Family vocabulary

Earlier this year I did a "family" unit with my fifth-graders. We started with "who's in your family? This is how you say mother, father, brother, sister." Some of the advanced kids wanted to know the words for "the sister of your grandmother, the daughter of your cousin, the brother who has the same mother as you but a different father."

One kid (luckily towards the end of class) raised his hand to inform everyone that his uncle had married a man, and what was the word for that man? I wasn't really paying attention because this kid ALWAYS has his hand up in the air, and I said something like "your uncle's married, you want to know the word for your uncle's wife?"

"No! He has a husband! What is he called?" Most of the kids were oblivious, one or two smirked, and I just said "oh, he's gay, he married a man, that's possible in some countries. He's your uncle."

This kid is from the Netherlands where, of course, gay marriage is legal.

The classroom teacher had come into the room and heard this exchange. I saw him later in the day and he said "nice teachable moment! you handled that very well! I think in the Netherlands it's not only legal, it's required!" "Yeah, like those cafes in Amsterdam where you HAVE to smoke dope" I said.

Later on this kid told me that he shouldn't draw a line connecting his parents on his family tree because they aren't married.

"Geez, what's going on in your family?" I thought, but didn't say. "Your straight parents aren't married and your gay uncles are?" I felt very conservative.