How to Raise Kids With Strong Values When You Live in MAGA Times
The cleats hit the mudroom floor hard enough to rattle the jar of dog treats on the windowsill. My 12-year-old Javi threw his backpack on the bench and said, “Eli says Trump should build the wall again and anyone who doesn’t like it should leave the country.” I was wiping strawberry jam off my 7-year-old’s wrist, and I froze mid-wipe.
We live in a small town outside Dayton, Ohio. More than half the houses on our street fly Trump 2024 flags this election cycle. Javi’s middle school has more MAGA hats than Biden-branded hoodies on any given day. I’m a progressive parent who votes straight blue and volunteers for local Democratic candidates, and for the first few years after 2016, I handled every political conversation with Javi the wrong way.
A month after the 2020 election, he came home talking about a discussion his social studies teacher led, and I launched into a 15-minute tangent about why that kind of rhetoric is harmful, scrolling my phone to pull up news articles to prove I was right. By the end, Javi just nodded and went to his room, and didn’t bring up any awkward school conversations for almost two weeks. I realized then I wasn’t teaching him anything – I was just performing how right I was for my own benefit.
That day in the mudroom, I wiped the jam off the counter, sat down on the bench next to Javi, and asked, “What did that feel like to hear?” He said it made his chest hot, because Ms. Lopez, our neighbor who’s watched our dog for us on every vacation for three years, who brings Javi conchas on his birthday, is from Guatemala. “Why would she have to leave?” he asked. I didn’t say “You’re right, Eli’s dad is terrible.” I just said, “That’s a really good question. What do you think makes him say that?” Javi shrugged and said he thinks Eli just repeats what his dad says, same as I repeat what my friends say.
That’s the first thing I’ve learned: I don’t need to lead with my own talking points. I just need to help Javi connect what he hears to the life he already lives. He doesn’t need me to give him a lecture on immigration statistics. He already knows Ms. Lopez, he already knows she’s a good person who belongs here. That starting point is way more solid than any fact I can pull off Wikipedia. When I ask him to draw that line himself, it sticks way better than anything I tell him.
I’ve also started giving him explicit permission to pick his own battles. I told him that day, “You don’t have to argue with Eli every time he says something you hate. It’s not your job to change his mind, and getting into a screaming fight at soccer practice isn’t going to help anyone. If you want to walk away, that’s totally okay with me.” That’s a far cry from what I used to believe, that you have to call out harm every single time you see it. But Javi is 12. He has to share a locker bay with these kids. He has to play on the same team for another two years. If I force him to pick fights every week, he’ll just end up isolated, or he’ll stop talking to me about what’s going on at school entirely.
Last month, we were in line at Walmart, and the guy in front of us was wearing a bright red MAGA hat, and he dropped his wallet as he walked out. Javi ran after him and gave it back. When we got in the car, I asked him if that felt weird, since he disagrees with what the hat stands for. He said, “Dropping a wallet sucks no matter who you voted for. Doesn’t mean I have to be rude just because he likes Trump.” That stuck with me. I used to badmouth MAGA neighbors all the time in front of the kids, until I realized that was teaching them to write off whole people instead of just disagreeing with bad ideas. Now, when our next door neighbor, who flies a huge MAGA flag from his porch, helped us fix our fence after it fell in a storm last summer, I said out loud to Javi, “See that? We disagree about almost everything, but he still showed up when we needed help. People aren’t just one thing.” It’s a small comment, not a lecture, but it sticks.
Last week, Javi came home and said there was a small pro-Trump rally at the school, and one of the kids called a trans 8th grader a freak. Javi walked over, told the kid “That’s messed up, stop talking,” and walked down the hall with the other kid to the office. He didn’t get into a 20-minute debate. He didn’t change anyone’s mind. He just did what felt right to him, in the moment. I didn’t tell him he should’ve done more. I just said that took a lot of courage, and I was proud of him.
I still don’t get it right all the time. Last week, I snapped at a guy at the gas station who made a snide comment about Biden, and Javi gave me that look that says I was being just as closed off as the people I criticize. Some days I worry I’m too soft, that I’m not teaching him to stand up enough. Some days I worry I’m pushing my own views too hard, and he’ll reject them just to be contrary. There’s no perfect script for this. We don’t sit down for formal politics lessons every Sunday. We just talk when stuff comes up, and I try to remember that the point isn’t to raise a kid who votes the way I do. It’s to raise a kid who thinks for himself, who judges people based on how they treat the people he loves, not just what bumper sticker they have on their truck. It’s messy, it’s still unfolding, and that’s okay.
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