A family provides love, stability, and support. As adults, we know that the people who make up a family can come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Once your young child is in a daycare or nursery school environment, they may begin to notice that not everybody's family looks like theirs.
It's up to you to help your little person understand and respect differences. You can start by teaching them that some of their playmates may be being raised by parents of different races or ethnicities, one parent, two moms, two dads, grandparents, adoptive parents, and more. Here are some tips to get started:
- Learning at a young age that there are many ways to be a family helps your child build empathy and accept diversity as normal. Talk about what's unique about your family so they can take pride in the special qualities of your family and culture. Know that you’re setting up your kid for success in a richly diverse world.
- Read books together that show and normalize different families: various races/ethnicities, LGBTQ+ families, urban and rural families, big families, small families. This will help them understand that there is no normal family — just different families, and that your family isn’t the standard. While there are lots of books out there that represent different people and families, a book like Love Makes a Family is a good place to start.
- Seek out experiences, friends, and communities that expose your kids to different types of families. This can feel hard when so many communities are segregated by race and class. A book like Together is a good place to start. But getting outside of your family’s experience can help children understand that diversity exists, and is a beautiful thing.
- When your toddler inevitably asks you where babies come from, include all the ways people form their families, including sex, adoption, and assisted reproductive technologies like IVF. An age-appropriate book like What Makes a Baby can be helpful. You can keep your answers short and direct, like: “Some grownups have a baby by having sex, some need the help of doctors, and some become parents by finding a baby who needs a home.” And then ask if they have follow up questions. Check out more tips on how to have this conversation.
- Remember that while some of this stuff can feel complicated and hard to talk about, younger kids are curious and don’t yet feel shame. So you can just give them straight answers and they’ll probably just say “OK” (maybe after asking “why?” a few, or a few dozen, times) and move on.
For more help on how to talk with your preschooler about all kinds of sex education topics, check out Planned Parenthood.org/Parents.
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