Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What I Actually Found That Works
Last Tuesday, I was tucking my 5-year-old, Milo, into bed after his preschool pizza night, and he turned the last page of his beat-up favorite truck book and looked up at me, frowning. “Why all the truck drivers are white?” he said. “Jamar drives the trash truck at our house, and he has brown skin.” I froze mid-tuck, the sheet bunching under my hand. I’d known this moment was coming, but when I’d looked up anti-racism resources for little kids a few months back, everything felt either too heavy for a kid who still cries when he can’t reach his goldfish crackers, or so vague it didn’t actually answer any of his questions. That night, after I mumbled something about the book being old and kissed him goodnight, I set out to find stuff that actually fit a 5-year-old’s brain.
I spent two weeks scrolling mom groups, clicking through Pinterest links, and even stopping by the preschool office to ask his teacher what she used. Most of what I found fell into two unhelpful camps. The first was full of resources for older kids, with discussions of historical trauma that no 5-year-old could process. One book I ordered had a whole section on segregation that left Milo asking why people wouldn’t let other kids play at the same park, and I couldn’t explain it without leaving him confused and sad. The other camp was all “we’re all the same on the inside” that ignored what Milo was actually seeing. When I first tried that line on him after his question about Jamar’s skin, he just blinked and said “No, we’re not. My skin is lighter. That’s okay, right?” He was right, of course. 5-year-olds’ brains are wired to sort things into categories – big trucks vs small trucks, dogs vs cats, blonde hair vs brown hair. Of course they notice skin color. Pretending it doesn’t exist just makes it feel like something weird or wrong to talk about.
The first good find came from our local children’s librarian, when I told her what I was looking for. She pulled three thin picture books off the shelf that I’d never seen before, and all of them have been a hit. The first is The Skin You Live In, it’s short, rhyming, compares skin tones to different ice cream flavors, and doesn’t try to make anything complicated. It just says skin is what holds you in, it comes in every shade, and it’s good. The second is Hair Love, which is just a sweet story about a dad learning to do his Black daughter’s hair for the first time. There’s no big lesson, just a dad and his kid having a silly, sweet morning. Milo asks to re-read the page where they end up with a messy ponytail every single time, because he thinks it’s funny. The third is Last Stop on Market Street, which is about a Black kid riding the bus with his grandma, and it talks about noticing all the different kinds of people in your neighborhood. It’s gentle, it’s relatable, and none of them are longer than 30 pages – perfect for a 5-year-old’s attention span.
Beyond books, I’ve found that the best “resources” aren’t even things you buy. My sister, who’s a preschool teacher, reminded me that 5-year-olds learn more from what they see every day than what you read to them. I started paying attention to how many of the characters in Milo’s go-to shows and books were white, and I swapped one a week for something different. Now, sometimes we watch Blue’s Clues & You instead of his usual Blaze reruns, and he doesn’t even notice it’s a “diverse” show – he just thinks Josh’s magic tricks are cool. When he points out differences in public now, I don’t shush him (which was my first instinct, when he said a Black lady’s braids looked “like purple rope” at Target last month, I wanted to disappear). Instead, I just answer his question simply. That time, I said “Her hair is dyed purple, that’s such a fun choice, right?” No big speech, just a normal answer. Shushing makes kids think difference is something to be embarrassed about, which is the opposite of what we want.
I did buy one small thing that’s been really useful, $3 printable flashcards from a preschool teacher’s Etsy shop. They’re just 12 cards, each with a drawing of a kid doing normal kid stuff – swinging, baking cookies, building with blocks – with every different skin tone and hair type. I keep them in the car for when we’re waiting for my older daughter to get out of school, and we flip through them when we’re bored. No lesson, just looking at pictures of kids. It’s low effort, it’s cheap, and it works. I also started pointing out small unfairness when we see it, in terms he gets. Last week, a kid at the playground wouldn’t let another kid join their game because of how his hair looked, and I said to Milo “That wasn’t very nice, right? Everyone gets to play, no matter what their hair looks like.” That’s all he needed to hear.
Last week, Milo brought home a drawing from preschool of him and Jamar playing on the slide. He colored his skin peach and Jamar’s brown, and scribbled “best friends” at the bottom. I stuck it on the fridge, right next to my older daughter’s soccer schedule. I still don’t have this all figured out. Sometimes I pick a book that’s too boring, sometimes I fumble my words when he asks a hard question, and I’m still learning what to say and what to leave for when he’s older. But after a few weeks of searching, I’ve learned that you don’t need an expensive curriculum or a rigid plan to teach anti-racism to a 5 year old. It’s mostly just leaning into the questions they already ask, instead of looking away, and giving them small, normal examples of all kinds of people being just people. I still check the library’s new picture book shelf every time we go, and I’m still collecting new things, but what we have right now is enough for this stage.
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