Image: Micaela Heck / Elena Scotti
How do you raise children who are not racist or sexist? What to do if you find out that your child bullied a classmate? When should you worry that your child’s selfishness has gone too far?
We answer these and other difficult questions about parenting this week in The Upgrade with the help of science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer. Melinda is an award-winning journalist writing on science, education, and medicine, and she is an editor for Scientific American, The New York Times, Washington Post, and other national media. Your new book, How to Raise Kids Who Are Not Assholes: Science-Based Strategies For Better Parenting – From Toddler To Teens, is full of fascinating research into how to raise children in ways that will hopefully keep them from becoming, um, terrible.
Hear Melinda talk about some of the research that has shown the best approaches to topics like talking about race with your children, raising children less sexist attitudes, and dealing with when your child has hurt someone else.
Listen to The Upgrade above or find us in all the common places that serve podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google play, Spotify, I was listening to the radio, and stapler.
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Highlights from this week’s episode
From the Melinda Wenner Moyer interview:
The importance of talking to children about emotions:
The really interesting thing about doing this research is that apparently one of the most important things we can do with children is talking about feelings and our own feelings, their feelings, recognizing them, and affirming feelings . And at first I thought what is the link here? Why is it so important to talk about feelings? But when you think about it, in order for a child to be generous, thoughtful and selfless, they have to be able to understand another person’s emotions, they have to be able to see how, oh my friend is sad and why? My friend is sad and what can I do to help him? And so they have to be really fluent in the language of emotions and recognize exactly what they look like and what they mean. And if parents talk a lot about them and educate them to read books and the like, it helps to consolidate this development. And I think the ability to talk about feelings really helps solidify itself, what is called the theory of mind, which is essentially the ability to take other people’s perspectives.
Why It Is So Important for White Parents to Talk to Their Children About Race and Racism:
There’s this idea that if you don’t talk about race, your kids may not see and make a big deal of it. And you know, that’s not why your kids get racist. But research really contradicts that directly. And again it comes back to this idea that children look around the world and try to understand what is important. And, as with gender hierarchies, they see very distinctive racial hierarchies and power. And if they see this and they are not told by their parents or teachers why this hierarchy exists and that this is due to racism and the way our society is built through policies and laws and so on, then they will the simplest conclusion that is, OK, well, maybe white people are just better [and] smarter. So again it is these conclusions that children draw, unless we as parents really fight them off, these conclusions can be really dangerous.
How to talk to your children when they have said something racist, sexist, or harmful:
When I talked to researchers about it, they emphasized that first of all you don’t want to shame and yell at your child right away for saying something racist, because then they are so upset and ashamed and they cannot really go beyond this point hear you And they may not understand what they are saying, and they may not understand that what they said is as terrible as it is. So [researchers] say, take a deep breath as a parent and say, “Oh God, where did you hear that? What does that mean to you? ”And“ Why did you say that? ”And try to somehow understand where they are from. And then beyond that, say,“ Okay, well, actually, what you said is really hurtful and let me explain why. “And then, depending on your age, you try to explain why what he said is a bad word or something really hurtful and try to explain the effect those words have on another person One of the things I discovered in general about discipline when I was doing research is that it really helps to keep what your child has done in line with how it affects other people.
For more research-based parenting tips, we recommend listening to the full episode.
Episode transcript:
