Our youngest son Ezra was born in Africa and came to America when he was five years old. That being said, his ability to communicate in English had to catch up with his thoughts and needs and wishes so we could figure out what in the world he was saying. The more he added to his vocabulary the more we could understand each other, for the most part…

Those first few years, I tried my best to write down the things he said, because they were often oh-so hilarious. Looking back on those notes, I recently found this phrase: “It’s more funner, like a cat eating a pickle.” Unfortunately, the entry lacked context, so I have no clue what this refers to.

Pretty soon after he was home, we began taking Ezra to speech therapy a couple times a week. I would sit behind the one-way mirror and watch him work with a therapist. After one session, I asked about my role in his speech progression. “I feel like I’m constantly correcting him—his word choices and pronunciation,” I told her. “I don’t want him to feel like that’s all I do.” I didn’t want to be the maternal equivalent of a giant red pen, always drawing slash marks through his words like a teacher grading an essay.

She suggested that instead of telling him that he said it wrong, I should just repeat what he said correctly. That sounded like a good plan, so later that day when he said, “Mama, me hungry,” I countered by saying, “I am hungry,” emphasizing the correct pronoun at the beginning of the sentence. He just looked at me matter-of-factly and replied, “Then eat something.”

When Ezra started kindergarten, I would go and volunteer in his classroom once a week and stay for lunch. On one such occasion, as I sat at the cafeteria table and attempted to field the many questions and stories being flung at me from all directions by his classmates in that raucous room, Ezra tapped my arm and said, “I feel sorry for Jonathan.” (He actually said John-a-fun, because that’s how he would always pronounce it. He had two Jonathans in his class that year: “John-a-fun with hair like Knox” and “John-a-fun who speak-a da Pannish.” In other words, Blond Jonathan and Hispanic Jonathan.)

I glanced at Jonathan—the adorable, smiling boy sitting across the table and looking up at me through his fringe of brown bangs as he rested his chin on top of his empty, zipped up lunchbox—and I asked Ezra why he felt sorry for him. “Nobody talk to him,” he replied, “because he only speak-a da Pannish.”

“Well, then you talk to him,” I suggested.

Ezra grinned and turned to his friend. Then, in a loud and exaggerated voice, he said, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

“Ezra!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing?”

“I speak-a da Pannish!”

“That was not Spanish! Those were made up words!” I looked back at Jonathan who seemed to tickled by his silly friend’s antics.

“Oh,” Ezra answered honestly, “Me not know dat.”

All of us have to start at ground level and hopefully grow towards understanding, and not just the people who move continents and drastically change families and cultures like our son did. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve been ignorant about someone or something, and I had to fess up and say to myself, “Oh! Me not know dat!” But once I know, it’s time to act differently. Author Maya Angelou poignantly said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” And that all begins by humbly claiming where we’ve been wrong.