Life with Aubrey

My 11 year old has a very vivid imagination, that seems to run in this family. Part of that might be the early reading or playing with older siblings when they had their "flights of fancy". I've encouraged this, dress-up and pretend can be fun.

She's pretty aware of current events and she does remember 9/11 and asks alot of political questions from time to time. She knows about the middle east.

We've gone thru stages of what Aubrey wants to "be", recently cheerleader then Japanese were the top two. She went as far as to ask me if she dyed her hair black would she look asian. The Japanese thing was not unexpected, her favorite book choices of late have been related to all things asian as well as being a fan of animes.

Last night she came out into the living room with her own version of a hijab and informed me that she was going to be a muslim. Our oldest cat appeared to be forced to consider islam whether he wanted to or not as he was also wearing a hijab. We talked about it briefly and I explained to her it took a little more than just putting on a hijab to become muslim. She went back to playing though thankfully the cat was freed from his "conversion".

It hit me later that somehow thru it all I have managed to raise a child that didn't fear any race or ethnic group. Children are born color blind to race, it is we as parents who change this. When I was four my favorite doll was a small black rubber baby doll. I don't remember how I got it but I do remember my mother telling me I couldn't take it with us when we left the house. I couldn't understand why. I grew up in a totally white neighborhood. The only black person I ever really talked to or had any interaction with until high school was our mailman.

Aubrey hasn't grown up like that, if she wanted the black doll or the asian doll or the hispanic doll? Fine. We've in her lifetime never lived in a neighborhood that was not racially mixed. Her school has a small majority of white students, however there are many different ethnic groups who attend there also. With the exception of the doll issue, I haven't done this on purpose, it really didn't dawn on me until last night when I started to think about this.

So in the end what did I come up with? That the future still holds alot of promise...