Age-Appropriate Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Actually Works
I was folding stinky soccer socks on the coffee table last month when my 5-year-old, Lila, dropped her preschool backpack at my feet, a half-eaten Goldfish cracker sticking out of the pocket, and asked, “Why is Zara’s skin brown and mine is beige?” I froze mid-fold. I’d always known I wanted to talk about race with my kid, I just didn’t expect the question to come so early, or that I’d have no clue how to answer it in a way that made sense for her age. That night I pulled out my phone to search for help, and all I found was either listicles full of heavy books about the civil rights movement meant for older kids, or thinkpieces scolding me for not already having a curated anti-racism bookshelf by my kid’s second birthday. I left the search more confused than I started, so I decided to test what worked for us, one library trip at a time.
I stopped by Lila’s preschool teacher after drop-off the next day to ask her advice, and she said something that stuck with me: 5-year-olds think in concrete terms, not abstract systems. They understand if someone doesn’t get a turn on the slide, they don’t understand hundreds of years of systemic injustice. Any resource that leads with that kind of heavy history is going to confuse them, maybe even scare them, because they’ll start to wonder if that unfair thing could happen to their friend. I didn’t believe her at first, so I tested it out anyway: I checked out a hugely popular anti-racism picture book about segregation from the library that popped up on every list. Halfway through reading it that night, Lila put her hand on the page and asked, “Would they not let Zara come to my birthday party?” I stumbled through an explanation that she didn’t really follow, and she went to bed a little upset. That’s when I knew Ms. Henderson was right. We needed to start smaller.
The first good resource I found was The Skin You Live In, a short rhyming picture book that compares different skin tones to things Lila already knows: coffee, cookies, caramel, vanilla ice cream. It never dives into unfairness or history, it just celebrates that all different shades are good. Lila asks to read it twice a week, and she now likes to point out which shade every member of our family is, and which shade her friends are at school. Next was Hair Love, a sweet story about a Black dad learning to style his daughter’s curly hair for the first day of school. It’s funny, it’s relatable to any parent who’s ever fought with their kid’s hair, and it never once mentions racism. It just shows a normal Black family having a normal day, which is exactly what 5-year-olds need. Difference feels normal when you see it in everyday stories, not just when it’s part of a big lesson about unfairness.
I’ve also learned that anti-racism for 5-year-olds isn’t just about books you check out from the library. It’s small everyday habits that take almost no extra work. For example, I used to shush Lila if she pointed out someone’s skin or hair in public, because I’d been taught that talking about race is rude. But a kid that age doesn’t see it as rude. It’s just an observation, the same as pointing out that someone has blue eyes or a taller bike. Shushing it just tells them that race is a taboo, bad thing to talk about, and that lets them make up their own wrong ideas about it. Now, I just answer simply and calmly. If Lila says “That man’s eyes are a different shape than mine,” I say “Yep, all people’s faces look different, just like some people like peanut butter and some don’t. Cool, right?” That’s it. No big speech, no overcomplicating it.
Another small change I made that took 10 minutes was swapping out our old crayons for a pack of multi-cultural skin tone crayons, and adding one brown-skinned doll with curly hair to Lila’s doll bin. It’s not fancy, it cost less than $15 total, but now when Lila draws pictures of her friends or plays family, she can include people who don’t look just like her, without even thinking about it. I also started being more intentional about the shows we watch: instead of only picking cartoons where all the main characters look like Lila, I mix in shows like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood that have a diverse cast of just regular kids going about regular days. No big lessons, just normal representation.
I still don’t have it all figured out, and I mess up all the time. Last month, a relative made a rude comment about the new Somali family that moved into our neighborhood at a family dinner, and Lila was coloring at the table right next to us. I laughed it off and changed the subject instead of saying something, and I still think about that. I know next time I need to speak up, even if it’s awkward, because Lila learns more from what I do than what I read to her. I also still get stuck when people send me endless reading lists for toddlers, and I feel like I’m not doing enough.
But right now, for a 5-year-old who just wants to play tag on the playground and eat popsicles after school, small is enough. Last week, Lila brought home a drawing of her and Zara holding hands. She colored Zara’s hand the color of milk chocolate, and her own the color of vanilla, and scribbled “best friends” at the bottom. That’s the goal right now, isn’t it? We don’t need to fix everything all at once. We just need to give them the words to talk about what they see, and let them see that all kinds of people belong.
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