Finding Courage to #BringBackOurGirls

the problem we all live withMy daughters are studying Courage at school. As a part of that discussion they highlighted the courage of Ruby Bridges which always brings to mind for me the image created by Norman Rockwell. I recently learned that the painting is titled “The problem we all live with.” What a powerful message – this is OUR problem!

This helped me to realize that shielding our children from the current problems of the world prevents them from the opportunity to develop the tools and skills to embrace courage in every day situations. With that said we began our discussion of the recent kidnappings in Chibok. This led to the production of video to the families of Chibok. It also sparked a great conversation about developed and underdeveloped countries. This included a comparison of families living off of less than $2/day for a family of four and us spending upwards of $200/week on groceries. We discussed access to television, running water (which required us to define the differences between running water as in rivers and running water as in in-door plumbing). We discussed camping trips and trips to their grandpa’s farm as a way of exploring lifestyles in less developed parts of the world – living without our every day luxuries.

I was hesitant to discuss the kidnapping but it presented itself as a natural next step in the conversation so I brought it up. We discussed freedom and safety and communities that are unable to feel safe and supported by the police. We discussed the safety in our neighborhood in that in our neighborhood when we call the police they show up (at least two police cars) within minutes. We discussed neighborhoods where the police are too busy to show up for such small crimes. Then we discussed the difficulty in Chibok where the “bad guys” have bigger guns and more weapons than the police.

We ended our discussion talking about the mother’s of these beautiful little girls. I explained that the girls were between fourteen and sixteen years of age. We named off friends and family members of similar ages. I explained how trucks drove up to the school and identified themselves as police to rally the girls into trucks and drive them away to what the girls believed was a safe place. The girls soon learned that the men were indeed “bad guys”. We talked about the mothers and fathers that went to look for their children by foot with limited technology (cell phones, roads, computers, texting, etc.) and how their children were still missing. We talked about how our government the United States is “thinking” about what type of help they will provide to help find the girls and how important it is for us to help support their courageous acts in searching for their children.

Together we produced this video – finding their voices and embracing courage.

 

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