As you know, we’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie series to the boys. We are on the third book now. The third book is about Almanzo, not Laura. I actually don’t care for this book as much as the others. I’d rather read about Laura and Mary.

The books about Laura’s childhood (at least so far) have given us a lot more to talk about. Well, maybe not a lot more to talk about. I guess we really only talk about the Indians, but we talk about them a lot. In the second book, Ma is fearful of the Indians and says ,what we would consider today, very inappropriate things about them. Pa is not afraid of the Indians and counters the rude things Ma says with open-mindedness and respect for their differences—kind of.

Pa also says things about how the Indians will be forced to leave their homes and land because it belongs to the US government, because it belongs to his family. He says this like it’s no big deal.

I happen to think it’s a really big deal, so we talk about it. We talk about why it’s not okay to expect the Indians to just leave. We talk about equality and rights and how we would feel someone made us leave our home. And we talk about how silly Ma’s fears are because we are all the same on the inside. We all agree that it doesn’t matter what we look like on the outside.

Of course, these are all simple conversations. There is only so much that is appropriate to say to a five-year-old and only so much a five-year-old can comprehend. But they get it. They understand why this is a sad part of our history (and continues to be). 

Wyatt even told me that it wasn’t very nice to be mean to the Indians because we all have the same hearts.