Kids Notice Everything | Christia Spears Brown | The Sean Trace Show

In this episode of The Sean Trace Show, I sit down with developmental psychologist Christia Spears Brown to explore how children learn stereotypes, recognize differences, and absorb bias from the world around them. Christia explains that children notice race, gender, skin tone, and appearance much earlier than many parents realize. The real issue is not that kids see differences, but how they begin attaching assumptions and meaning to those differences.

We discuss how children pick up subtle messages through body language, media, toys, friendships, school environments, and adult reactions. Christia also explains why young children sometimes repeat hurtful words without fully understanding them, how stress can expose unconscious bias, and why avoiding conversations about discrimination can leave kids to create their own inaccurate explanations.

Most importantly, we explore practical ways parents can raise kinder, more open-minded children through honest conversations, diverse representation, shared experiences, and meaningful connections with people from different backgrounds.

What is one lesson about differences, kindness, or acceptance that you want every child to learn?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

No, not at all. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest things I end up talking about with parents is um kids are really never too young to have these conversations because as soon as they're paying attention to the world, they're picking up on these things. Um, so really, really quickly, and in ways that I think most parents would be really horrified by. I think if most parents knew the connections that kids had made, um, they would not be happy, right? It's just that kids are doing it. And if parents aren't talking about it, then it's going to be kid connected types of biases. Um, and so for and the other thing is we do know and from research studies, like experimental studies, kids do pick up on the body language of their parents when their parents are having interracial conversations. So they'll have an adult who's then talking to a person who basically works for the study that's of a different race than the parent. Kids will watch it through a kind of a glass and they're on a video. And kids' attitudes will be different if their parents were instructed to have, you know, cross their arms, lean back, kind of push their chair away a little bit. Kids are paying attention to that. And when you look at their racial attitudes after the fact, it shifts in ways consistent with those really subtle nonverbal behaviors. So we know for a fact that kids are paying attention to things like the crossed arms, the do you take a step away from somebody in the elevator? Do you lock the door when someone's passing? Um, kids are tuned into that because that's again, kids are really, really tuned into, and I mean young kids, you know, preschoolers are really tuned into the emotional reactions of adults.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

All right, welcome everybody back to the Sean Trace Show. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have a very interesting guest with me today. Uh, can you tell people who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Sure. I'm Christya Spears Brown, and I am a developmental psychologist. Um, you know, I also have an academic job, but my training is developmental psychology, and I study how kids learn stereotypes and understand discrimination and how it affects them as they're growing up.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

That's absolutely awesome, actually. You know, I had um I where to start on all this. I live in a country overseas. Uh, I live in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese people are wonderful. I love them. I feel very welcome to be here, and yet I have a mixed-race child. And there are times where it can be challenging. Last year, my daughter wanted to go out for a school play. And uh I'm not gonna slight anyone. Her teacher is a phenomenal teacher and a wonderful human being. But uh when my daughter went up for the play, my daughter's like, I would really like to audition. And the teacher looked at her straight in the face and said, You're not Vietnamese enough. And I was like, she came home and I was livid. Her mom was livid. And we're like, this role has nothing to do with anything. Um and like there was nothing about race in this role. And later on, she but we were upset. I was like, well, you're not gonna go out for anything that doesn't want you. And she, my daughter was wiser than me. She's like, Dad, I still want to try. And she tried out and she didn't get the one role she wanted, but they gave her a different role. And yet I was still frustrated, you know, and it led me to think about this because I taught children for many years, and there's this point where like when they're little kids, there's not race, there's not, you know, bias, there's they're just people. They're little tiny people, but there's a time where something switches, and I don't know what happens at that time. At what age do kids actually start noticing differences between people like gender and race and appearance, you know?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, I think actually they notice it more earlier than most people recognize.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

