June 21, 2007 - Issue 234

Parenthood makes one reflect upon his or her childhood with a clarity never before possible.

For me, the latest scenario providing new lucidity into my own upbringing was the specter of securing the best educational and social opportunities for my now three-year-old daughter. I used to roll my eyes and turn up my lips when I heard former (white) co-workers obsessing about this-or-that three-star-rated pre-school, or pontificating about the virtues of having at least one parent at home on a full- or part-time basis. But my entrée into parenthood, attendant with issues of high-cost daycare and pre-school (where I live, $500 a month or so on the cheap, up to $1000 for the best) and ensuring my child is actually learning something constructive, has made me into the very worrywart I once derided in my mind.

And being the Black mother of a Black child has exponentially increased the anxiety. Until several months ago, my daughter had been enrolled full-time at an at-home daycare. Her days there started around 8 a.m. and ended roughly at 5:30 p.m. Stowing one’s child away for such a prolonged duration left me guilt-ridden, but I reasoned that I just needed to get over it because this was what everyone else does, right? Plus, the caregiver came from a line of daycare providers, had a nice, properly appointed facility in the confines of her respectable home, capped enrollment at a tolerable number of 12, and had a rotating roster of part-timers to assist.

She commented often on my daughter’s intelligence. “She remembers things so well.” Or “She can already count to ….” Or “She’s very smart and knows X, Y and Z already.” I was proud but nonplussed because I had always augmented her instruction with my own lessons at home. We pored over the alphabet and phonetics, numbers and the days of the week, alternative colloquialisms for common sayings, and more. My husband and I ensured she had age-appropriate books with characters that looked like her. We watched episodes of Barney for Black kids who weren’t racially ambiguous. We banned the nonsensical Teletubbies from our household.

I was also proud but nonplussed by my daughter’s intelligence because I had been a smart child, too.

I was a child who grew up as a “first,” an “only,” an “exception,” someone somehow “not like the others” who shared my phenotypic profile. I was such a novelty, my childhood was like being a Black history fact, something recorded and recited into the annals of familial and local Black lore.

I was a Black girl who grew up in the suburbs. I was one who got off “the white bus” and spoke in the timbre and jargon of my surroundings. Because I was an exception to the stereotype my white teachers had formulated in their minds, I was afforded opportunities to have my psyche poked and prodded, to be analyzed and marginalized. “What makes her tick?” they wondered. In the end, my IQ was impressive and I was christened as “gifted,” and summarily placed in the right classes, groups and activities. As an adult now looking back, I realize that there were more worldly factors than Providence working in my favor. But as a mother, I recently discovered that replicating and projecting my childhood onto my daughter had yielded unintended, strange fruit.

My daughter had been the only Black child at her daycare. She was often the only Black child when my husband and I took her to the park, the museum, art galleries or other activities. I didn’t necessarily see this as an immediate deficit, based primarily on how only-hood had opened windows of opportunity in my own life. However, when I began the process of having her screened and tested for a pre-K program for gifted children, I was brought to pause.

The application process was intense. I requested a packet, which I presumed would consist of a form or two, and instead received a glut of instructions and forms to be filled out by her pediatrician, former daycare provider and by myself, separately. My responses generally consisted of high ratings (3-5 on a scale of 1-5), followed by supporting explanations on topics in categories designated at the cognitive, social, effective, physical and intuitive/creative domains. Her former daycare teacher, on the other hand, rated my daughter abysmally low on all accounts, with a series of 1s, followed by no explanations whatsoever. Then I began to think of her daycare teacher not as the benevolent caregiver who had a multi-generational love of children, but rather a white woman who came of age during Jim Crow and had probably never had a Black child in her home before.

When the day finally came for my daughter’s initial screening, they test for potential rather than IQ; I was pensive. I was somewhat softened when I saw the friendly-faced Black psychologist who would be testing her. She was affable and immediately engaged my daughter into a comfort zone that made her easily go alone with her for 30 minutes of one-on-one time.

Shortly thereafter, the psychologist shared her findings with my husband and me. “Your daughter did very well,” she said. “She definitely has potential.” The outcomes showed that my daughter had tested at 99.9 percentile in letter-word identification (reading), 91 percentile in applied problems (math) and 93 percentile in academic knowledge (science/social studies). We gloated briefly, then the psychologist paused and said, “But look at how her daycare teacher rated her.” The trusty old teacher, who had always been full of verbal praise for my daughter, had results that tallied up to a -1 in academic performance and a paltry 24 (out of 44) for creative thinking skills.

“Obviously, there should not be such a discrepancy between her results here and the observations recorded by the daycare, should there?” I asked.

“Of course, not,” said the psychologist. “But I’m going to be honest with you, I see this all the time with our kids. They come in with a low rating from their pre-school or daycare, then come in here and score off the charts.”

My daughter is currently scheduled to go in for another round of screening, which will include an official IQ test. Whether or not she scores at the official gifted level remains to be seen, but I am now more vigilant than ever to do all within my power and influence to shield my daughter from the effects of the biases and prejudices of those with cloaked agendas. How, exactly, this will be accomplished, I am not yet sure.

But I do know that being the “only” and “first” are by no means necessary, or a hedge against hate from people who choose to wield their limited power for evil instead of good.

BC Columnist K. Danielle Edwards is a Nashville-based writer, poet and communications professional. She is the author of Stacey Jones: Memoirs of Girl and Woman, Body & Spirit, Life and Death (2005) and is the founder and creative director of The Pen: An Exercise in the Cathartic Potential of the Creative Act, a nonprofit creative writing project designed for incarcerated and disadvantaged populations. Click here to contact Ms. Edwards.

 

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