Resources for Parents on Talking to Children About Racism & Violence

June 2, 2020 10:37 AM

Difficult conversations with children have to happen. A resource list for parents (caregivers, teachers, therapists, etc) around speaking plainly with children about race, racism, and racialized violence.

Resources for Parents on Talking to Children About Race, Racism, & Racialized Violence:

The Talk: Surviving Police Encounters While Black from Utne Reader

It's Time for White Parents to Have the Talk With Children About Police Brutality

Common Sense Media: How to Talk to Children About Violence, Crime, and War

Addressing Racial Injustice With Young Children

Zero to Three: Racism & Violence: Using Your Power as a Parent to Support Children Aged 2-5

Resources for Talking About Race, Racism, and Racialized Violence with Kids

Black Lives Matter at School

Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Round Up

Common Sense Media: How White Parents Can Use Media to Raise Anti-Racist Kids

Talking Race with Young Children (20 minute podcast from NPR)

Read aloud video of Something Happened in Our Town (Book for young children about a killing by police)

Talking With Children About Racism, Police Brutality, and Protests

posted by fairlynearlyready (8 comments total)

That first link results in a "unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit" error, likely because of recent events generating too much traffic. But this is a great list of resources for children/parents/anybody. Thanks.
posted by Fizz at 11:41 AM on June 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

First link gave me
"Resource Limit Is Reached
The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later. "
which is a great metaphor for how I feel today. I'm taking a mental health day today and this is one of my goals - find ways to have these conversations with my kid. Thanks so much for all these links.
posted by WacoKid at 12:01 PM on June 2, 2020

A couple days ago my wife was asked to lead a meeting to train teachers at her school in how to teach current events and put them in context. She put together this powerpoint with this video accompaniment.

The first year my wife decided to make Thanksgiving dinner she found herself Thanksgiving morning with a frozen turkey and called her father to ask how she should cook it. He told her, "Ideally you would have started this yesterday, but here we are..." before explaining how to work with the situation she had at hand. Teachers (and parents) should have already laid the groundwork for discussing the current situation by teaching anti-racism from day one, but here we are. It's time to do better.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 12:06 PM on June 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thank you for this, I have been wondering how to talk to my 4 1/2 year old. We live in a small, not very diverse town in the middle of a largely white, largely rural county, and this morning she asked me what a protest is.
posted by Lawn Beaver at 12:17 PM on June 2, 2020

I wanted to add Talking about Race, from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.
posted by gudrun at 12:26 PM on June 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I was raised in a very diverse community for a white woman born in the 80s, thanks to my hippie parents and my grandfather serving as mayor/chief of police in my home city. The first time anyone talked to me about "race" was my first day of public school kindergarten in my 100% white class. We were told we weren't "ready" to learn with non-white children. To this day it fucks me up that, despite consistently being around non-whites my entire childhood and thinking nothing of it, I was having systemic racism and segregation forced into my head at fucking age 6 by an institution that is supposed to be educating children. This was BARELY 30 years ago, and we want to talk about progress.
posted by Young Kullervo at 9:24 AM on June 3, 2020

WacoKid: “Resource Limit Is Reached”

Google has a cached copy.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:40 AM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

30+ Books to Educate Kids and Teens about Race (Annie Goldsmith, ELLE)
posted by katra at 11:03 PM on June 3, 2020 [1 favorite]