[Featured Image Description: Illustration by Lisa Sky featuring a young child with medium-length hair smiling and holding a gastronomy tube syringe. He is shirtless and the tube connects to a gastric port in his chest.’]

DESTIGMATIZING BODY DIVERSITY

103: Talking About Differences With Kids

Books destigmatizing diversity give us a chance to catch prejudice before it begins.

All kids form generalizations – we need to lump things into abstract groups so our brains don’t go dizzy with detail. The trouble is that we group humans according to what they look like. So, when we fail to explicitly discuss diversity with our children, they create their own stereotypes.

Unless we expose children to stories featuring people of different races, abilities, sizes, and genders, we will miss the messed-up theories they come up with on their own.