Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Actually Works for Little Kids
Last month, I was pushing my 5-year-old Lila on the swing at our neighborhood park when she pointed across the playground to a little girl with coiled braids and deep brown skin, and said loud enough that the girl’s mom glanced over: “Why is her skin that color? Mine’s pink.” I froze for half a second, fumbled out a quick line about people having different skin colors just like we have different color hair or different colored eyes, and changed the subject when Lila asked to go down the slide. By the time we got home, crumbs of Goldfish crackers in her jacket pocket and a dandelion she picked tucked behind her ear, I knew I needed better than that off-the-cuff line. I started scrolling for anti-racism resources for 5 year olds, and quickly realized most of what’s out there is for older kids. No one tells you what’s actually appropriate for a kid who still thinks the tooth fairy is real and can barely sit through a 10-minute story.
I tried a few highly recommended books first, per a mom group thread. One had pages and pages of talking about historical injustice, and by the third page Lila was asking if we could get ice cream instead. It wasn’t that it was bad, it was just too much – 5 year olds don’t have the context for systems of oppression or hundreds of years of history. Another popular book said “we’re all the same on the inside,” and Lila looked at me and said “No we’re not. Mia’s skin is brown and mine is pink. That’s different.” She was right, of course. Erasing difference doesn’t teach anti-racism to little kids – it just confuses them, because they can see the difference with their own eyes.
My friend who teaches preschool downtown gave me my first good tip: meet 5 year olds where they are. Their whole world is playgrounds, crayons, snack time, and bedtime stories. Anti-racism for them doesn’t need to be a big, heavy lesson. It just needs to be part of their everyday.
The first resource that worked for us was the picture book The Skin You Live In. It rhymes, it’s bright, and it never tries to pretend differences don’t exist. It talks about skin as the thing that carries you through your day, that it comes in all different shades just like cookies or flowers. We read it three nights in a row after I checked it out from the library, and the next morning Lila asked if we could play “name that skin shade” on our walk to the bus stop. We pointed out the warm beige of our mail carrier, the pink with freckles of my arm, the soft brown of our neighbor’s granddaughter. It felt silly at first, but it normalized talking about skin color instead of treating it like a taboo subject you shouldn’t mention. That’s a big shift from what a lot of us were taught as kids – we were told not to talk about it, but that just makes kids think it’s something bad or wrong to notice. Now when Lila comments on someone’s skin politely, I don’t panic and shush her. I just go along with it.
The easiest change I made was swapping out our old pack of crayons for a $10 pack of multi-cultural skin tone crayons. It takes two minutes to order, and it’s made such a big difference. Before, the only “skin” color in our crayon box was pale pink. Now when Lila draws our family, her friend Mia, our mail carrier, she can pick a color that actually matches how they look. It’s a tiny thing, but it lets her practice what we talk about – different people have different skin, and all of them are normal and good.
I also found that kids’ shows Lila already loves have great, low-key content that fits. The Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood episode where a new Korean American boy joins the neighborhood talks about how he brings kimbap for snack, which is different from the crackers other kids bring, and that trying new things and being friends with people who do different things is fun. I didn’t have to set aside a special “anti-racism time” to watch it – it was just our regular after-nap screen time. After it ended, Lila asked if we could make kimbap for our next playdate, which felt like a way better win than any formal lesson I could have given.
One thing I’ve stopped doing is looking for books that are only about “racism” or “civil rights heroes” for Lila right now. Don’t get me wrong, those books are important, but they’re for when she’s older. Right now, what she needs is books where kids of different colors are just being kids. We have a little board book about a Black girl going to the grocery store with her dad, another about a Latinx boy flying a kite with his abuela. No big lesson, no heavy history, just everyday kid stuff. Seeing different people in the stories you read every day normalizes difference way more than a one-off lesson.
Last week, Lila was drawing chalk rainbows on our sidewalk, and she initially didn’t invite the new little girl who moved in last month, who speaks mostly Spanish at home. I just nudged her and said “Why don’t you ask Sofia to come draw with you? We invite everyone to play, no matter what.” She ran over and asked, and the two of them colored for an hour, even though they barely understand each other’s words.
I still don’t have it all figured out. Sometimes Lila asks a question I don’t know how to answer, and I fumble through it, or tell her we can talk more about it when she’s bigger. I’ve put a couple of books back on the library shelf that were too much for her. But the small stuff, the stuff that fits into a 5 year old’s everyday life, that’s what’s working right now. You don’t need to be an expert, you don’t need a huge curriculum. You just need a few good books, a pack of crayons, and the willingness to talk about the things your kid already notices.
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