So talk to me about that.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

They start, yeah. So we know that they can start paying attention to race and gender being the big ones, but race and gender when they're infants. So as soon as they can turn their head and pay attention to faces on a screen, ways in which we test kind of what infants know, we see that they're sorting people based on skin tone or hair texture. They sort on based on gender. Um, so really early, they're clued into the fact that we do look different. We do come in different shades, and we do, with gender, we kind of play up the differences. You know, I'm wearing earrings that are dangly. I mean, there's not some gender patterns. They're not perfect by any stretch. You know, I have short hair, which gets confusing for little kids. But anyway, they're paying attention to that. Um, in infancy, we know that they start putting meaning on it when they're about three and four. So kids do, if you ask them, they start um they start showing stereotypes. Now, what adults often worry about is it's not as emotionally laden as it is for adults. So when kids are saying a stereotype or saying something about race and gender early, around age three to five, they're just assuming this is just the way the world is. It's not about hatred in their heart. It's assuming that certain patterns of behavior go along with certain patterns of people. In the same way that they've learned animals that look like dogs bark, right? So that's ultimately a stereotype because not every dog barks, but it's a pretty good um rule of thumb to pay attention to certain animal with certain characteristics, has a certain type of behavior. The problem is then what we so that's really good when kids are doing it at three. The problem is then when we pivot it to people, which is the same cognitive pattern, the same kind of cognitive skill, but then people are so much more complex. It doesn't work with people, right? But the idea of looking at patterns and how people look similar and how patterns you might notice in behavior in the world, kids pay attention to that. You know, we say in the US, we showed kids uh, you know, picked kids in elementary school, like early elementary school, kindergarten, a picture of all the presidents of the United States. Um, don't point it out, don't say anything about it. We ask, what do you what do you know about what do you notice about this? And they'll say they're all men. Um and then when you ask them about stereotypes, they think boys are going to be better leaders, boys are better presidents. So they take this one little pattern they notice and then kind of make sense to explain it in the these ways. Um but so I think a lot of times we think as adults, kids are not noticing, but it's really just because we haven't been asking them and they don't just necessarily bring it up on their own.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

I I think that's really interesting. I think it's interesting too because um there is a lot of uh working with children and seeing them go through these fun, beautiful years like of development. And you're right, like people do notice things, but then meaning is added later. You know, we have different we have different you know things, and like I remember when I was a kid, I my mom worked in a woman's dorm and she worked at a university and people from around the world. And I remember that when I was um Sterling, Sterling was his name. Sterling was my buddy. My parents had this guy named Sterling who babysat me all the time, and he was African American, and all I knew was he was the most wonderful, awesome, coolest person. He was my hero. And I didn't understand race. I knew he looked different, but to me, Sterling was my hero. And then I grew up in New England, and I'm not gonna throw any shit. Then I moved to the South. And I had a lot of kids around me who had very different experiences around race than I did. And it was interesting because these, you know, I when we moved down to the south, I was five and we moved to North Carolina, and it was just like I didn't understand what some of these words were that kids were using, and they were words that I won't use in this podcast, you know? Yeah, yeah. And these were kids that were using really aggressive racial slurs. And I was just like, wow, that's wild. You know, five and six-year-olds that were that has to be getting modeled from somewhere, you know, because it's not from them.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

No, and I'll say, and um, and it's not really regionally specific either. It's it seems to be with more diversity in a school, kids see things oftentimes that they then it makes it then salient to them. So often in you, you know, in schools that are in predominantly white areas, for example, you may hear fewer types of discrimination simply because it's less salient in their in their day-to-day the the kids in the school's day-to-day lives. So part of it is this tricky balance of kids stereotyping and like the type type you're talking about, like the negative value part of it. One of the best ways to help kids not embrace that is to kind of to your experience, have people that they can become friends with or get to know well that are different than them in some way, racially or gender, right? So when you have people in your life that you know well, that's a really good way to have lower stereotypes about that group because you know, oh, this person has all these other characteristics. They're a complex, interesting person. A stereotype isn't enough to contain them, right? Um, and so diversity in your of who you're friends with and who's in your close kind of inner circles is a really good way for kids to not have the stereotypes. Um, but that's a where do they pick it up? I mean, it is very kids are really sponges for the world, right? So they're they're getting some of it probably from parents, but not a lot, not as much as we often think. They might hear it from other kids who have big brothers or big sisters, right? The sibling pipeline often is um pretty powerful. Then it starts to cluster in these peer groups, and then they hear stuff that they really do. There's this hearing stuff at school from maybe one kid. And so then the cluster of kids around them pick it up as, well, maybe this is just the way we act, right? These are just the peer norms that we have. We know they pick it up from media in really subtle ways and sometimes in really overt ways. Um, they pick it up from toys, oftentimes, from even children's media can be often not the types of messages we're wanting kids to get. Um, so it's like they get it from all of these places. And because they're cognitively kind of primed to sort people, to look at patterns, when you have all of this other negative biases that get attached to those patterns and those people, you get a mess by the time kids are seven and eight, you it's really hard to start shifting their ideas.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

I love that. And I love that you can start looking at it because it leads to the next question of like, how do we work with being better around this? You know, like how, how, I mean, we're gonna get to that, but like I want to go back a step. Like, if a 10-year-old asked you, what is a stereotype? How would you explain it? You know?

