Kids see the world differently to us

Kids see the world differently to us. Thank goodness for that.

Skin colour, social status, education and country of origin; none of these things matter when it comes to their beautiful little minds.

That’s why we adore the new CBeebies campaign.

It’s about belonging. And it’s about friendship.

The video features pairs of kids chatting about their differences.  They talk about how one likes tomato sauce, while the other does not. They argue about how one lives up the hill and the other lives down the hill. They laugh about how one of them is a good dancer, and the other has two left feet.

They bicker and giggle over many differences, but not once do they ever mention skin colour, gender, disabilities or social status.

Why would they? They are mates and the only things that matter are who scored the last goal in soccer and who is best at pulling funny faces. Their physical differences are there, but they are not important to friendship.

Kristina Olson, Ph.D, has studied race in relation to young children for many years and her research tells us that while children do see skin colour, eye colour and other physical differences, unless adults make these things important, kids don’t care.

Kristina encourages families to talk. She said it can have a negative impact if parents ignore race and skin colour, because kids end up coming to their own conclusions, or overhearing other people’s harmful opinions and thinking they are true.

She says that in her studies (in the US) she found families of colour spoke about race and ethnicity a lot more than Caucasian families did. And this had a positive impact on how children felt. Discussing differences and talking about racism and how to avoid it is healthy.

The same goes for disabilities and other differences.

Young children are curious, not cruel and we all have stories about our kids voicing some undecidedly cringe worthy things about others in very loud voices at the supermarket.

But kids are born without prejudice. And we can learn more than a thing or two from them.