What Anti-Racism Resources Are Appropriate for a 5-Year-Old? A Parent’s Real, Low-Effort Guide
The goldfish cracker crumbs were still sticking to Milo’s rain boots when the boy on the next swing said it. They’d been bickering for three minutes over who got the next turn on the blue belt swing, the one that spins if you lean back far enough, and I was just digging a second granola bar out of my coat pocket to defuse the usual 5-year-old standoff. “My mom says brown boys don’t get to go first,” he said, like he was stating the rule about holding the railing on the slide. Milo froze, one hand still on the swing chain. He looked over at me, eyebrows pulled together, like he was waiting for me to say if that was actually a rule.
The other boy’s mom was 20 feet away on a picnic bench scrolling work emails, and she never looked up. I knelt down in the wood chips, wiped a smudge of chocolate off Milo’s cheek, and spoke loud enough for both boys to hear. “That’s not a rule at this playground,” I said. “Everyone gets a turn, no matter what their skin looks like. Milo, you got here first, so you go next, and then it’s your turn.” Both boys nodded, like that settled it, and for the rest of the afternoon they chased each other around the play structure and didn’t mention it again. But on the 10-minute drive home, after he’d crumpled his granola wrapper into the door pocket, Milo asked quiet from the backseat: “Why did he say that?”
That’s the question that sent me digging through the 17 bookmarked “anti-racist kids resources” lists I’d saved in my browser folder over the years, back when racial justice protests had every parenting outlet posting roundups and every influencer selling curated book bundles. I’d saved them all meaning to get to it, but most of what I found that night wasn’t made for a 5-year-old. There were 200-page books for parents about difficult conversations, picture books centered on marches and police violence that I knew would leave Milo up at night asking if his dad was going to get taken away, and printable worksheets with words like “oppression” and “systemic bias” that he couldn’t sound out, let alone understand. I’d made that mistake once before, when he was 4: I’d checked out a lauded civil rights picture book from the library, and he’d fixated on the page with police dogs and refused to go to the park with his dad alone for a week. I’d returned the book early and felt like I was already doing this wrong.
I taught pre-K for six years before Milo was born, so I know how 5-year-olds think. They don’t understand big, abstract ideas. They understand turn-taking, who gets the extra sticker, whether the rule is fair for everyone. They notice every single difference between people from the time they’re toddlers: who has curly hair, who brings hummus for snack instead of goldfish, who uses a wheelchair, who has skin darker or lighter than theirs. The mistake so many well-meaning adults make, me included for a long time, is treating skin color like a rude secret. When Milo was 3, he pointed to a Black woman in line at the grocery store and yelled “She has skin just like Daddy!” and I shushed him so fast I fumbled my wallet. I told him “we don’t talk about that,” and in that second, I turned a neutral observation into something secret, something that felt wrong to even name. That’s the opposite of what little kids need.
That night after the swing incident, I texted my sister-in-law, who’s a Black elementary school counselor in Chicago, and she laughed and said most of those viral resource lists are made for parents who want to feel like they’re doing something, not for actual 5-year-olds. She walked me through what actually works, and over the past year, I’ve tested it out with Milo, and swapped tips with a small group of other parents at his play-based preschool. None of it requires a big “race talk” or an expensive book collection, and most of it fits into stuff we’re already doing every day.
The first shift I made was stopping the search for resources that are only explicitly about racism. For a 5-year-old, anti-racism starts with seeing all kinds of people as regular people, not just examples of unfairness or history. Most of the books on those viral lists only feature BIPOC kids going through hard things, talking about marches or segregation. Those books have their place when kids are 8 or 9, but at 5, kids need to see brown and Black and Indigenous kids just doing the same stuff they do: chasing butterflies, being annoyed at their little siblings, loving mermaids, messing up baking with their grandma. Our shelf now has Julián Is a Mermaid, Last Stop on Market Street, Luli and the Language of Tea, and a half-dozen easy readers about Black and brown kids solving silly mysteries or building Lego, right next to his dinosaur encyclopedias and his stack of Pete the Cat books. We don’t stop to have a lesson every time we pick one up. Sometimes we just read the story. If a character gets treated unfairly because of their skin, I just say the same line I said at the playground: “That’s not fair. Everyone deserves a turn, no matter what their skin looks like.” That’s it. No discussion questions, no 10-minute lecture. He gets it, because he already knows what it feels like to get skipped for a turn.
Toys and screen time count as resources too, even if most lists don’t frame them that way. Most of the plastic figurines Milo got for birthday gifts when he was little were white, with straight hair, so I picked up a $10 set of diverse family figurines from the local teacher store and tossed them in the bin with his dinosaurs and superheroes. When we play restaurant or school, I don’t make a big speech about representation. I just might say, “Hey, none of the brown kids have gotten to be the teacher yet. Want to switch?” Half the time he’s already rearranged them on his own. For shows, we still watch Bluey most nights, but I added Ada Twist, Scientist and Gracie’s Corner to his Netflix and YouTube queues, where Black kids get to be silly and curious and sing off-key, no heavy lessons required. I didn’t throw out any of his old toys or ban his favorite shows. I just added more options, which is zero drama and takes 10 minutes of ordering online.
I also stopped looking for perfect scripts, because there isn’t one. The line I use most often, when he asks a question or repeats something he heard, is simple: “Some people learn wrong ideas from the grownups around them. Skin color doesn’t change who deserves kindness or fair turns, and that wrong idea isn’t true.” That works for everything from the swing comment to the time a kid in his class said ninjas can only be white. I don’t try to explain redlining or generational wealth or the history of racism to a kid who still can’t tie his own shoes. I meet him where he is, with what he already understands about fairness. I also stopped saying “I don’t see color,” which I used to default to when I was nervous. Kids do see color, and saying you don’t just sounds like you’re pretending a part of them, and a part of the people they love, doesn’t exist. Now I just say, “I see lots of different skin colors, and everyone deserves to be treated the same.”
Not every moment goes smoothly. A couple of months ago, we checked out All Are Welcome, the popular picture book about a diverse elementary school, and Milo just shrugged and said “this is boring, can we read the dinosaur one?” So we returned it and got the dinosaur one. A few weeks back, we tried to make kimchi jjigae after reading a picture book about a Korean American girl cooking with her grandma, and we salted the cabbage way too much and ended up ordering pepperoni pizza instead. No big teachable moment, just dinner.
Last month, Milo came home from school and said the boy who made the ninja comment still sometimes says weird stuff about skin color, and his teacher doesn’t always hear it. He asked me if some grownups just never unlearn the wrong ideas. I told him yes, some people hold onto wrong ideas their whole lives, and it’s not his job to fix them or argue with them. I told him if he hears something that feels unfair, he can walk away and tell a teacher, and he can always come home and tell me and Dad. I don’t know if that’s the perfect answer. I still worry I’m not doing enough, that I’m messing this up, that one day he’ll hear something worse and I won’t have the right words.
I still get the parenting newsletters with the big resource roundups, and most of them I delete now. I don’t need a 50-book bundle or a three-hour parent webinar to do this. What Milo needs right now isn’t a college-level understanding of racial justice. It’s small, regular stuff: seeing people who look like him and people who don’t look like him doing ordinary, fun things on his bookshelf and his TV, knowing he can say the words “brown skin” out loud without getting shushed, and knowing for sure that unfair rules aren’t real rules, even when another kid says his mom told him they are. Some days it feels like that’s enough. Some days I’m still figuring it out.
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