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, I mean, I think it's it is characteristics, things we think about that fit a category of people or animals or things. So I often use the example of a stereotype of a dog is that they bark. Is it always true? No, not at all. Do some other types of animals bark? Yep, like a seal, for example, right? It's not a very good clear one. Um and then part of it is then we explain about kind of another easier way to talk about stereotypes is to think about it in terms of gender. So we think about, oh, well, boys are stronger than girls. That would be a stereotype. Um, now, how many girls do you know that in your class, for example, that are much stronger than the boys in your class? And they can name a lot, right? Like they can so part of how to explain the stereotype is to say, yes, it applies to some people. The problem is when we try to have a descriptor word that applies to everybody in that category. And that's when we start to make a lot of errors, right? So some boys are strong, but some girls are strong. Some boys, you know, get in fights, but some girls get in fights. Um, some girls cry, but some boys cry. So kind of helping kids and I mean adults too see that a stereotype is this what we think a group is like. Um, the problem is people are really complicated and we're not all like one thing. And so trying to do that is um limiting to the people that we're kind of meeting and interacting with and ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Yeah. So interesting. A couple of thoughts. There's lots of thoughts. I got all the thoughts right now. But you know, it's interesting too because I I think about it, and as kids are learning these things, and I mean, I'm a father and I'm I'm filtering everything through trying to figure out how to raise my daughter right, because as a teacher, um one of the things I I think is like we exist in a box, and I saw this. Like I was working with these kids, and um there was a teacher that was African American. And in Asia, like in Vietnam, they don't have as much experience with with African Americans. And the kids were giggling when the teacher walked past. And I said, Why are you giggling? Like, what is it that's interesting? And one of the boys said, Well, he's different. And I said, Well, if you go somewhere else, you're gonna be the one who's different. Did you ever think about that? Like, everyone is different somewhere. And we tried to do some exercises that helped them get it. And there were some that got it, and there were some that didn't. And the the thing that I did right away is I had the teacher come in the room. I said, Hey, do you mind helping me with like a teachable moment here? He came in the room. And I started going, Hey, uh, can you tell me about your favorite video game? And he's like, Well, you know what? I like this video game. And the kids were like, dude, I like that video game too. And there was this shared experience, and suddenly they're like, Well, I don't know about all of the people of that group, but he's cool. And if he's cool, there's gotta be other people that are cool. So, and immediately I had three kids who were able to go, well, I have this divider that's uh exists in my mind, but I have this unifier over here that exists in my mind as well. And so it was interesting because how do we do that on a larger scale, though? Like that's my question, you know?

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Well, I mean, I think that's why things like media representation are so important, right? So I think some of the categories that we've seen the biggest stereotype reduction in are things like LGBTQ identities. So in the past 30 years, we've seen, in not every country, but pretty um, it's not just a US-centric thing. It's kind of in a lot of different countries, you've seen more positive attitudes towards LGBTQ individuals. And a lot of folks have pointed to you can track how that's changed based on representation in the media. So as there have been more LGBTQ characters on television and in movies and in children's movies and in children's books, um, you start to see it more and more. And so if kids don't have the teacher that can come in front of them and talk about their experience, they can see a character that might do that, that might have kind of things that they do that the kid can, you know, feel a sense of connection to. Um, so partly that's one of the reasons why representation is really, really important. I think, especially for kids that live in kind of segregated or isolated spaces, um, seeing people that are different than you in some ways, but are similar to you in other ways is really, really profound. And it's hard to get a shortcut around that. So if you can't do it in real life, doing it in other ways, like media is a big part of for at least for kids, helping them see the complexity of people. Because that's really all it is. It's just saying simple descriptions don't work for folks. We need to be more complex. And so the best way to do that is to meet and think about how interesting that individual is.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I love that. One of the things, like, I've just been my brain is running here because I I have a YouTube channel with my daughter, Ilani's Little World, where we explore things around the world, right? And I just like as we've been talking, my brain is cut thinking up an episode for Ilani's Little World. And what I want to do, this is where I go, this is how my brain works. I'm thinking content all the time. That I was like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna do Eilani meets five different people from five different countries. And we can do these little calls, and then they send her on a challenge. And then I don't know if you'd be open to it, but might be answering five quick questions for Eilani at the end of this episode. We'll just end the recording and ask those questions for Eilani and then put them in there. Yes. It's awesome. But so we ask you some cool questions and then we jump back in, and then they send us on a challenge. And that challenge is to go and try the food from their country. And then Eilani and I go to a restaurant, we try that food, and we go, wow, that was amazing. You know, because those little things, I think, are bridges. Um, you know, it it it's a way to open that door because we have to find ways to open doors, you know?

