What Our Kids Need To Know About What Jussie Smolett Did

Jussie Smollett was just arrested because police say he faked a hate crime to get a better salary on his show, Empire.

(He’s out on bail now. Because of course he is.)

I was already pretty sure Jussie faked the whole thing, but now we know just how bad this whole mess was.

It’s everywhere, and because he was such a high profile person, our kids are asking questions.

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First and foremost, this is a great time to teach our kids about crying wolf. They have to understand that when people do things like fake something as serious as a hate crime, that nobody is going to believe them, ever.

That’s why we all read the story to our kids. Because we want them to be better people. We want them to understand it’s important to be honest, good people.

Not only is Jussie’s credibility shot for the rest of his life, but his career is probably over, too.

This is a man that was super talented, with an amazing job, and had a lot of great stuff in life.

And now he’s probably going to jail.

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The next thing we need to teach our kids is to be grateful for what they have. Why did he do this? Well, he did it because he wanted more money. He wasn’t happy with what he was getting.

He did it for sympathy.

And not only is that disgusting, but it’s just downright ungrateful. Kids need to understand to be grateful. To be gracious, and to be happy with what they have. This is a great lesson to be pulled from all of this.

And of course we have to talk about hate. We have to make our kids understand that just because this one person staged a hate crime, that doesn’t mean these crimes don’t still exist.

That doesn’t mean that minorities aren’t marginalized in awful ways every single day.

The messages we need to take from this, the messages we need to teach our kids more than anything are to BE HONEST, BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER, and to BE GRATEFUL.

These aren’t difficult messages, but this is an awesome teachable moment for us as parents, and a good way to take something awful and make it into something good.

Lemons. Lemonade. And all that.

So go out there, spread some love, and remember that not everyone sucks.

But this guy does.