Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Works for Everyday Parenting
Last Saturday, we were waiting in line for vanilla cones after my 5-year-old Lila’s soccer practice, when she pointed straight at the Black woman standing in front of us and asked, loud enough for the whole line to hear, “Mom, why is her skin brown like my chocolate cone?” I felt my face heat up. I knew better than to shush her—shushing tells kids difference is something shameful to hide—but my mind went blank. I mumbled a quick apology to the woman, gave Lila a 10-word answer I can’t even remember now, and by the time we got our cones, I was already googling “age-appropriate anti-racism resources for 5 year olds” on my phone.
I’d always known I wanted to talk about unfairness around race with my kids, but I’d assumed that conversation would start later, when they were old enough to understand more of the world. That ice cream line moment showed me it starts way earlier. Kids notice difference long before adults think they do. But when I started scrolling through all the lists and blog posts, most of what I found didn’t fit. A lot of resources were for middle schoolers or teens, talking about systemic injustice that Lila wouldn’t be able to wrap her head around—she still can’t understand why we can’t get ice cream every day, after all. Other lists had the same 5 books over and over, and half of them were too abstract or too heavy for a kid her age. I checked out three from the library anyway to test them out.
The first one I tried was super popular, all rhymes and short pages, but Lila just thought it was a silly book about babies breaking rules. She didn’t connect any of it to the real world. The second one, The Skin You Live In, clicked right away. It’s simple, talks about skin color the same way it talks about hair color or shoe size—just something that makes everyone different, nothing scary or weird. That first night we read it, Lila pointed to every kid on the page and said, “That one has curly hair like my teacher Ms. Rita! That one has skin just like Javi from my class!” It wasn’t a big, heavy lesson. It was just normal. I picked up I Am Enough a week later from the library, and that worked too—it’s about being kind to yourself and kind to people who look different, no big speeches.
I realized pretty quickly that anti-racism resources for 5 year olds don’t have to be all big books and formal lessons. A lot of the best stuff is just small changes around the house that cost almost nothing. I noticed all our crayons only had three “skin” colors, none of which matched most of Lila’s friends. I ordered a $4 pack of skin-tone crayons on Amazon, and now she draws all her classmates with colors that actually look like them. Our old band-aid box only had one pale pink option, so I got a box of multi-tonal band-aids for our medicine cabinet. I added one more doll to Lila’s collection—one with deep brown skin and curly hair, just like her best friend from preschool. None of these things took more than 10 minutes of ordering, and Lila doesn’t think anything of it. She just puts both dolls to bed every night, like it’s always been that way.
A couple weeks after we started reading those books, we were at the neighborhood playground when a new family showed up. The mom wore a blue hijab, and her 4 year old son ran straight for the slide. Before I could even think, Lila walked right up to the mom and asked, “Why do you have that cloth on your head?” I held my breath, but this time I didn’t jump in to cut her off. The mom smiled and said, “It’s something I wear because it makes me happy, and it’s part of who I am.” Lila nodded and said, “It’s blue. Blue’s my favorite color too.” Then she grabbed the boy’s hand and ran off to the slide. That moment felt way more useful than any fancy lesson I could have planned. I learned then that the biggest thing I can do is just let her ask questions, instead of shutting her down when she points out difference out loud. You don’t need a 20-minute explanation. All you need to say is “That’s just part of who she is, everyone is different” and that’s enough for a 5 year old.
Five year olds think in concrete terms, after all. They don’t grasp abstract concepts of historical harm or systemic unfairness. That’s not a failure on anyone’s part, that’s just how their brains develop right now. Trying to force that heavy content on them doesn’t help anyone, it just confuses them. Right now, anti-racism for Lila is just building the habit of seeing difference as normal, talking about it openly, and treating everyone the same. That base is what she’ll build on later, when she’s old enough to learn the harder parts of the story.
Last week, Lila came home from preschool upset. She said a boy in her class told her friend Zara that her brown skin was dirty. I talked to her teacher, who sorted it out with the whole class gently, and when I asked Lila what she said to Zara, she told me, “I said it’s not dirty, it’s just the color her skin is. My skin is vanilla and hers is chocolate, and both are good.” That’s exactly what I wanted for her right now. I still don’t have all the perfect resources. Some days I still fumble for words when she asks a question out of the blue. I know there’s so much more we’ll talk about as she gets older, when she’s ready for harder questions and harder stories. But right now, these small, simple things—picture books, skin-tone crayons, letting her ask questions—work. It’s enough, for now.
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