Tag: families are complicated

More on the problem with family trees as a classroom activity

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
About family trees: isn’t it exactly the fact that people’s families are so different that makes such a project interesting in the first place? This might depend on the teacher – but if a teacher introduced the assignment by briefly talking about different kinds of families and gave specific suggestions about how people could draw in two sets of parents, deceased relatives etc., would you feel differently about this?
realsocialskills:
I think it would still be a really bad idea and that the reasons I described in my original post still apply.
No matter how a teacher frames this, it’s a really sensitive subject.
It’s great if teachers are sending the message that there are a lot of different kinds of families. They should send that message, and one way to do that is to assign books that show lots of different kinds of families and cultures.
It’s not good to use students as object lessons, though. Particularly if they’re dealing with something painful or socially stigmatized.
For instance:
  • A kid who’s been in foster care since they were three and doesn’t know who their parents are shouldn’t have to decide between lying and announcing that to their whole class.
  • A kid whose mother just died might not want to talk about that.
  • A kid who has two fathers might be afraid to tell other students that, particularly if many of them are members of a faith that stigmatizes homosexuality
  • A kid who doesn’t have ready words to describe their family situation might not feel comfortable discussing this with you. They shouldn’t have to choose between lying and having a scary conversation about something personal.

A school project not to assign

Real Social Skills

If you are a teacher, do not ask your students to make a family tree as a school assignment. *Especially* do not do this as a class art project to be posted on the wall.

A lot of kids have very complicated families, and complicated feelings about which words to use for which people.

For instance: Some kids call multiple people “mom”. Sometimes this is because they’re being raised by a lesbian couple. Sometimes this is because they are adopted and also maintaining a relationship with their mother who gave birth to them. Sometimes this is because their parents divorced and remarried and they also see their stepparents as parents. None of these relationships map easily onto a family tree project.

Some kids don’t have any parents at all. This isn’t something that they should have to tell their peers if they don’t want to. 

Some kids aren’t sure who their parents are. Is it the people who adopted them when they were a baby and disrupted when they were six? The person who gave birth to them? The people they’re living with now? The one nice staff in their group home? The person they’re in foster care with who they’re hoping will eventually adopt them? It’s complicated and not ok to ask kids to declare this in writing in front of everyone.

There are any number of emotionally fraught and complicated situations that go along with describing families. It’s not good to have kids do that as part of an assignment, unless you’re working in a context in which getting people to do emotionally fraught things is appropriate.