Reply to White parents: what are you teaching your white preschool age children about racism?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't teach my 3-year-old about racism. At this stage, I'm letting her grow in the world as she sees it where people come in all sorts of different colours and we're all just 'same but different'. Same for gender issues - she just sees or experiences girls doing a range of different things and in wide variety of roles, as do boys.

When she's older and starts to understand news or we come across issues, I will explain what's right or wrong and my view of those things.

Right now she hasn't encountered or witnessed racism or racial issues in her life - which I think is a good thing - and I think she's too young to really understand theoretical explanations.[/quote]

You sound like a really loving parent and your intentions are good, but I encourage you to read more about this and what professionals and researchers recommend because they are all really in strong agreement that this is not the best approach as much as it sometimes feels right in our minds. There have been many resources in other threads to start learning about why it’s so important, Your Parenting Mojo has a bunch of podcasts if that feels like a good medium, just search race and start at the beginning of her series (wait is my toddler racist?). It’s all really enlightening and I didn’t realize it before either.

Here is a really simple, good visual on why kids are never too young
http://www.childrenscommunityschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/theyre-not-too-young-1.pdf  [/quote]

I saw that chart. Here’s the thing: my child plays with all sort of children and has never once mentioned race to me. Part of me wonders whether it’s right to draw her attention to differences before she can understand why I’m doing so. She cannot, at 3 years old, really understand racism. At 5-6 years old—sure. But at 3 years old, if she hasn’t ever mentioned race or showed preference for her own race, I don’t know if it’s productive to draw attention to it when she can’t understand the context. [/quote]

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