Will somebody do something about insensitive teachers? My son goes to a pre-primary school. Firstly, the principal called me at work to remind me that I had ‘forgotten” to supply details of my son’s father in the application form.
As if that was not enough, my son came home one afternoon demanding to know why his family was diferent: ‘Mummy. What’s wrong with my family?”
The theme for that week at school was ‘My family”. Family trees were constructed for them and they had to fill in blocks starting with ‘me” and then ‘mother, father” then ‘grandmother and grandfather”. This disregards the fact that the family structure is changing. More and more children are raised by parents of the same sex, or single parents.
I share a one bedroom flat with another woman. Naturally, my son’s immediate family would be: mother, aunt Regina and him. That’s what was ‘wrong”.
It took me the whole evening to explain to my three year old that there was nothing wrong with our family but in fact something wrong with the structure of the tree — I don’t know if I managed to convince him.
Anne, Johannesburg