Conversations with My Son

Several events over the last few days have brought me to think about how we prepare our children to leave the comfort of home and make their way in the world.. I have seen many posts on Facebook from friends who are sending a son or daughter off to college for the first time. Others of us have seen children get married and start another phase of their lives. But what has really brought it into focus for me has been the coverage of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of that situation. I freely admit I don't know enough to make a judgment one way or another. There is one particular aspect of this situation, however, that has struck a chord with me.

As parents, we have all had various conversations with our children to help guide them through the trials and tribulations of growing up. We imparted lessons on how to deal with the outside world as well as at home. We shared our values and encouraged them to be good people. We hoped to present them at some point as useful members of society as we launched them into the world. For a variety of reasons, although similar, the conversations we have differ whether we are talking to a son or a daughter. Right now I want to focus on the conversations I had with my son.

Over the years I tried to impart many lessons to him. I always joked that I wanted to raise him in such a way that another woman would want to take him off my hands. (I apparently succeeded in that he married a wonderful woman this past May.) Here is a sampling of some of these topics (some trivial, some vital) that we discussed over the years:

1. Don't pick on your little sister.  I'm not sure how successful I was with this one, but it was worth a try.
2. Clean up after yourself. Again not sure how well I succeeded. This is a work in progress that is now someone else's problem.
3. Show respect for your elders - parents, grandparents, teachers, rabbi, etc.. I feel pretty good about this one.
4. Don't out Santa to your kindergarten classmates. This was a tough one. My five-year-old son felt very strongly that his classmates were being lied to by their parents and it was his job to set the record straight. We managed to dissuade him. Which leads to the next very important lesson:
5. Be tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. Luckily this was not a difficult lesson to impart. What was more difficult was making him understand that others might not be so tolerant of his. Harder lessons about dealing with Anti-Semitism came later, but this is where it began.
6. Treat others the way you want to be treated. The theory was pretty easy for him to understand, the practice took more time and growing maturity.
7. Judge others based on who they are, not what group they are a part of. Growing up in a diverse community allowed him to interact with a variety of different people and learn to accept their differences.

When he became a teenager there were more practical conversations. Although I left the basic "birds and bees" talk to his father, we did discuss the proper way to treat young women. When he started going out with friends we told him that no matter how late, no matter what he had been doing, if he was in a situation he felt uncomfortable about or did not want to drive home himself or with someone he thought was impaired he should call us and we would come get him, no questions asked.

When he started to drive we told him about all the precautions and got him a AAA card. We also talked about what do do if he was pulled over by the police. The basics were remain calm, be polite, do what the officer tells you, before you reach for your license or registration tell the officer what you are doing, don't get out of the car unless you are told to, take the ticket and the we will deal with it when you get home. That was it. Now to the main point that brought me to write this blog.

One conversation I never thought to have with my teenage son was how to handle a direct confrontation with a police officer. I never thought of what might happen if he were stopped when walking down the street either alone at night or with a group of friends during the day. I never worried that he would be mistaken for a criminal. I never worried about getting a call telling me he had been shot by an officer or had died in custody. I have come to realize, however, that this is not true for the parents of young men of color.

Repeatedly during the last few days on television, on Facebook and in person I have listened as parents talked about these conversations they felt compelled to have with their sons. About their fears for their safety. It really opened my eyes. I have often felt that members of the African-American community have held on to ideas about racism too long. That it was time to let it go. Now I am not so sure. I realize that I am the beneficiary of the benefit of the doubt in many situations merely because of the color of my skin.

I don't have the answer to this problem. Some ideas are percolating, but that is for another day. For now, I am simply grateful that there is one conversation that my son and I blessedly did not have to have.