I Went Looking for Anti-Racism Resources for My 5-Year-Old and Left More Confused Than I Started
Last Tuesday, my daughter Lila came barrelling out of preschool, dropped her glitter-covered backpack on the driveway, and said, “Mia’s skin is browner than mine. Why?” I was mid-argument with the lawn guy about why he mowed over my daffodils again, so I just blurted out, “Oh, everyone’s different, that’s just how it is!” and herded her inside for goldfish crackers. By the time I’d cleaned the cracker crumbs off the couch, I was kicking myself. That answer was useless, right? It didn’t actually say anything. So that night, after I got her to bed, I poured myself a cold cup of coffee I’d left on the counter that morning, wiggled my foot in the sock with the hole in the toe I’ve been meaning to mend for two weeks, pulled up my phone, and started looking for actual resources. Like, good ones, for a kid who still thinks “injustice” is when the ice cream truck runs out of vanilla.
I should say I grew up in a tiny town that was almost all white. No one ever talked about this stuff when I was a kid. The only time race came up was when we were forced to read that one chapter in social studies about Martin Luther King Jr. once a year, and that was it. So I don’t have a script for any of this. I don’t know what’s too much, what’s not enough, what’s age appropriate and what’s just performative nonsense. I figured other people must have done the work for me, right? There’s gotta be a list somewhere, or a perfect picture book, that makes this easy.
The first place I checked was my local library’s website. The children’s librarian had a whole pinned list of anti-racism books for little kids, so I put five on hold. When I picked them up a few days later, I flipped through them in the car before driving home. Half of them were all, “We are all the same inside! It doesn’t matter what color you are!” And I get the heart of that, but… Lila already sees that Mia’s skin is brown and mine is pale. If I tell her it doesn’t matter, that’s like telling her the thing she noticed isn’t real, right? That felt wrong. One of the other ones went straight into talking about slavery and segregation, and I just… how do I explain that to a kid who thinks the “Underground Railroad” is a train that goes under the ground? I tried reading that one to her after nap anyway, and she got through three pages before she asked if we could get popsicles, and that was the end of that. I just closed the book and got the popsicles.
I asked my older sister, who teaches first grade, what she uses. She sent me a link to a teacher’s online store, a whole anti-racism activity pack for preschoolers, $12. I bought it, printed it all out, and half the activities require googly eyes I don’t own and glue sticks that are actually all dried out in the junk drawer. The big flagship activity was “Match your skin tone to a crayon!” which sounded cute in theory. Lila looked at the crayon box, picked purple, and colored her whole hand purple. When I asked her why she didn’t pick the one that matched her skin, she said purple is prettier. Fair. I didn’t have the heart to argue. I just taped it to the fridge anyway.
I scrolled for an hour on Instagram that first night, and saw a dozen parenting accounts saying if you don’t start explicit anti-racism education by age 3, you’re raising a racist. That made me feel like garbage for about 20 minutes, until I realized half those accounts are run by 27-year-olds who don’t even have kids. They just sell printables and online courses to guilty first-time moms like me. I closed the app after that.
This past Saturday, we ran into Mia and her mom at the grocery store. Lila took off running to say hi, and before I could stop her, she reached out and touched one of Mia’s beaded braids. I froze, already opening my mouth to apologize and pull her back, because you don’t touch people’s hair without asking, right? But Mia’s mom just smiled and said, “Want to feel the beads? They jingle!” And Mia turned around and shook her hair so Lila could hear them jingle, and the two of them ran off down the cereal aisle laughing. I stood there with a half-empty cart of milk and bananas, and thought, wait a second. What am I even looking for? All these fancy resources and books and printables, and the best lesson Lila’s gotten all week was standing here watching her friend’s mom be kind and normal about being different.
I don’t mean that all resources are useless, or that we don’t need to talk about this. I still want to find a good book that sits right in that sweet spot—acknowledges that people look different, says it’s good, doesn’t dump a bunch of heavy history a 5-year-old can’t process on her. I still fumble every time she asks a question. Last night she asked why our next door neighbor, who’s Black, has a different last name than us, and I just said “everyone’s family has different last names, just like how your cousin has a different last name than you” and left it at that. Was that enough? I don’t know. I don’t think there’s such a thing as enough when you’re figuring this out as you go.
I returned the two books that were too heavy to the library yesterday. I left the one that says we’re all the same on the shelf by the couch, just in case. The purple hand drawing is still on the fridge. Tonight we’re going over to the Lee’s house for dinner—they’re the Korean American family that lives two blocks over, their son is in Lila’s class. We’re gonna eat dumplings that Mrs. Lee makes, the kids are gonna run around screaming and play with dinosaurs, and I’m not gonna bring up any big lesson or pull out a worksheet. That’s enough for right now, I think. Even if I still haven’t found that perfect resource I went looking for.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » I Went Looking for Anti-Racism Resources for My 5-Year-Old and Left More Confused Than I Started