Age-Appropriate Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Worked For Me
The playground slide was still warm from the September sun last week when my 5-year-old daughter, Lila, ran over to me, her cheeks sticky from a cherry popsicle. She’d just spent 20 minutes chasing a new girl around the climbing structure, and when she skidded to a stop in front of my picnic blanket, she asked, “Mom, why is Mia’s skin brown like my chocolate teddy bear? Is that okay?”
I was mid-packing crushed Goldfish crackers into a ziploc, and my mind went blank. I mumbled something about all skin colors being good and different being cool, and sent her back to play, but the question stuck with me. I’d known I wanted to talk about racism with Lila as she grew up, but I’d struggled to find anything that felt right for her age. Everything I’d stumbled on online was either abstract, too heavy for a kid who still leaves her stuffed dinosaur out for the tooth fairy, or written for older kids. So after we got home that night, I sat down to actually sort through what’s out there, and talked to my friend who teaches pre-K to get her take. Here’s what I found that actually works.
First, I learned really quickly that 5-year-olds don’t need big, heavy conversations about systemic injustice right now. That’s not a cop-out, that’s developmental. Kids that age think in concrete terms, they understand fairness and friendship, but they can’t wrap their heads around centuries of oppression. If you throw that at them too early, you either scare them or confuse them. I made that mistake early on when I clicked on a recommended kids’ video that talked about people being hurt because of their skin color, and Lila woke up twice that night with nightmares. So I scrapped anything that centers harm for this age, and stuck to resources that build a foundation first.
The best books I found are the ones that don’t treat skin color like a big, scary secret. “The Skin You Live In” is my top pick. It uses simple comparisons kids get – skin as different shades of cookies, coffee, and cream – rhymes, and focuses on playing and having fun together. There’s no heavy plot, no sad parts, just a celebration of different skin. Lila asks to read it at bedtime twice a week now, and she always points to the shade that matches her arm and the one that matches Mia’s. “Last Stop on Market Street” is another good one; it follows a boy on a bus ride with his grandma, and talks about noticing different kinds of lives and finding joy in community, without being preachy. I avoid the books that jump straight into talking about historical racism right now – that can wait until upper elementary school, when kids can process it.
Beyond books, the best “resources” are just tiny, low-effort changes to your daily routine. My pre-K friend told me that the number one mistake parents make is shutting down innocent questions. When a 5-year-old points out that someone’s skin is a different color, that’s just them noticing a difference, like how someone has curly hair or wears blue shoes. If you hush them and say “we don’t talk about that,” you teach them that difference is something bad or embarrassing to talk about. I almost did that a week after the playground, when Lila said Mia’s skin looked like chocolate ice cream in front of Mia’s mom. I tensed up, but instead of shushing her, I just said “It does look like that, doesn’t it? We have all different colors of skin, it’s so cool.” Mia’s mom smiled, and that was that. No big scene, just normal conversation.
Another tiny change I made was swapping out our old crayon box for a pack of multi-cultural skin tone crayons. We do art at the kitchen table most afternoons, and before, the only “skin” crayon was that pale peach that didn’t match half the people Lila knows. Now, when she draws pictures of her friends from preschool, she can pick the right shade for their skin. It’s such a small thing, but it normalizes talking about and seeing difference as regular. I also bought a simple 24-piece floor puzzle that shows 12 different families – all different skin colors, different sizes, different makeups – and we put it together every Sunday morning. We don’t have a big talk while we do it; we just point out who looks like who, and move on.
I still get overwhelmed sometimes. Social media makes it feel like you have to be doing a 10-step anti-racism curriculum with your toddler to be a good parent, but that’s just not realistic, or helpful. Right now, for my 5-year-old, the point isn’t to teach her all the problems in the world. It’s to teach her that it’s okay to notice difference, that all people are kind and worthy of friendship, and that she can ask me any question she has without getting in trouble.
Last week, we ran into Mia and her mom at the grocery store. Lila grabbed a bag of mini vanilla cookies and a bag of mini chocolate cookies out of the bin, held them up, and said “See? Me and you! We match these.” Mia laughed and grabbed a cookie, and they ate them while we checked out. I don’t know if I’m doing this perfectly. There will be harder questions down the line, and more hard conversations when Lila is older. But right now, this is working. We’re taking it one question, one book, one cookie comparison at a time.
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