SPEAKER_00 18:27

And I think food is out, frankly, a great way to do that because food is so linked to culture, um, and which is then linked to things like ethnicity and where we're from, country of origin. And so we know that for kids, also food is really concrete. So for kids, they rely on food oftentimes when it comes to thinking about how they describe their own like ethnic identity. Um, so we have, you know, kind of speaking of your daughter, we have um research with multiracial or biracial kids. Um, and one of the things they talk about a lot is how they can think about their own two sides of their identity, is to think about the types of food they eat that represent one part of their culture and the foods they eat that represent another part of their culture. So it's this like great um learning kind of tool to understand these bigger, complex ideas of family and where we come from and all the good part of our culture. Um, food's the way to do it because kids can really understand it in a cultural way.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

It's interesting too. I was laughing when you were talking about that because like my daughter's so spoiled with the food from Vietnamese culture that like when we go back and she does not like any of the food. I was like, Do you want a hamburger? She's like, mmm, I was like, pizza? She handles pizza but anything else. Though she has a newly acquired taste for Mexican food. And I was like, well, that's pretty cool, you know? Try different things and feel it out. But I want to ask you this because this is something that I noticed. Why do children sometimes repeat biased or hurtful ideas even without understanding what they mean? And I I remember when I was a kid, and this is an experience that was wild for me. Um, I was in this setting. I was maybe five, and this one kid that was my dad's co-worker and I came over, uh, and his co-workers came over, and I was with these other two kids, and both of them were nice kids. I can't remember much. I was five, but I do remember what happened. The little white kid ran into the bedroom and told me, Come here, come here, come here. And he closed the door and he left the little African-American kid outside. And I was like, What are you doing that for? Like, he's really cool. I just remember that clear as day because I had conditioned into me Sterling. Sterling was literally the coolest person. Sterling was my hero. Now, I'm Sterling, if you're out there listening to this, but I would love to reconnect. You were, I just remember this big, powerful person that just carried me on his shoulders and like, oh man, my memories of him are so profound. I don't even remember what we did, but like, such an awesome hero of mine. He was a hero of mine, just this tower of a man. Oh man, he didn't even tear up thinking about him. But when I was in that room and I'm sitting there, this other kid's like, and then the kid outside, the African-American kid, started yelling a racial slur. That was the wrong racial slur. Like, it was not no racial slurs, right, but he started, he started yelling the inward toward the white kid. And like what I realized is like no one in that group of kids understood what was happening. They were just all acting upon modeled behavior that was wrong across the board. And yet the adults were outside pretending to be nice to each other, but yet they were the ones who had to have been modeling the behavior for these kids. You know what I mean? So I was just like, it blows me away.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, and I think it's an example too of how kids are picking up things that they don't fully understand, right? So they'll um they absorb information and try to make The world make sense and they're using the these fragments of information. And because adults don't talk about these topics very often, kids are forced to on their own cobble together things that may be inaccurate in all sorts of different ways, right? Um, so part of it is that one of the reasons they might be doing this is partly they know it gets a reaction. So when you yell a slur, for the most part, adults around react. Um and so sometimes kids like doing that to get a rise. They know it there's a taboo-ness to it. Um, so part of it is they do it that way. And they probably don't fully understand. They know this is a word to describe a person that's a valuable word, like it carries a lot of emotional weight. Um so they'll pull it out. Right. Yeah, so they'll pull it out kind of indiscriminately. Um, and so that's one of the things we find a lot in our work is that kids have a lot of these biases, hurtful things in their head, and they've heard it. They don't necessarily know the ways in which it's used, but they do know that you use it to hurt someone else, and it gets a big reaction.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

