It's no secret that our popups draw many tween and teen families, I'm so happy for that! Finding peers for our traveling adolescents feels so good from a parental standpoint: Woohoo! We are not negatively affecting their social growth & development by embracing a worldschooling lifestyle.
Teens & Tweens: Sevilla, Spain 2024
As parents, supporting our teens' and tweens' social development includes providing the opportunity for them to be part of peer networks, to chat and banter with one another, and to explore their own personalities and how they fit into the group.
One way kids can connect might be through typical teenage behaviors: griping about parents or siblings, discussing pop music and movies, rating their favorite hobbies or online games or travel destinations... and as they start to know one another better, they may share some snide comments, inside jokes, and sarcastic remarks.
So where’s the issue? This all seems quite normal and natural for kids in this age group. Believe me, it is! And normally I'm thrilled that tweens and teens can start to explore their sense of humor at our events... however, we need to be aware that there are times when humor crosses the boundaries, with or without the kids realizing that their words are harmful.
At a recent popup, a handful of children (including my offspring) engaged in off-color teen banter. This included remarks that are racist and homophobic, and I wouldn’t doubt some sexism as well.
Ok, I don’t just want to brush this off and say it’s typical of adolescents, part of it is... but there is more to explore here. Teenagers are spreading their wings and trying out new behaviors which may include diving into sarcasm and dark humor. Without realizing it, offensive jokes, slurs, and other unacceptable comments can slip into the group rhetoric... which then sets the tone that this is admissible.
And this is what happened... the tween/teen banter got out of hand and subsequently violated our diversity policy. So now we all get the chance to talk about it!
Here's what I've got for you:
Diversity Policy? Yep!
When does humor cross the line?
What was the intention when words became harmful and hurtful?
How do we address it with our children?
Teens & Tweens: Normandy, France 2023 | Da Nang, Vietnam 2024
First things first, I want to share our diversity policy. It's listed in our FAQs page.
As a business designed to build and strengthen the worldschool community, the Worldschool Pop-Up Hub values both inclusion and respect of all individuals. We welcome every family and acknowledge your diverse backgrounds, lifestyles, and viewpoints. To date, we've had participants who are neurodiverse, span the LGBTQ+ community, come from varying socio-economic backgrounds, practice all major religions or no religion at all, hail from all corners of our earth, elected to be solo parents, have multiracial families, speak English as a second or third language, live with an ongoing disability, or are unique in some other beautiful way. Please join us with your most authentic you! We do our best to provide a safe space for you and your family. We kindly request attendees to equally extend this respect and inclusion to all who gather with us.
Each family who signs up for a popup ticks a box that they’ve read the FAQs and agrees that they understand our policies.
As a rule, these are my family’s values as well… we are all human and deserve to be met, respected, and accepted right where we are in our lives. Many of you have heard me tell my kids to "be a good human" as a reminder when they walk out the door.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all could be good humans all the time? However the reality is we will sometimes make mistakes. Having a little more knowledge about humor and boundaries can help prevent future carelessness.
How do you know when humor has crossed the line?
When dealing with tweens and teens, it's bound to happen that humor occasionally gets out of hand. Honestly, it's really tough to know when humor crosses the line, even for adults. Aside: and adolescents don't have a fully developed frontal cortex portion of their brain until their mid- to late-20's (!!!) which exacerbates how difficult it is to make sound decisions during this stage of growth.
As a benchmark, humor crosses the line either when someone becomes uncomfortable or worse: someone feels marginalized, singled out, unwelcome, or unsafe. The tricky part is these things are subjective... and sometimes no one realizes the boundary was crossed.
Let's start with an example of someone becoming uncomfortable: At one of our popups, a “Deez Nuts” theme was running through the teen group and many of them took advantage of every possibility to drop in a one-liner.
-Someone innocently asks, “Have you seen How to Train Your Dragon?” -Draggin’ deez nuts across your face. Got ‘em!
Honestly, these one-liners may still circulate in the teen chats if someone accidentally opens themselves up to getting ‘burned’… but we had a complaint and I addressed it with that specific group.
I told the teens that another kid was feeling uncomfortable with their jokes (who the heck wants to hear about nuts being dragged across a face?). I asked them if they had considered that beforehand. Oh, they were a bit shocked! They were so busy being easily entertained that they never thought about their words actually being offensive.
But the good news is that this was all we needed to say to them:
Someone is feeling uncomfortable. Did you consider that beforehand?
Those two sentences brought them out of their one-up-man-ship, and they were able to regroup and move forward with more reflection before saying something snarky.
As adults, many of us can relate to being in situations where we let some words fall out of our mouths without thinking it all the way through. We can understand why teens get sucked into these sorts of humor loops, especially when they see it as a challenge to respond with the fastest and wittiest reply.
Additionally, many of us are willing to forgive an offensive incident that was never intended to upset someone, it truly just got out of hand.
Teens & Tweens: Seoul, S Korea 2023
However, I now have a situation on my hands that has crossed into more serious territory.
At a recent popup there were derogatory jokes made which were not respectful to individuals part of the LGBTQ+ community, certain religions, and certain races. Some of the teens/tweens made distasteful comments and teased others about people and things “being gay” (and it’s more than that, I don't know all the details as my family didn't witness it first-hand).
