Anti-Racism Resources for 5 Year Olds: What Works From One Parent’s Search
Last month, I stood on the edge of our neighborhood playground wiping strawberry jam off my 5-year-old Lila’s favorite pink sweatpants when she pointed across the chipped, sun-hot blue slide and said, loud enough for half the playground to hear, “Mom, why is her skin brown?” The little girl’s mom looked up from her bench, and I felt my face heat up. My first instinct was to shush Lila, mutter that it’s rude to point, and yank her toward the swings. Instead, I took a breath, walked over with her, and we commented on the little girl’s pretty sparkly shoes. The kids ended up racing down the slide together for 20 minutes. But after we left, I couldn’t stop thinking about the moment. I didn’t have a good answer ready for Lila, and when I went looking for help that night, I realized almost all the anti-racism resources I found were for kids old enough to read chapter books, or they were way too heavy for a 5-year-old’s brain. I started this search because I wanted to do right by my kid and the people we meet, but I had no idea where to start.
I sat on my couch that night eating cold leftover pepperoni pizza, scrolling through dozens of blog posts and Pinterest boards, and most of what I found fell into two unhelpful buckets. One group said the right approach is to teach kids “we’re all the same” and pretend we don’t see color. But Lila already sees color. She notices when her friend has curly hair that’s different from her straight hair, she notices when someone’s eyes are a different shape, she notices skin. Pretending those differences don’t exist felt like a lie, and it would only teach her that talking about these things is taboo. The other bucket was full of resources that got into heavy, traumatic history that a 5-year-old can’t process. I clicked on one book description that talked about segregation and violence, and I just closed the tab. Lila still has nightmares about the wolf in The Three Little Pigs. She doesn’t need to carry that kind of weight right now.
After a few hours of sifting, I pulled together a small list of things that have actually worked for us, and I’ve been surprised at how easy it is to fit them into daily life. The first two books that stuck are The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler and Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña. The Skin You Live In is short, rhymes, and compares different skin tones to things Lila already knows: cinnamon, coffee, cream, peanut butter. She loves flipping through it and pointing out which shade matches each of her friends. It doesn’t try to teach a big complicated lesson, it just says all skin is good skin, and that’s enough for right now. Last Stop on Market Street is just a story about a kid riding the bus with his grandma, and it shows all kinds of people living different lives, no big speech required. 5-year-olds would rather listen to a story than sit through a lecture, so that works perfectly. I also like All Are Welcome, which shows a diverse preschool class just doing normal kid things—painting, eating snack, playing—no drama, no hard lessons, just normalcy.
I also picked up a $12 pack of multi-cultural skin tone crayons and a small set of matching paint from Amazon, and that’s been one of the most useful tools we have. A few weeks ago, Lila sat at the kitchen table for almost 30 minutes mixing different brown paints to get the exact shade of her best friend Mia’s skin, chattering the whole time about how Mia’s skin is darker than hers and that’s cool. I didn’t have to prompt her to talk about it, it just happened. When she asked why we all have different skin, I just told her it’s like how we all have different colored hair or different colored eyes—it’s just how people are made, and that’s that. She nodded and went back to mixing. That’s all the answer she needed.
The biggest thing I’ve figured out through this search is that anti-racism work for a 5-year-old isn’t about teaching big words or complicated history right now. It’s about normalizing difference, so it doesn’t feel like something scary or rude to talk about. I was raised to not point or ask questions about people who look different than me, so that instinct came naturally at first. But that just makes difference feel wrong. Now, if she asks a question, we talk about it simply. If we’re in person and it makes sense, I even help her ask the person directly if they don’t mind talking. Last week at the grocery store, she asked why a man was wearing a cloth wrapped around his head, and after he smiled and said he didn’t mind, he told us it’s a turban for his religion. Lila told him her sparkly birthday headband is her favorite thing to wear on her head too, and that was that. No fuss, no awkwardness, just two people talking.
I still don’t have it all figured out. Last week, Lila asked why our neighbor who’s from Korea has a different last name than we do, and I fumbled through an answer that I’m not sure was quite right. I still come across resources that feel like they’re too much too fast, and I still panic a little when she asks a question out of the blue in public. But right now, this small, slow approach works. We have the books on the shelf, the crayons in the art bin, and we just talk when questions come up. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be honest. I’ll figure out the harder stuff when she’s old enough to ask for it.
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