That makes like the most sense of anything to me. Like it is because, you know, I remember when I I learned a new language, and when I started learning that language, you know, it's interesting because you say certain things. I made some, there are some very dangerous mistakes in Vietnamese. That's what I will say. It's like there are words that if you say slightly wrong, it means a whole different thing. And I I made some very serious mistakes, and I just went thinking back, I'm just like, oh, thank goodness. But what you do, and one of the things that's wild is like I can say a swear word in a different language, and to me, it has no emotional gravitas, it has nothing. But when I say it to someone else from that culture, they're just like, and I think about it that way, because when I taught languages to kids, like to children, you know, like the F word, right? To me, I'm like, I say that, I say that word, and I remember, you know, getting in big trouble. Yeah, that's a big one, right? Big one, you're grounded for a long time, you know, like no, no games, no fun, no nothing. But when I would teach it to these kids, they would sit there, and I had this one kid, and he was just like, F, F, F, F, F, F. Don't do that. Whatever you do, don't do that. You know? I mean, maybe I think he was like five or six, and he's just like, F. And I was like, Where did you hear that, kid? You know, and um talk to his parents and they're like, Yeah. We let him watch some movies with his parents, and he just picked it up like it was like a sponge, you know? And I don't know how he's he's picked it up, but that was the word he got, you know?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Well, probably because he could have said it once, and then the adults all either laugh or try to stop or have some kind of reaction. Because I think if you had a five-year-old that all of a sudden just said it, the shock would be kind of amusing at first. And then I think us, I mean, I think about us, you know, having been the parent of a five-year-old. Sometimes they say stuff and you're like, oh, I can't believe they said that. Um, but you have that reaction, and then the kids, kids do anything for attention, rather that they'll have good attention and bad attention, right? Um and so I think that is part of it as well. Um, but again, kids are, you know, I often say this, and I say it somewhat glibly, but it is, it is accurate though, in that all kids, by about when you're talking to them about age five and age six sound really racist and sexist. It they just, if you ask them about these questions, and it's because of the cognitive limitations, it they'll grow out of some of that. So five and six, all kids sound kind of terrible if you ask them these questions. Um, I've done it, you know, with thousands and thousands and thousands of kids at this point, and it's always a little shocking. Like, you know, we have research assistants that go with us to the schools and interview kids on these types of topics, and we have to kind of prepare the research assistants. Like, you know, we have these college students that go and they're interviewing these cute little kids, and we have to prepare them because we have a very ethnically diverse research group. Um, and you know, you have a student of color going into the school to talk to this white kid, and you're like, these are the types of things kids say, and we have to kind of think about what it really means when the kid is saying it, because it can be shocking, frankly. Um, but as they get a little bit more cognitively advanced, as they get at better able at taking other people's perspective and saying, if I yell this word, it can hurt your feelings, or understanding that not everybody that looks similarly acts the same. Once, and those are cognitive skills, and kids don't get them until they're about eight, nine, ten. So once they get that, you start to see more of their kind of true attitudes come out. And it's not just that cognitive framework that they use to make people's behavior seem easier to predict.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, I love that. I love it because it's like one of the things that I noticed, I want to go back to the laughing thing because I think you hit on something there that was interesting to me. A lot of parents think kids are too young to notice discrimination, too young to get it. And, you know, and when that that too young idea, you know, but really they're they're picking things up uh right away. They're getting it modeled for them and like, you know, and it's simple little things that we don't necessarily notice that we're doing the way we move, the way we pull back, the way we engage with someone, the way we stand, you know, uh, you know, at a certain way. I was looking at photos. We I did a music video shoot with my wife. I filmed her, and my uh assistant was taking pictures of me so I could have them for my LinkedIn so I can feel special. Um the cool work I do, you know. I feel so silly doing that, but everyone does it. I figure I might as well put some pictures up. Like, this is me hard at work. But I noticed I kind of have this resting, grumpy face, using nice words there, but I kind of run with that, and it's just my thinking face. But it's like I look defensive all the time, man. I realize I'm like, mmm, you know, and I just like I'm like literally when you get to know me, I'm laughing half the time and bust up. But like, if you don't know me, I'd look grumpy, and I don't mean to. It's just I'm thinking, and I'm like, my thinking face looks not happy. But you know, a lot of people, parents think kids are too young to notice discrimination, too young to notice this stuff. Is that actually true?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

No, not at all. I mean, I think that's one of the biggest things I end up talking about with parents is um kids are really never too young to have these conversations because as soon as they're paying attention to the world, they're picking up on these things. Um, so really, really quickly, and in ways that I think most parents would be really horrified by. I think if most parents knew the connections that kids had made, um, they would not be happy, right? It's just that kids are doing it. And if parents aren't talking about it, then it's gonna be kid connected types of biases. Um, and so for and the other thing is we do know in from research studies, like experimental studies, kids do pick up on the body language of their parents when their parents are having interracial conversations. So they'll have an adult who's then talking to a person who basically works for the study that's of a different race than the parent. Kids will watch it through a kind of a glass and they're on a video, and kids' attitudes will be different if their parents were instructed to have, you know, cross their arms, lean back, kind of push their chair away a little bit. Kids are paying attention to that. And when you look at their racial attitudes after the fact, it shifts in ways consistent with those really subtle nonverbal behaviors. So we know for a fact that kids are paying attention to things like the crossed arms, the do you take a step away from somebody in the elevator? Do you lock the door when someone's passing? Um, kids are tuned into that because that's again, kids are really, really tuned into, and I mean young kids, you know, preschoolers are really tuned into the emotional reactions of adults. That's how you learn. So it's one way you learn what's scary is if some loud noise happens, you look to the adult to see are they scared? It's called social referencing. We do it across all sorts of things. Um, we want to know if mom is scared, then I should be scared, right? And so that's really normal and it happens early. But so we're kind of hardwired to do it. But now if you have someone with these subtle kinds of nonverbal cues that I'm not comfortable, I don't really trust this person, um, I feel scared, kids are picking up on those subtle cues as well, and it's affecting their actual attitudes later.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

