🌪️ How do we teach our kids to be in community with all kinds of different people?

Scratch That: Parenting & ReParenting Off Script

This conversation was inspired by a visit Rebekah took to her son's classroom. As he has adjusted to a new school, Rebekah has tried to think more critically about how she wants to lead the conversation (and onslaught of inevitable questions these kids have) about her wheelchair.

In SCRATCH THAT fashion, this episode is more in-real-time-processing and back-and-forth questions than a 1-2-3 step plan for raising our babies to have immediate and "perfect" understanding of disability from a very young age. How do we teach our kids how to respond when they notice difference in public? How do we teach our kids about all kinds of difference when they don't experience all of it in real life? Are there any blanket rules about what we say/don't say? How do we avoid accidentally reinforcing the stigmas we're trying to push against? And as we ask and listen, we realize this is actually a conversation about how we do the hard work of being community with all kinds of different people.

Together, we generate a hearty set of ideas for how we strive to navigate these tricky conversations that we fully expect to be just as messy as human relationships themselves.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📚 Our favorite disability-forward picture books.

📜 Rebekah's current script for answering questions about her wheelchair.

🎯 Evaluating our goals in teaching our kids about disability and difference more broadly. What are we really trying to do here?

🎨 The pieces that make these conversations sticky and complicated and learning to embrace the messiness of it all.

♿️ How Otto's new school has responded to Rebekah's disability and need for access.

🤝 A sprawling brainstorm on how we teach our kids (and ourselves) to build communities of care.

Mentioned in this episode:

Come Over to My House by Eliza Hull

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder

This Is How We Play by Jessica Slice

Mama Car by Lucy Catchpole

The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen

Cake Girl by David Lucas

We would love to hear from you! How are you navigating these kinds of conversations? Have you discovered any scripts that have helped you? What makes these moments feels especially tricky to you in any direction?