Incorporating Diversity in Family Time by Ash Beckham

Between making good food choices, limiting screen time and juggling after school activities, we hardly need one more plate to spin as parents.  At the same time we know inclusivity is a critical life skill that we want our children to learn. How do we shift it from “one more thing” to a family experience that we do together.  By examining diversity and inclusion in these 4 aspects of our family life and then making conscious efforts  to broaden our family’s exposure makes it more of a practice than a task to be completed.  

1 .  Assess the media we consume together –
Whether it is the shows we watch, the books we read or the music we listen to, are diverse perspectives and experiences represented? It is natural for children to gravitate to characters that talk, dress and look like them.  The immediate biological response to difference is fear .  So it makes sense but is also a reflex we want to intentionally retrain in our brains.  Luckily, local public libraries are excellent resources for materials you may not find on your bookshelf at home.  If your local library does not have a diverse selection, many large library systems have non-resident cards for access to eBooks and audio books for this very reason.  Also, PBS offers free shows to stream or on-demand that showcase a multitude of cultural differences.  That is not to say your kids should no longer watch or read about characters that look like them. Seeing themselves is important too.  We just need to help broaden the characters they see to help promote their empathy for difference. 

2.  Engage in regular (even scheduled) family discussions on diversity –
Often parents are uncomfortable with conversations about race or ethnicity or difference in general because we don’t always have the answers.  But that does not mean we cannot have the conversations.  This is an opportunity to learn together.  If we want our kids to feel more comfortable with the topics, we need to start the awkward conversations in our home. This can be as easy as highlighting a diversity group each month and having conversations about the unique experiences and challenges that group faces.  Unfortunately, there is an endless supply of current event topics that you can ask your children if they have heard about or have any questions around.  And you do not need to take a deep dive.  Keep the conversation age appropriate.  Right now my 5 year old is very invested in fairness.  Particularly when he believes he is not receiving what his brother is.  So we frame our diversity conversations around fairness – What if every time we ate strawberries your brother got 3 and you got one, just because your hair is darker than his?  Does it seem fair that you should get less because of the color of your hair?  That personalizes the experience and opens the door for further conversation.

3.  Consider who your kids see on a daily basis –
Who comes to your house?  Who are your kids’ teachers?  Who do you see in authority like coaches or principals?  Who bags your groceries?  What do your neighbors look like?  The lens of who your family interacts with daily (and who fill what roles) dictates what your kids see as possible in the world.  The people we see regularly become the “us” while the people we don’t become “them”.  We often cannot immediately control the demographics of our school or neighborhood but being mindful of what that reality looks like can underscore the need to proactively seek diversity in the areas and activities you can control.

4. Make diverse events part of your family activity schedule. 
Research when cultural events are happening locally.   Whether it is a reading at your local library, a street fair or a virtual celebration, you can find events that immerse your family in a culture through sights, sounds and smells you are not accustom to.  This exposure to difference through embracing celebrations gives our family the connection necessary to see the complex and rich fabric of a culture rather than simply the surface level difference of visual traits of an individual.

If you are still reading this, you want to raise inclusive kids.  Reading a book about Martin Luther King Jr. in January and going to a Pride Parade in June are not enough.  We need to weave diversity into our daily lives with intention and purpose.  We strive to get to a point where seeing a character in a book that is different from us or having conversations about race or attending a cultural event we are the minority, does not even phase our kids.  Not because they no longer see difference, but because they appreciate and embrace it.  That is when being inclusive is something we are rather than just something we do.

Ash Beckham is an inclusion activist known for her viral Tedx talk Coming Out of Your Closet, the “accidental advocate” for equality, does not shy away from hard conversations. Her book Step Up: How to Live with Courage and Become an Everyday Leader is an empowering call-to-action to help mobilize all to embrace a different vision of leadership to create change in our workplaces, schools, places of worship, communities, and homes cultivated from both Beckham's personal and professional experiences.

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