys. I was not going to bring it up for several more years because my son just doesn't have the context for it. He doesn't understand war or that there are perceived differences between people and other cultures. Frankly, I barely understand it as an adult. It is hard for me to wrap my more experienced mind around it so I can't imagine how the pieces fit together for him. I chose to let him have this experience, however. I elected for him to have it by signing the permission slip and handing over my money. I can't really say that I regret it. It will be slowly dissected in our home for months to come at my son's speed. I would not have chosen this time to address it, but that is more because I don't like dealing with the fact that we live in an unpleasant world where people choose to do horrible things. We live in a world where genocide is not the distant past but our present and, sadly our future as well. I'd rather not have my 6 year old know about that because he's perfect the way he is and I admit that I am rather selfish about protecting that. But the realities of the world have a weird way of imposing themselves on our children no matter what we do and I
don't think he was destroyed by the knowledge he has received. What I know is that he will tuck it away and deal with it in small increments as he acquires new bits of knowledge about history and human behavior. What he experienced at that performance and through that book will become an important part of his identification with history as he grows up. Just as my childhood experiences tromping through Civil War battlegrounds and seeing my Dad's collection of Civil War paintings depicting the carnage of those same battles has shaped me as I began to develop my sense of compassion. It isn't pleasant. It isn't the timing I would have chosen. But I have no regrets. Our cruelest natures are revealed when we are most afraid. That is how war, genocide, and brutality happen- not because of strength, but because of fear. We cannot confront fear by ignoring it. So here we are, the O'Connor Family whistling in the dark."

Well. I was then pounced upon by other parents who insisted that their children did not "get it" and that now they are suffering because of widespread developmental insensitivity on the part of the school. On one hand, I understand their anger. After all, I once gave a friend of mine a lecture for taking his seven year old to Ground Zero and showing him pictures of people jumping out of the building. I guess I justify that rant because he just sprung it on his poor kid and did it to keep his kid from goofing off while he was there. I thought he was needlessly frightening his child to get more "appropriate" behavior and not providing context from which the child could learn. But who am I to talk? I willingly subjected MY child to the Holocaust- regardless of how sensitively it was portrayed. Aren't I a monster for doing that?

Other parents were angry because there was a character who was a Hitler Youth. The point was to show the Nazis as humans too and to show how easily one can fall prey to propaganda even when it is against our better nature. And, yes, it was a musical. Nazis got to sing and dance, but it was no "Springtime for Hitler". Not in my opinion. Other parents thought it was a glorification of anti-Semitism. There are some things you just aren't allowed to explore in any context. Maybe a show aimed at families is not the place for such complexities- but I really, really WANT it to be. The artist inside me really NEEDS it to be. However, the mother inside me desperately wants to protect her child. The difficulty is, if I really want what I say I want for my child I have to expose him to unpleasant things and I need to challenge his critical thinking in ways I might not get to control.

The artist in me is angry. The fact that I live in a place where "developmentally appropriate" is even a serious discussion makes me feel pampered and spoiled. Do parents around the world have that luxury? I'm sure there are some Sudanese parents who would love to have that discussion, but with family, neighbors and friends being slaughtered they just need to survive. Yes. I have some bleeding heart, liberal guilt that my child gets the "benefits" of this debate while others are subjected to atrocities and for the most arbitrary reason of all- simple geography. My son was born somewhere that doesn't have that problem.

So, shouldn't I, as a parent, take advantage of that stroke of luck? Shouldn't I protect him from inappropriate reading material? Shouldn't I shelter him from harsh realities until he is "old enough" to be able to "process" them? I probably should. But that means that I should shield him from fairy tales and fables, myths and even the Bible. I should keep him away from Harry Potter, pirates, and Star Wars. Darth Vadar destroys an entire planet, for Pete's sake! If I did that, then I would keep from myself my most valuable teaching tool- story.

In our house the story is king. Stories mean absolutely everything. We process our feelings through other characters. We broaden our outlook through tales of another's experience. When something is too difficult to work through directly- we break out a book or a movie and filter our own confusion through a character's lens. Stories help us to understand and to be more compassionate. A story about the Holocaust is just as real to my six year old as the story of Luke Skywalker. Villains exist in story because they exist in life. We have to deal with them somehow.

I sat down with my son to gauge how the performance and the book were affecting him. After all, I had overheard him and his friends playing "Nazi" on the playground. Of course this disturbed my liberal sensibilities, especially since my son volunteered to be the Nazi. Then I remembered that he always plays the bad guys- and he is about as evil as a newborn kitten. He is six so he processes things that frighten or confuse him through play. But it still warranted a discussion.

What I learned from our discussion was that he understood that the Nazis in the play were not "real" but actors. He had empathized with the girls in the play but he had focused not on the terror but on the uplifting ending- friendship endured and a life was saved. "Playing bad guys is fun, Mom. But I'm not a bad guy in real life. In real life, I'm a funny guy." When I told him that I had considered keeping him home from the performance that day I saw a fire in his eyes that nearly knocked me off my seat.

"I'm not too young, Mom. I can handle it and I'd be angry if you ever tried to keep me from something like that."

Funny, but I think I made the right decision- against my better judgement. I have a kid whose intellect that I can trust and deserves my respect. In my own family, at least, I need to allow for that complexity and that difficulty because the apple don't fall too far from the tree.