Sure! I’m crashing right now so feel free to follow up but the short answer is proactivity and not worrying about public perception when it doesn’t matter.
For instance: if one of my kids goes “that person is black!” We don’t go “shhh shhh stop stop” and act like it’s the end of the world in public (or in private). We go “yes that man is black. What color skin do I have?” Or “yes that man’s skin is black. Daddy’s skin is white. People have different skin colors! What color is your skin?”
Shaming and acting like observing it is bad teaches them that there’s something wrong with it vs the simple reality that people look different. It’s not different than blond or back hair unless you make it a big deal.
As they get older, we’ll start (this is at least our plan) pointing out things like the race and gender of people in different roles around them. As they get more observant and curious our goal is to slowly introduce the concept of “gender roles” and inequality so that then don’t just internalize what they see with no context.
We don’t have it all figured out but we’re trying our best and we’ll adapt where we can.
Naturally if it any of this puts someone in an uncomfortable position we take it upon ourselves to apologize but we don’t make a massive deal about it to the kids or they get a very mixed message
Sure! I’m crashing right now so feel free to follow up but the short answer is proactivity and not worrying about public perception when it doesn’t matter.
For instance: if one of my kids goes “that person is black!” We don’t go “shhh shhh stop stop” and act like it’s the end of the world in public (or in private). We go “yes that man is black. What color skin do I have?” Or “yes that man’s skin is black. Daddy’s skin is white. People have different skin colors! What color is your skin?”
Shaming and acting like observing it is bad teaches them that there’s something wrong with it vs the simple reality that people look different. It’s not different than blond or back hair unless you make it a big deal.
As they get older, we’ll start (this is at least our plan) pointing out things like the race and gender of people in different roles around them. As they get more observant and curious our goal is to slowly introduce the concept of “gender roles” and inequality so that then don’t just internalize what they see with no context.
We don’t have it all figured out but we’re trying our best and we’ll adapt where we can.
Naturally if it any of this puts someone in an uncomfortable position we take it upon ourselves to apologize but we don’t make a massive deal about it to the kids or they get a very mixed message
Nice, thanks for sharing. Yeah it that makes more sense then I thought it would.
It’s parenting no one has it all figured out but from my estimation you’re not far off.
Thanks for asking! It’s actually something I like discussing. It helps me organize my thoughts a bit