Word to Your Madre

There were a few words and phrases in my childhood home that were absolutely forbidden.  Aside from the normal ban on cursing, the word "sucks," and using "God" inappropriately, under no circumstances were my sister and I ever to say "shut up."  As a sixth grader, I was quite certain that I was amongst the oppressed people of the earth because of my parents' firm stance on this phrase.  It's not that I necessarily wanted to tell my parents to shut up, but on occasion, (sorry Deborah), I really wanted to tell my sister to zip it in less than polite terms.  My mother, however, was determined that ours would be a household where polite behavior was not reserved just for strangers and elders.  And thus, telling anyone to "shut up," even my little sister, was completely unacceptable.

I've thought about this a lot the past week given the uproar our country has been in over civility (or the lack thereof) in our political discourse, and as I mentioned last week, the re-wording of Huck Finn.  No matter what your political persuasion, it's clear that we all care deeply about words.  Some of us care more about the freedom to use them however we see fit, and others of us care more about content -but the bottom line is that we imbue words with power.

Now that I am the parent of a child on the precipice of talking, I feel like I now am even more aware of words and what they mean.  I hope to teach Mateo to use his words in a way that is respectful, thoughtful and civil.  Part of that learning curve, as my parents showed me by the shut up ban, is that for those values to take hold in the public sphere, they have to be practiced at home.  Or, as President Obama so eloquently said in Tucson, "how we treat one another is entirely up to us."

To that, I say word.  And Mateo says ball.