Different Is Special

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5 Comments by Denise Gibel Molini on September 15, 2009

filed in Children, Life, One, being different, bi-racial families, blended families, children's self esteem, faith

tagged being different, bi-racial families, blended families, Children, children feeling different, children self-esteem, children's books, interacial adoption, interacial families, love, multi-cultural families

5 Responses

Vincent says:

June 29, 2008 at 2:11 am

I appreciate the loving sense that pervades this story and its delightful illustrations, but it is repetitive and slow. It’s like a parental description of the facts of life, starting with the birds and the bees, which gets lost in its own lyricism and never gets to explain about human sex at all; leaving the kid, who knows about it all anyway, impatient to get to the point. So I watched the presentation in impatient suspense.

In the first instance I didn’t notice the mention of “bi-racial families” in the title so had no idea of the “difference” under discussion. I’m a white man who previously married a Malaysian from Borneo. Our two children (now grown up) look partly oriental but it’s not been a big deal so far as I am aware, in this very multi-racial town in England. I am now married to a Jamaican, who’s very definitely black. I’m 66 and she is 54, and I notice that we attract looks, except in our local community. I just mention this to indicate why I find your children’s book of interest.

If I were the child sharing the book with a parent, I would want details of the difference being talked about. Then I would ask about this odd word “special”. “Mummy, am I more special than the people who are not different?”—and so on. I know that in America the race thing is different from here in England. But I regret the indoctrination implicit in this story; the implied necessity that the child can’t get out and live without very careful and difficult to grasp stories about specialness and difference. Denise we are all different. Every child has to get used to it. How can a parent protect the child from what may happen, the bullying or whatever? Are there still battles to be fought here? Is it necessary to sully the child’s natural experience of life with these uneasy expressions of “special”?

“Different” is purely in the eyes of the beholder. “Special” is surely a code word for “superior”, and that is a concept we can surely do without.

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Denise Gibel Molini says:

June 29, 2008 at 11:14 pm

You are right in one sense, but, I am a child of a bi-racial marriage and I have two children on a bi-racial marriage and sadly – in this country, it is an issue. When I was growing up everyone asked me if she was my real mother, and my children get asked the same thing constantly. I try very hard in the story to make it clear that everyone is different in some way, we are, I believe, all different in our own way. But, my children, in fact most of the children in my family have grown up in this country where we are often made to feel inferior. It is not for everyone, but many children here to whom I have given the book because they were like my children and myself have benefited from it, their parents have told me that they feel better about themselves because of it.

Then, there was a woman who was adopted and in her town in Argentina that was different, who herself, felt uplifted by the book, and someone who knew that he was gay at a very young age felt uplifted by the book – a woman whose brother has down syndrome read it to him regularly, so I didn’t want it to be simply about being bi-racial, I wanted it to touch people who just, for whatever reason, felt different.

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Vincent says:

July 1, 2008 at 5:19 am

Thanks for responding, Denise. I don’t in my comments want to force you into defending your position on anything, though i do appreciate hearing your comments as much as I appreciate your thought-provoking posts.

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Michael Sutton says:

February 25, 2009 at 5:41 pm

My name is Michael Sutton and I’m a casting director for documentary television series and I would like to ask for your help.

I’m currently doing research for Left/Right Productions on a new show for a major cable network about a large blended family with parents of different races. Ideally, we are looking for a family that has come together in the last year. We would love to find an African-American parent with children who has married a Caucasian parent with children, so that the siblings have step brothers and sisters of a different race. But in our search, we are open to any dynamic, interesting blended family with two different-race parents.

I would love to speak with you about networking with you and your organization to find a great family that would be interested in this opportunity. I can be reached at castingfamiliesNYC@gmail.com Thank you so much.

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celtic tattoo designs says:

June 6, 2010 at 7:20 pm

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