Why “I Don’t Know” Is a Great Go-To When Talking to Your Child About Racism
In any good Thai dish, you can taste a balance of salty, sweet, and tangy flavors. In this article, you’ll get a sweet reminder that you have all the ingredients you need to make anti-oppression/decolonized parenting irresistible yet simple for you while strengthening your child’s development all in one bite. I know that’s hard to believe because talking to your child about racism may seem just as excruciating (if not more) as having the “birds and the bees” talk.
When you don’t have all the answers to your child’s question about race and racism (“Um, I don’t know”)…
When you don’t have any energy left to be present enough to have this hard/heart conversation (“I can’t talk about that right now”)…
You can model to your child how to set a boundary, how to follow through with accountability and nurture your child’s emerging executive functioning skills, empathy, and social justice value.
And it takes two sentences.
Your Action
I’m honoring the pressure you may have on talking to your child about racism flawlessly. The “I should’ve known how to do this” might cross your mind.
I’m honoring the fear you may have at the thought of answering your child’s 439 follow-up questions about race and racism that you might not have time and energy for.
I’m also honoring the push and pull between not wanting to burst your child’s bubble and being pragmatic about reality to protect them.
When that happens, my invitation is for you to honor your needs, set a boundary, and set a time to follow through.
You’ll be leading your tiny future leader by example how not to say “yes” to everything, how to safeguard energy, and how to follow through and actually do it… all of which are important to quality adulting and social justice advocacy.
Some examples are:
“Hm, I don’t know how to answer your question yet. I’ll try my best to find an answer so we can keep our conversation going later after dinner.”
“I need to decompress a bit after my meeting. This topic is important to me too and I’m glad you brought it up. How about we talk about it with grandma tomorrow morning?”
(Yes, you have full permission to put this on Grandma.)
From one angle this is a way to put into practice Brene Brown’s “vulnerability…feels like courage.” And I love that since parenting and perfection don’t really go together.
However, I want to come from another angle and that’s your child development and decolonized parenting.
Your Child’s Development
By getting real with your discomfort and owning the parenting part that doesn’t have the answer (yet), you promote your child’s development in these areas:
Cognitive development:
Inhibitory control
By showing your child “Hmm…” or “I don’t know yet. Let’s think about it together,” you’re modeling that it’s okay to not have the answer right away. When your child pauses with you, your child’s exercising “inhibitory control” (one of the three members of the band called executive functioning in the front part of the brain). Inhibitory control in the zero to three years is budding and through daily interactions like this you’re strengthening your child’s brain development. No flashcards required! Inhibitory control is the skills you use when you pause, reflect, and focus on the task at hand without getting distracted. You have the power to build this foundation now.
Cognitive flexibility
By coming back to the conversation again when you have more energy and flexibility, you’re more likely to engage your little one in a two-way conversation rather than giving a lecture about race. Your child will get to explore different ideas about race and racism and walk through the subtler nuances with you. When you see that they think along with you and ask more questions, they are exercising the second skills in the executive functioning band called “cognitive flexibility.”
You may notice that sometimes young children are so black and white in their thinking or are very categorical: “only boys play with trains” or “only girls can wear skirts and have long hair.” You might already have some cringe-worthy moment in a grocery store where your curious little peanut asks you why someone’s hair is different. And you want to fly out of the store as quickly as you can.
I remember one of my preschool students told me point blank, “your eyes are ugly. My eyes are pretty.” Her mother’s face couldn’t have gotten any more red. Before I could respond: “Maddie, you noticed that my eyes have a different shape from yours and your mom’s. My eye shape says that my family is from a different part of the world. I’ll show you on the map tomorrow. My mom and dad share the same eye shape and I’m so proud to look like my family…” Maddie was already sent into timeout in the car with her mom’s partner.
In this example, Maddie’s doing what preschoolers do which is showing their understanding that she’s her own person with unique physical appearances. She’s flexing her new awareness by telling me that she notices that I’m different from her. Very developmentally appropriate, indeed.
