Do You Need to Talk to Your Child About Race?

“It’s too hard to talk about race.” “My child is still too young.” “Maybe it is better to just not say anything and just get along.”

These are some of the things that all of us raising children may say to ourselves, regardless of our racial or ethnic background. But research shows multiple benefits of talking with children and adolescents more openly about their ethnic and racial identities. Open, honest conversations about race and ethnicity build positive self-esteem and help youth to cope if and when they face bias and discrimination. Talking about race and discrimination may be hard, but parents can learn to do this “one talk at a time.”

At the meetings of the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development that I recently attended, I heard an inspiring talk by Dr. Lisa Kiang, a faculty member at Wake Forest University, part of a team of researchers across several U.S. universities who are developing the One Talk at a Time program to help families engage more comfortably in conversations about these difficult topics. Their research suggests that parents feel like they don’t know how to start these difficult conversations, and they are worried that their children will focus too much on race; they just want their children to get along with their peers. But unfortunately, we know that Black, Asian, and Latino children are likely to face racial bias and discrimination at some point. Conversations about race and discrimination are important for all children of all backgrounds to help them better understand themselves and empathize with diverse groups of friends.

One Talk at a Time helps parents build skills and prepare conversations so they are more confident in engaging with their children about issues of race and discrimination. Through a series of structured videos, One Talk at a Time guides parents through how to ask questions, listen actively, validate experiences, and help children cope with negative emotions. Initial results are very promising. Parents report greater comfort and readiness to have these kinds of conversations with their children.

The guidelines provided by One Talk at a Time resonate with a great deal of research on how parents can help their children better understand their challenging experiences and difficult emotions more generally. In The Family Narratives Lab that I direct, we have found that mothers who engage in more open conversations with their young children about difficult experiences help their children build emotion regulation skills and higher self-esteem. It also helps children better understand the perspective of others, a critical aspect of living successfully in a diverse world, a world where friends from many different kinds of backgrounds celebrate each other. Some critical ways for parents to engage in these conversations include:

• Asking open-ended questions that allow your child to express their experiences and emotions. For example, asking “How did that make you feel?” rather than “Did that make you angry?”
• Validating your child’s experience even if it is different than your own. For example, “Yes, I understand you were sad. It made me angry, but I can see how it would make you sad as well.”
• If possible, gently reframing your child’s experience in a more constructive way. For example, “Yes, what your friend said was very mean, but your other friends came to your defense,” or “Yes, what your friend said was very mean, but he apologized, right?”
• Perspective-taking: Validating and reframing can also help your child learn the ability to see a situation from someone else’s viewpoint, even if that viewpoint is flawed. Perspective-taking is a key skill in building empathy and resilience.

And parents do not need to worry about having a “big conversation” talking to their child about these issues. An important takeaway from my research, and from One Talk at a Time, is that engaging in conversations with your child can happen in small segments and short exchanges over days, weeks, or even months. In the car, over dinner, or just chatting about your day can open an opportunity to have a conversation with your child.

Just opening the door to the possibility of such conversations helps children begin to explore and think about their experiences in new ways. The conversations can blossom as children become readier to engage. In the words of one of the mothers who participated in One Talk at a Time, “I learned that…to make conversation happen, you don’t need to do it in a formal way, you can just do it in any way…in five minutes, you can just do it. The more you have the conversations, the better the result…”

Yes, it is hard to have these conversations with our children. It is hard for us, and it is hard for them. But it is worth it. Difficult conversations—conversations about race, ethnicity, bias, and discrimination, conversations that help children process and validate their experiences—can provide coping strategies and build strength and resilience. And, hopefully, help children understand themselves and each other better, and so build a better world. One talk at a time.