Being able to talk about race is an important life skill for all parents, but especially for parents raising multiracial families. When a family adopts a child of a different race, questions about race and racism cannot be avoided. On this episode of Early Risers, host Dianne Haulcy speaks with transracial adoption expert Beth Hall, co-author of “Inside Transracial Adoption” and executive director of Pact, An Adoption Alliance in Oakland, California. Hall also has personal experience with...

Young children are like sponges, absorbing information about the world around them. Children have already started to internalize racialized messages about their value and self-worth by the time they are three to four years old. Psychologist Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, an expert in racial identity development and the author of “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race” calls this “the smog we’re all breathing.”   In our Season 2 premiere...

This special episode sounds a little different than our normal one-on-one conversations. This is an edited recording of the Early Risers event we hosted on June 17th called Teaching Anti-Racism. There is an incredible panel of experts on early childhood, racial identity and racism including Dr. Rose Marie Allen, Dianne Haulcy and Dr. Brigitte Vittrup. It’s a riveting conversation about common barriers to talking about race and racism with young children and what to say to get these...

In schools and old children’s books, Native people are often talked about in terms of history. But Brook Lafloe has been creating toys and teaching tools to connect all children to contemporary Native culture in an authentic and respectful way.  In this conversation with podcast host Dianne Haulcy, Brook shares the traditional Anishinaabe teachings she learned about race and respect. And she shares how caregivers from all cultural backgrounds can adopt this approach to race and help their...

This week we’re asking a pretty fundamental question that parents might get from their kids: where does racism come from? In this deep and lively conversation host Dianne Haulcy speaks with Resmaa Menakem - therapist, coach and best selling author of My Grandmother’s Hands. He breaks down how racism is connected to generational trauma and he describes practices that can heal the trauma and strengthen anti-racist thinking and action.  Episode...

For years, many adults have believed young children are too young to understand race and racism. Some have felt we need to teach our children to be “colorblind” thinking if you don’t talk about race, kids won’t be racist. But thoughts on this topic are changing and people are talking about race and racism with very young children. In this episode, host, Dianne Haulcy talks with Dr. Debra Sullivan about why we talk with very young children about race and racism  and how?  Dr. Sullivan also...

It sometimes happens that our loving and joyful young children say something terrible. They can hurt other children’s feelings. And sometimes these hurtful comments are racist. It causes confusion and emotional pain and, long term, it can cause real trauma.  How do we help young children work through these experiences? How do we help the child who has been hurt, the child who did the hurting and the bystanders who are impacted? Resources: Learning for Justice :...

Minnesota’s population is 80% white. Many communities across the state have few if any Black or Native people or people of color.  So how can we teach children to celebrate diversity and talk about race, racism and bias when all their neighbors are white? Early childhood education expert Louise Derman-Sparks shares her rationale and creative tools for teaching white children about race, racism and diversity. Resources “What if All the Kids are White” Paper by Louise...

We’re coming to you from Minneapolis, Minnesota where our communities are struggling to process yet another killing of an African American man at the hands of a white police officer. In this conversation, we are focused on our children. How do we prepare them for these events? How do we answer their questions? And how can we build up our BIPOC children so they are stronger than the racism they face? It’s a job for all of us.

This is a quick preview of our new podcast launching the week of April 19th: Early Risers, waking up to racial equity in early childhood hosted by Dianne Haulcy of Think Small.