She’s at the stage of development where she’s processing so much information using her emerging (sometimes limited) brain power. So she categorizes her experiences into boxes so she knows what to do and what to expect in certain scenarios based on her past experiences. This way she doesn’t have to reinvent the wheels and rethink how to act every single time. Grownups do this too. When we know what our new conversational partner does for a living, we can relax a bit and engage with them “appropriately.”
My response would encourage Maddie to expand her cognitive boxes of “same looking means good” and “different looking means ugly.” Instead of getting stuck in the either-or, I would nudge her to tap into her emerging cognitive flexibility and do both-and: My eyes are different and I’m proud of it. It’s both we’re all unique and this difference isn’t deficit.
When you explore multiple views with your little one, you’re laying the groundwork for multiplicity of perspectives, for both-and thinking, and for acceptance and understanding of nuances.
You’re teaching your child that your child can BOTH feel sorry for their friend who was bullied AND appreciate this friend’s strength too. It doesn’t have to be either-or. By holding this particular complexity, you can minimize saviorism early on, too.
Social emotional development:
By promising to revisit this conversation and actually following through, you’re leading by example that this conversation is hard but your child can come to you anytime. You’re open to talking about it and it doesn’t make you too stirred up.
Young children are very aware of the discomfort in the grownups they love the most, you. When they ask questions about race and racism and they detect your discomfort, they learn to not do it. You may not intend to pass down and teach color blindness. But, your child may have already inferred that it’s better to be what Dr. Beverly Tatum called color silent than to upset you.
Your open communication when talking to your child about racism, even though the conversation doesn’t take place at that moment, teaches your child a very important lesson. You’re teaching them that you value their curiosity, you value yourself, and you value people’s humanity despite their differences.
Your Decolonized Parenting
This pandemic has so many parents juggling so many roles at once: a parent, a work-from-home professional, a videoconference expert, a daycare teacher, a chef, a child development specialist, and so on. I know you want to have this important discussion but sometimes you just don’t have any energy left.
By explicitly saying to your child that you want to talk about this important conversation but after dinner (and actually doing it after dinner), you’re showing them how to set boundaries. You’re modeling to them how to check-in with yourself, how to honor your body’s needs, and how to say no to what’s not in alignment (instead of saying yes to every demand of life).
Isn’t that the skills we, grownups, are trying to be better at too both in life and in social justice advocacy? This is what decolonized parenting looks like in real life.
One More Example
Your child might be scared that the bullying/microaggression they saw at school earlier today might happen to them. Even though you’re still going to talk about racism and answer more of their questions after dinner, it’s still important to first assure your child that they’re safe with you now and you’re here for them.
For example, “It really stinks that your friends tease Amira because of how she speaks. That’s not okay and it can be kind of scary, right? We’ll think about what you can do after dinner but right now I got you. You’re safe with me.”
Then after dinner… “When someone sounds differently, it’s called an accent. We all have it. Some people learn English later because they have their own languages that they had to learn first. Cool, right? How would you feel if your friends make fun of you for sounding different? Ah, that must not have felt good for Amira. Would you like to think together what our family can say when we see someone getting teased like that?...”
Final Words
Your “not having the energy to be fully present,” “not having all the answers,” and imperfection are the very things that show your child how to practice self-compassion. It’s not so much about reciting catchy mantras and “manifest” compassion for yourself. It’s about walking the talk and guiding your little one to follow your footsteps. The bonus is you’re strengthening your child’s brain development along the way, too.
This hard conversion is better done together in a community. To learn about our work, please visit Our Approach page.
References
This section simply means that it’s my promise to share with you information that is grounded in BOTH child development and psychotherapy theories and research studies AND my 10 years of clinical observation and heart + gut +body knowing. This way you’re getting balanced and wholesome information.
Children’s Thinking: Cognitive Development and Individual Differences by David F. Bjorklund
From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development by the National Research Council Institute of Medicine
The Emotional Life of The Toddler by Alicia F. Lieberman
Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function by Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child
Resources
A lovely infographic on executive functioning .
Explore what you need to know before talking to toddlers and preschoolers about race and racism.