Page 64 - Parents Magazine (December 2019)

KIDSÑAdvice

Help Kids Understand Hate

In an era rife with division, bias incidents darken our news feeds

and escalate our anxiety. We asked leading experts how
parents can shield their children from—and shepherd them

through—a world that seems hell-bent on hate.

by KATIE ARNOLD -RATLIFF / illustrations by ANDREA D e SANTIS

THINK BACK to when you were small, years. From the way your uncle sneered Now adult-you sees hate—racism,
when you first noticed that some people at the boys on the corner; from an adult’s misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia,
differed from you. You noticed but didn’t whispered joke when she thought you transphobia—enjoying a grotesque
much care. At school or on your block, couldn’t hear or understand. (Adults golden age. You worry that your child
you’d hang with anyone who wanted to always underestimate what kids hear will soon learn the same sad truths you
play, whether or not their skin, religion, and understand.) Maybe you learned did, except earlier, more terrifyingly.
physical ability, or family was like yours. about difference because you had to: You worry that when he’s alone in his
You knew the streetlight’s glow meant “There are people who don’t like us bed or quiet in the car, he’s thinking
dinnertime, the bell’s trill meant recess’s because of who we are,” your dad said, “so not of Saturday’s cartoons but of
end, and that differences between people we must be careful.” And eventually, you yesterday’s carnage, trying to make
were real but benign, value-neutral. learned, from footage of cops clubbing a sense of some grisly headline that tore
So it rattled your little world to learn crouching man or from Anne Frank’s across the screen before you could
that for some, difference inspires disgust, diary, that there are people who so loathe change the channel. You worry that
rage, hatred. You learned this slowly, over difference they will hurt or kill over it. what he sees could someday change

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