That's interesting. And I think it's interesting too to see how we interact, like how kids are watching, how we interact with other other races, other genders, other whatever it might be, you know. And one of the things too is I I think so much of what we're doing is subconscious and people don't realize it. Like in my office, I have I have a team of uh 20 video in my video production company, my my marketing company. And uh we deal with all genders, we have all different types of races, we have all different types of uh people of all across. And like even in my small room, uh I have my wife's assistant, he's LGBTQ ⁇ . My assistant uh is LGBTQ ⁇ . I have two editors and uh very different places that they identify as as well. Um and where I'm getting at is that we all interact and we have all these, and we were talking about body language with each other the other day. We get these great conversations because one of my workers, and he's the first to tell it, he's ADHD and he's autistic, and he is rad and special in all these different ways. But he's got this thing he does, and he doesn't even realize it. We brought it up to him the other day, and we we he loved like now we brought it up, it's fun because we just didn't see it. But like when he's uncomfortable, he starts talking like Mickey Mouse. Like he's like, he's like, I don't know why. And uh he's like, hey guys, I don't know, I don't know what's going on right now. And I'm just like, you do understand that every time that you get uncomfortable, you start talking like Mickey Mouse. And it's really awesome, funny, hilarious, but like what I'm getting at is that he doesn't understand that he's doing that. And so many of us don't understand what we're doing. And when I started talking to each of these people, all of the people in our office, each one of us has our different things that we do. And it's wild to see how those affect how we interact with other people. Because, you know, my workers were like, one of the guys was like, Well, oh, she's she's a lesbian? Well, hang on. I didn't know what to do. And she's like, Well, why would you change how you're gonna interact with me just because of this? You know, it's like it's just and that's one of the things is these biases that we think and are attaching meaning to when really that same person's been right in front of us the whole time and we didn't have all these these labels and things. Does that make any sense?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it's I mean, so a couple things come to mind. One is I think it's part of also why um race and gender are the two that are so seem to be so important to kids early on. So it's the ones kids latch onto the first. And most of it the research suggests it's because kids can see it right away from the very beginning. So they see the category before they learn the characteristics. So unlike someone that's LGBTQ plus, you learn for the most part who the person is because it's a private behavior, right? Or a private identity that's not necessarily visible unless you're it's not typically visible to an adult. Um I'm sorry, to a kid. Um and so the child, but with race and gender, the child can see the person right away. And you know instantly race and gender for the most part. Some people are harder to categorize, but typically you latch onto that, and then that's gonna shape all the other things you learn about the person, because it's that was clear from the very beginning. Other categories, things like sexual identity, political affiliation, religion, other categories that we know have lots of stereotypes, aren't as strong in kids because they're not the first thing a person notices. Whereas race and gender are so visually salient that it's cognitively easy for a kid to latch onto it from the very beginning. And then that attention to those categories shapes everything else that they're learning. The other thing that made me think of it is those implicit, those like behaviors you're talking about. We are particularly less likely to um we're less likely to, sorry, I have family walk-in all the time.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

So it is not a problem. I edit it. I edit things, so don't worry, tell her shit's okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

It's all okay. It's like a teenager and a dog.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

My daughter walks into the room now and she's 10, and she starts dancing like this in front of like on this side, and like to try to get her my attention last night, and I have to sit there and try to go like this, and she's over there going, and I was like, What are you doing? What are you doing right now? How can I focus?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

