family

Here are two depictions by Olle of his family, both done at school.

This first was done in the first week of this school year and put up on the classroom wall - they'd all been asked to draw their families. When we first saw it, we both started laughing. I'm not exactly prone to wearing short red dresses and co-parent doesn't clomp around in big boots.  But as a friend of ours who is also a lesbian mother pointed out, he's just trying to normalise us. In so doing, he gets not only our typical wardrobes wrong, but gives co-parent green eyes instead of brown and gives me blue eyes instead of green. Those are the sorts of details he usually takes care with.  (By the way, I've cut the words out, but he labelled co-parent by her first name and me, the red dress wearer, as 'Mummy'. This is what he addresses us as, but he refers to her as "my mother" when talking about her with other people. As seen below.)

In German they were also asked to construct images of their family. It looks like they could take individual relations and add them in as appropriate.    I note that he has one typed 'mutter' and one handwritten - maybe each child was allotted only one mother each? And the face of the extra 'mutter' is quite different from the 'real' mother - maybe she was destined to be an aunt or something...    It interests me that he put his cousins in there, where most other kids would have had siblings. Usually he includes both dogs and both cats when listing his family members, which comes to a lot of names, so I never feel that he thinks he's in a small, only child family.

Comments

[jellyfish]

I reckon the second Mutter was originally meant to be a Grandma, as she looks a little jowly. Gotta love how the Mum is all glamourous with lipstick and earrings! That's kind of the problem with those pro-forma sheets, they don't allow for for a lot of variation!

On my recent teaching round I inadvertently rocked the boat a little when I raised a few concerns I had about activities related to Father's Day. Despite the fact that a couple of the kids in my class are from same-sex parents, and others have father's who are dead or absent, the teacher's just leapt into it, occasionally saying off-handedly, 'Oh, so-and-so, if you don't have a Dad why don't you do your uncle?' It made me very uncomfortable and I was quite upset on behalf of the kids. When I tentatively voiced a few queries (trying not to seem like a young upstart) the staff all seemed really surprised. How does your school handle this? Does it ever bother you or Olle?

(I loved the story about the 'finger space' spelling, btw!)

[susoz]

When he was in kindergarten I was a bit worried they'd do something about Father's Day in class, as they'd done Mother's Day activities. So I raised it with his teacher in advance, who said she no longer did Father's Day with her kindies since having a pupil who got very upset because her father had recently died. I wasn't asking her not to do anything, but if she had been going to do something, to be aware that O would need to be encouraged to do something about an uncle or grandfather or godfather. However, the school does run Father's Day gift stalls every year and O participates very enthusiastically. He buys us *both* presents for Father's Day, as well as for Mother's Day. Interesting eh? He doesn't in any way consider Father's Day to be an occasion to focus on the men in his life, he sees it as being about parents. Since kindergarten I haven't felt any need to 'protect' him by discussing things in advance with his teachers as I'm confident that he feels able to be open about his family at school. (I don't think he would know about not being open.)

[jellyfish]

Thanks for your response. Sometimes I think I worry too much!

But having been on the end of teacher's insensitivity many times I'd rather be too careful than go blundering in, I guess.

[jellyfish]

I've also been on the receiving end of some BAD GRAMMAR LESSONS, it seems.

OKIWILLSTOPPCOMMENTINGNOWIPROMISE.

[Susan]

It is interesting to see the way he expanded the depiction of family: Curious Girl sometimes says she has siblings, or more pets, than we really do, simply to fit in with what she perceives other kids as having. She's conscious of us being a small family, and she doesn't always like that.

[Linda]

"Usually he includes both dogs and both cats when listing his family members, which comes to a lot of names, so I never feel that he thinks he's in a small, only child family."

That's gorgeous!

Great post.