Illustrator and photographer Kim Kelley-Wagner of Words Written in Crayon adopted two daughters from China, and noticed that people sometimes say certain things to her daughters.
Kelly-Wagner tried to explain to her daughters that "people do not say these things to be mean, they say them out of ignorance." So she decided to embark on a photography project "Things said to or about my adopted daughters" to show how words can hurt. As Kelly-Wagner said, "Words are powerful, they can become tools or weapons, choose to use them wisely."
View the rest over at Kelly-Wagner's Facebook page or blog.
Comments (4)
These kids will grow up. They will have a much more complicated understanding of what they went through than what is exhibited here, but these photos will always be findable. It's not really about what is best for them, at all.
If the recipient just puts up with it, nothing will ever change. At the same time, getting offended at every stupid comment is not good for your own mental health. Over the years, my daughters and I have discussed how clueless people can be, and tried to figure out together in which instances it would be right to 1. laugh it off, 2. say something appropriately short and clever, or 3. start a conversation about feelings and intentions and what would be more appropriate to say. It’s a long and involved process, but by now my kids are pretty good at judging those situations on their own.
On the one hand, children in this situation should be armed with the proper responses, but on the other hand, it’s not a child’s responsibility to change the world at the expense of her own well-being. For young children, how the parent responds is more important for the child’s security than anything a stranger (or even a friend) says.
One good thing is that the people who make thoughtless comments serve as a bad example. This sort of thing was a way to teach my children how words have an effect on those you say them to, and thinking before you speak is a big step in growing up.
I've often been told by folks visiting our town from south of the border that they love our Ontario accent. We're always like... what?... we have an accent?
lol...
I'd like to offer this tidbit:
I, as well as others, believe Justin Bieber is living proof that who you surround yourself with (i.e. where you end up) will invariably influence the way you speak. Let me explain. Justin is from the same town I am. The one I am in as I write/you read this post. Nobody in this town speaks the way he does. Somewhere along the way he has picked up not only the dialect but the accent of the folks he is most closely associated with. We notice this most when we see his Proactive commercials on TV. Everyone I know in town comments on it. More often than not people around here will say things like, "what's up with the accent?". "Why is he speaking like an American?". Maybe it's all part of the act, maybe he's been taught to speak like that, but most of us feel it's 'cause of where he's been for the last while and who he's been hanging around with.
Just my $0.02 worth...
Carry on...
2) Really? People in Southern Utah sound the same as people in Seattle?
Man, this is impressive, but I'd really like to know which bits to accept as truth... (And RAF, I don't think Moon Unit was ridiculing the accent she and her friends used. She was documenting it with exaggeration.)
At various times in my life I've had people ask me where I was from, even when I lived in San Francisco, and when I told them they'd tell me they thought I was from, the Mid-West, New York, Texas, New England, and many other places.
It was a woman here in Idaho that pointed out just how I would pronounce certain words, such as: water, daughter, and quarter. She pointed out that they all sound the same and she would laugh hysterically every time I would say the following: Here's a quarter for the water for your daughter.
May be that is why some people thought I lived over on Tirty-Tird & Tird in the Bronx?
Perhaps there is a simple explanation for this, but I don't know what it is. My assumption is that it has something to do with social class. Sort of how like southern-like accents seem to exist among poor white people all over the country; and southern-like ebonics is a trans-regional black accent.