And like, I'm just like, I know she's just standing there for a bit. I was like, okay, I can't carry my thought anymore. It's no problem. Um, but yeah, I was gonna say about those like behaviors that we do too that we're not aware of them. We know also that those implicit, those like subtle things come out when we are stressed. So when we're under what you know we call cognitive load. So when you're stressed out or tired or doing 14 different other things, those behaviors that we're not aware of are more likely to come out. So for example, I have a very southern US accent. Um, when I am stressed or tired, it gets really thick. Um, now I'm kind of fine and you know, it's the middle of the morning, and I've had my coffee and I'm in a professional mode, and so it's less thick. It's still there. Um, but it's like all of those things when we're stressed or at capacity, these other like more natural behaviors come out. And the problem then is when you put in, think about like an elementary school teacher. She's got four million things going on. Um, it's it's a hard, stressful experience. And then that's why you're more likely to see things like implicit biases come out in the classroom. So you see teachers who wouldn't, in their heart, want to be biased towards students in their class. But because so much other stuff is going on in their head, these like subtle things might come out, like ways in which they were brought up that maybe they don't believe in anymore, but subtle stuff comes out because everything else is swamped. Um, and so I think that's one of those things that's for parents important to think about is that you may really do believe in the equality of people and you want to treat people equally. But if you're stressed and you're trying to load the car with groceries and your kid is screaming in the buggy and you're doing 14 different things, you're thinking about what you're fixing for dinner, and you're, you know, you're worried about work and all the things that we know parents experience, that's most likely when you're gonna have those little subtle behaviors that kids are latching onto. That's when you might be more standoffish to someone that's different than you. So part of it is like being aware of that and trying to say, yeah, I kind of did that. I need to override that and be more conscious of what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

I um last week had a really bad allergic reaction. And man, I became an asshole. I was trying to be like as nice as I could. It's hard when you're miserable. Oh man, it's hard when you're miserable. So I get it. Like when you get to these places where you're tired, things come out. And on the accent part, I was working with a voice coach um ages ago because I wanted to learn, like I was I used to do acting, and I wanted to get the British accent down. And she was like working with me on the RP, and my father's my father's English, and I can do it okay sometimes, but it's not not easy for me. But when I said one word, she's like, I knew where you grew up. And I was like, what was that? And I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, say this word for me. What is the person who works in a courtroom? And I was like, lawyer? And she's like, Well, what was that? And I was like, a lawyer? And she's like, So where did you live in your childhood? I was like, Well, I was born here, but then I moved to North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

That sounds North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Yeah, I was like, yeah, y'all know that. I used to live down in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I lived down in Hendersonville, North Carolina for about 10 years, and it it pops out if it needs to, you know. So lawyer, lawyer, get, and get, get instead of uh like get G I T. G-I-T. And she's like, Git, what was that? And I was like, get, and she's like, wow, but you don't realize that these little things, these foundational things that are in there.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

So so it's and these are kind of fun examples, but you know, then you think about, well, it also happens when the other behaviors that we don't want to happen too.

unknown 40:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

And kids are paying attention to it.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

And there's another thing. So we've got all this laid out. How can parents best help their kids to grow up to be awesome human beings? You know, like we've laid this out, we hear about all these biases. How can we best teach our children to be be the kid that that's sitting there going, oh, this guy likes video games too? How can we create those settings to help them?

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Yeah, part of it is giving them the language to understand what stereotypes are. So I say it's it is partly the answer is talking about it more. So, you know, so saying calling out, oh, this person's in a different kind of race group than we are, but look how many similarities there are between the things they like and the things you like. Things you can't really do in schools, but you can a parent can definitely do it though. So helping kids see this person may be different, but they also have lots of similarities. And when you see someone else doing something in a biased way, to talk to your kids about it, to say, I'm really disappointed. And it doesn't have to be in a public, shaming kind of way, but to make sure your kid can clock it that's saying, oh, that was actually a stereotype, or that was actually really biased and hurtful, or I wouldn't like it if someone said that to me. So helping the kids process even the little things, you know, sometimes it's grandma says something and you're like, oh, and so getting in the car on the way home, kind of saying, you know, grandma, I was kind of not happy that she said that, and kind of explaining why. So helping kids detect what the stereotype is so they don't presume it's just the reality of the world. So part of it is giving them that, like having more conversations, and they don't have to be big, let's sit down and talk about global racism, um, which by the time kids are getting older, those are conversations you can have. But young kids, you can do a daily kind of just noticing the differences across people. Even if it's, you know, kids' books, things like that, those are really good to also have a lot of diversity in a kid's life. Because that's the other part is learning about other people that are different than you is really one of the best things. Um, so it's both talking about it more and increasing the models and the representation and the things that kids are exposed to so that they can start to see how different everyone actually is.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

I love that. Well, where can people go to find out more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Um, they are welcome to go to my website, so Christiabrown.com. Um, and you know, I have a couple of books, one about this in terms of specifically on gender, so parenting beyond pink and blue. Um, and then another one that I wrote more recently about um it's called Unraveling Bias. So thinking about all the ways in which kids are noticing the um kind of stereotypes and discrimination that's out there, how it affects them, and then ways that we can um help at both the family level, at the kind of societal level, at the school level. So, what can we do in our daily lives to help kids live in a more just um world?

