How to Talk to Your Child About Being Multiracial
When Sonya Smith-Kang moved to California in the 1980s, it was “at the height of The Valley Girl’s popularity,” she says. Everywhere she saw blue eyes and downy blonde hair.
“I was almost the complete opposite of that,” Smith-Kang tells me. “I was dark, with curly disheveled hair.”
Smith-Kang’s mother is Mexican, father is black, she was born in Puerto Rico. When she married a Korean, her experience taught her that it was only a matter of time before her children were bombarded with questions from peers who did not understand what it meant to be multiracial.
The number of children of different races in the United States is in the midst of a boom. Two years ago, Pew Research reported that one in seven babies born in 2015 was multiracial or multi-ethnic – nearly three times as many as in 1980.
Yet talking to kids about their multiracial can still be challenging. Because parents may not know what to say, they often avoid such conversations. And that can be dangerous.
“What happens to kids is that they learn it like, ‘There must be something wrong with me if I have these thoughts,” says Smith-Kang.
So how do you get it up? What do you say when your daughter asks, “Why are you not like me?” Or is your son telling you that the kids on the playground noticed his skin color?
Start a conversation early
To make sure she proactively answers questions her children may have, Smith-Kang did what she calls “Mash Talk.” “It’s when we talk about all the awkward questions other kids (and adults!) Ask us about who and what we are,” she writes on Mash Up Americans , a website that helps people navigate hybrid cultures and identities.
According to her, this is not just a one-time conversation – it is a constant conversation that starts early. Children aged 1-2 years understand the difference between colors and can sort and arrange. During the Mash-Up Talk, the Smith-Kang family discussed dolls, books, music and films that “reflect our cultural reality.”
Find people with a common experience
Smith-Kang also suggests finding communities – in real life or on the Internet – of people with similar experiences. She recommends a few that demonstrate diversity and multiracial experiences:
- Multiracial Americans of Southern California , a nonprofit organization that advocates for multiracial and transracial communities. Smith-Kang is its president.
- Culturas , a women-led media and technology site that “creates and discovers content that celebrates culture, diversity and inclusion.”
- InCultureParent , the online magazine for parents raising the world’s youngest citizens.
- Multicultural kids blogs dedicated to art, food, language and entertainment for kids.
Read books
Lauren Gaines uses books to teach her multicultural daughter that people are more than just skin color. On Parenting, she recommends five titles that can help kids talk about their origins and how to love themselves, including What I Love About Me! from Allia Zobel Nolan and Miki Sakamoto, who teaches that our differences make us special; and Nicole C. Mullen’s Black, White and Tan , where a little girl named Jazz shares what makes her family special.
Mullen even recorded anaccompanying song , which begins like this: “Mom is like coffee. Daddy is like cream. Baby is an American dream in the form of mocha drops. All the colors of the rainbow are in her family tree, woven together with a paisley tapestry. “
Learn with your child
Before you can give your children any semblance of identity, you yourself must have a strong sense of self-worth. Parenting expert Samantha Kemp-Jackson told HuffPost Canada : “It means understanding their cultural and ethnic history not only in the context of the country of ethnicity, but also the socio-political perceptions of that culture in the society in which they live. “
You should also learn about all the cultures your child is a part of, trying to understand the specific complexities and challenges that groups may face in America. And stay in the know. You can join Facebook groups like ” Are these your kids?” A one-day transition to multiracial motherhood , a resource group for mixed-race parents and literacy training through a variety of books .
But also know that it’s okay not to know all the answers. Smith-Kang thinks you can say, “Let’s study together.” One way to do this is to let your children be teachers. They study three languages - Korean, Spanish and English – and help her with Korean pronunciation and culture.
“I think that’s the beauty of it,” she says. “We have the opportunity to learn more about cultures. This helps the parents not to think they are going to say the wrong things. And they can, and that’s okay. We learn, adapt and grow. “