How to Talk to Kids about Race and Racism - with Sheila Modir, Ph.D. and Jeff Kashou, LMFT

In today’s episode of “Helping Families be Happy” podcast, host Dr. Carla Marie Manly, a practicing Clinical Psychologist, Wellness Advocate and Author based in Sonoma County, California. She talks to guests Dr. Sheila Modir (Pediatric Psychologist) and Dr. Jeff Kashou (Licensed Marriage & Family therapist in California). They both discuss about how to communicate with kids about color, race and racism. They also talk about their Book – ‘The Proudest Color’.

 

Episode Highlights

• 2:00 – Dr. Sheila says that she has specialized in trauma and understanding racial discrimination across different communities of color.
• 04:00 - Dr. Carla gives out a beautiful description of the book while asking both the guests about the narrative of their book. 
• 06:45 – Referring to one of her favorite pages from the book, Dr. Carla enquires more about emotional identification and emotional literacy.
• 09:25 - Children need to understand that they can have more than one emotion; multiple emotions in one moment can sometimes help explain an ambiguous situation, states Dr. Sheila.
• 11:40 – How does emotional literacy lead to emotional intelligence, asks Dr. Carla.
• 13:30 - A parent can very much understand what their child is going through, even if the child can't necessarily explain it sometimes.
• 15:45 – Dr. Jeff and Dr. Sheila didn't see a book that could speak to a brown child and hence they wanted to put a book out there that was accessible to a broad range of children.
• 18:00 - If you talk about diversity in a school curriculum, children of non-communities of color tend to recognize discrimination more, and tend to go to the teacher and say something about it.
• 20:00 - Children can readily relate to the character of the book and parents can utilize tools like open-ended questions to help build understanding in the child. 
• 22:05 – Dr. Carla points out that even though it is a children's book but she also sees it as a really wonderful learning tool for adults.
• 24:00 – There are numerous people of color who have gone on to do amazing things, whether it's just in a family and local community or school or on kind of a bigger global stage, says Dr. Jeff.
• 26:20 – Dr. Sheila and Dr. Jeff really hope that this is a book that families can learn together, talk together, heal together and understand together.
• 28:30 - Dr. Carla enquires if the resources that they offer at the end of the book will really help them find the most appropriate way to talk to the children at the right level.
• 30:20 – Dr. Jeff suggests few important takeaways for parents who want to help instill more resilience in their child.

Three Key Points

1. This book is a wonderful launching pad for children and adults to be able to learn to feel their emotions, name their emotions, and then express their emotions. Once you learn to describe and express your feelings in healthy ways, then you're able to use all of that insight to use your emotions to work for you to integrate the emotions and then use the emotions to work for you.
2. Dr. Sheila and Dr. Jeff have experienced varying levels of discrimination growing-up being Middle Eastern Americans in America, especially in a post 9/11 world where the level of discrimination increased tremendously towards this population. Now they both are trying to help create a children's book from their experiences.
3. They wanted to be very sensitive about writing a book like this however what helped them feel comfortable was not just their education and background, but also the research on themselves. They’ve included citations in the book and also on their website at the theproudestcolor.com. 

 

Tweetable Quotes

• “Jeff and I are actually happily married; we live together in Southern California.” – Dr. Sheila Modir
• “We enjoyed writing this book honestly.” - Dr. Sheila Modir
• “I'd like to read one of my favorite pages from the book, because you mentioned emotion identification, and emotional literacy.” - Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• “We wanted to write an authentic and honest book based on our experiences.” – Dr. Jeff Kashou
• “We want to ensure that that emotion literacy is a key component of this book.” - Dr. Sheila Modir
• “Once you kind of have the language, you know how to speak English, and then what do you do with that?” - Dr. Jeff Kashou
• “That was the other point why we wrote the book.” - Dr. Jeff Kashou
• “Books like this are so wonderful for beginning the conversation and allowing personal awareness.” - Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• “I do find books to be a magical tool in communicating messages.” - Dr. Sheila Modir
• “I really love that you mentioned the healing one because it's so important, isn't it?” - Dr. Carla Marie Manly
• “The resources are really geared towards children age’s five to eight.” - Dr. Sheila Modir

 

Resources Mentioned

• Helping Families be Happy Podcast Apple
• Dr. Carla Marie Manly Website LinkedIn Twitter Instagram
• The Proudest Color Website
• Dr. Sheila Modir Instagram
• Podcast Editing