SPEAKER_01 43:17

I love that. Well, I want to say thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. And uh this is where we'll wrap this part. But if you could you answer five questions for like a 10-year-old? They're really simple.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Why do people notice differences like skin color, language, or appearance?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Well, partly they notice things like skin color because we are come in different shades, right? We're we have really good eyes and we can see that we do come in different shades. Um, just like we come in different heights, we have different color hair. Um, we notice that kids and babies are especially kind of hardwired, so they're born wanting to pay attention. To people, because people are the most important things in a baby's life, um, because people are who keep them safe, people are who feed them, people are who they rely on to survive. And so we seem to be hardwired to pay attention to those people, and we're gonna pay attention to the things we can see. And so, because that's all I've got to go on, and so I'm gonna pay attention to how you look, what shade you're in, um, the ways in which you are dressed and carry yourself. It it helps, it's ultimately adaptive. It's just we have all this other stuff that comes later on that's pretty negative with it.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

I love that. Well, here's our next question. Um, when do children start noticing race and differences between people?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Well, they start noticing race when they're babies still. So before they're a year old, they notice race. Um, they notice that race groups, people that have that are of a different race, are associated with different characteristics by about age three and four. Um, and so by about age five, if you talk to kids, they'll assume that kids that look different are different in really core ways as well.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

I love that. Uh next one. Why do people sometimes make assumptions about others before getting to know them?

SPEAKER_00 45:16

It's because we're lazy, is the real answer. It's because we are what we call cognitive misers, which means we don't want to use any more mental energy than we have to. And so if I just look at you and say, that person's nice, that person likes to eat ice cream, and that person drives a red car. I know all sorts of stuff about that person without having to get to know them. I learned a lot just because I made uh assumptions about them. You know, I say, like, think about a parent that has to buy a birthday gift for their uh daughter's friends. And so you say, What's the gender? Is it a boy or a girl? And you go into the giant toy store, the big box toy store. And if you think girls like dolls and boys like trucks, you just saved yourself half the time because now you don't have to look at every single toy to figure out exactly what the particular kid would like. You just cut the store in half and you think in this aisle is what girls like. And so it's cognitively, you know, it's mentally easier for us to just make assumptions than to learn all the individual characteristics of a person. Um, and so because we're lazy and we've seen and well, also because the world is really complicated. So we have to pay attention to a lot of things. So we take shortcuts where we can. Even when those shortcuts aren't good for people and they're not act very accurate, we like to think that they're accurate.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Mm-hmm. That's so true. All right. How about this one? How can learning about different cultures help us become kinder and more understanding?

SPEAKER_00 46:53

I think it helps you realize that everyone is different in lots of ways and that everyone is similar in lots of ways, right? So when you learn about other cultures, you're like, oh, that's similar to what we do. Um, and then you also learn when you learn about lots of cultures, you see all of these variations. So that must mean there's not one right way to do it. It's just lots of very lots of differences, and that difference is exciting and difference makes things more interesting because it would be pretty boring if you only knew the stuff that came out of your household and you only had your experience. So partly what we say is all these different cultures, it helps us be interested. There's we're always learning something new. We see that there's lots and lots of differences among people, but that there's also a lot of similarities. And ultimately that's the way that you get past stereotypes, right? Is that you see we all have differences, we all have similarities, we're interesting, unique people. Um, and so that's kind of the best way to do it. It's also the most fun way to do it, right? Learning lots of cultures is a really fun, interesting thing. Um, and it keeps us open to maybe we haven't discovered our favorite food yet. Maybe we don't know our the prettiest place to go. And so learning about other places gives us opportunities to see things that we might not have ever seen before.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

I love that. Well, uh, one more question. What can kids do when they meet someone who seems different from them?

SPEAKER_00 48:21

I think first of all, is to not feel um uncomfortable that people are different. So kind of thinking about it's okay if, or maybe to if I do feel uncomfortable to say that's okay. It's just this person's different than me, and that's not a bad thing. Um, and then try to find what are things that you might have in common. So just like we meet any kind of a friend, to think about, oh, what types of things do you like to do? Ask questions. You know, asking questions is the best way to learn about someone. Um, and people like to talk about themselves. So if when people can, when you ask them questions, you're gonna see ways in which you have connect points of connection, and it's an opportunity to make a new friend that you might not have had before.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

I love that. I love that. What is your favorite food from a different place around the world?

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Is one of my favorite things, which is pad thai. Um so I'm a big fan of tofu and pad thai.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Tofu and pad thai are all types of wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Yeah.