Additionally, one of my kids was part of this teen chatter which likely set the stage for undesirable words to appear acceptable. My heart knows he is not trying to alienate people, especially about this. His sister is part of the LGBTQIA+ community. I often use her as a sounding board for how things are going with the teens. But we didn’t catch it. What can I say? We messed up.
Whatever happened didn’t trigger a response from us on the spot (and I’ll also say I’m learning about these things more than a month later, so never had the chance to address these concerns with our group). Whether or not we caught it, or if the intent went from joking to malicious, doesn’t matter because words were said, and people were hurt.
When chit chat and jokes start to marginalize whole groups of people, we need to talk about it.
Honestly, the perfect place to build this conversation is on one of the benefits of worldschooling! Many of us have visited parts of the world where people have been oppressed: forced labor, languages and religions outlawed, families and neighbors split apart, people trapped in their villages by landmines, deportations, spying on neighbors, mass graves, excommunications, executions, and wars declared in the name of anything and everything on the face of the earth (colonialization, diplomacy, white supremacy, religion, freedom, war on drugs, etc)!
I feel that my kids have a good grasp that certain groups of people have had a very hard time surviving to the current day and still face challenges that my family will never understand as part of our daily life. But learning about the struggles of others may not be enough. We may need to drill down further... were these words intended to hurt someone.
Memorials: Dachau, Germany | Tashkent, Uzbekistan | Baku, Azerbaijan
What was the intention & motivation when words became harmful and hurtful?
For me, intention is the trickiest part: nearly always the intent is to garner a laugh from the group. But I think it's useful for kids to put this into their own words. What was my intention? What was I trying to achieve? Why did I say the words I said?
Very likely the answer will be "because I thought the other kids would laugh" or "I was just trying to be funny." So then the next bit is allowing them to see that what was meant to be funny inadvertently became hurtful.
At this step, it's quite helpful to have descriptive words for what others might feel because uncomfortable is only the beginning. Perhaps they also feel insulted, singled out, shocked, sad, hated, scared, excluded, unsafe, or even exhausted that they need to be on the defensive over and over again.
... and that ties into motivation. You wanted to get a laugh, but did you also want to make someone feel rotten? Were you trying to hurt someone? Can you understand what this feels like from someone else's perspective?
I sincerely hope they respond that their purpose was never to hurt anyone. They just weren't able to see the full repercussions of their words... and this is part is where the learning begins.
It would be easy to brush this off as “kids will be kids” and they didn’t know… but if kids are being jerks (that’s the nice word, I’m trying not to swear here), someone needs to tell them. How are they going to know that their words are hurtful, derogatory, offensive, insensitive, and marginalizing others if we don’t ask them to consider how they’re making others feel?
And, most importantly, if we don’t talk about it with them, how else will they have that conversation?
What does that conversation look like? Maybe something like this:
Question 1: Someone is feeling uncomfortable… and this time not only uncomfortable, but feeling betrayed, hurt, disliked, angry, stereotyped, excluded, unsafe, unwelcome, etc.
Question 2: Did you consider that beforehand?
Question 3: What is your motivation?
Question 4: Are you intending to alienate and hurt people?
Question 5 could could go a number of directions: Is it worth it? Does your heart approve? How do you feel when you accidentally hurt someone?
Question 6: If you see it happening, are you able to tell your peers that this isn’t acceptable?
Because here is the thing: something that starts as a joke with no intention to hurt feelings can easily normalize into conversations… and then slip into more vindictive content. And all of it has the potential to spark serious, negative consequences for minorities.
As parents of teens & tweens, it’s our responsibility to have these conversations with our kids. They’re learning things every day… including empathy, judgment, authenticity, and tact. Our interactions with them now can help them decide what sort of a person they want to be. Now is a perfect time to form solid character traits for their future.
One of these traits can be what they do when they witness others' words undermining diversity. It often only takes one or two people to tell their peers that their words are becoming mean and unfair. Perhaps they call it out to the whole group, or maybe pull the offender aside and mention it's time to be more respectful.
I know it isn't always comfortable for teens and tweens to take a stance, but when others start to feel unwelcome and disrespected, it's important. However, if they're unable to say something directly to their peers (understandable, that's a big ask for some kids), then please let them know they can talk to an adult about it (or even me directly... I'm happy to help facilitate this so everyone feels welcome at our popups).
Currently in our household, we are learning some tough lessons. Letting people down when we’re such advocates for community ourselves feels really rotten… but lessons that include some heartache and humility are also the ones that don’t need much reinforcement. We can and will do better.
So for those of you we’ve let down, I apologize.
For those of you I didn’t stand up for, I apologize.
For our LGBTQIA+ popup families and friends, what do I say? I'm so sorry this happened at our event. Please always know I’m approachable about honoring diversity.
And to all our beautifully diverse members of the greater worldschool family, your presence has made our lives richer through the camaraderie, adventure, laughter, tears, and learning about one another. You are all welcome in your most authentic selves.
I hope my words have been kind and respectful to all. If anyone wants to continue the conversation, please reach out privately.
With love,
Rachel
PS I often say this to my kids too, here it is in bumper sticker form (stolen screenshot, sorry for the poor photo quality):
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