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Key points
- Don't shy away from politics: Experts say election talk handled well aids child/teen development.
- Election education stresses values, communication skills, and learning how to work through disagreement.
- Counter rancor by modeling how to get along and how historic movements met success through hard work.
Even if we limit media, children learn about elections from radio, pop-up ads, classmates, and signage. They absorb attitudes and biases, often without context or information (or disinformation).
“It’s never too early to talk to your child about politics,” Hoyt Phillips, now with Learning for Justice, told PBS during the last presidential election. Political conversations allow children to understand your value system, decision-making, and voting.
When children ask parents about current events, ask “What have you heard?” and “What do you think?” Kids pick up election stress and its strain on relationships. Hecklers interrupting a speaker. Assassination attempts and safety concerns. Charged verbs like “lie,” “stole,” “incited,” and “can’t be trusted,” often used in ads.
This language troubles children, who need to be reminded of fundamental truths. Those are: most people are good and trustworthy, caution is smart for safety, careful choices work better than snap decisions, and helpers lend an ear to talk with or ask questions.
According to the Fred Rogers Institute: “In seasons of elections, it can be helpful to talk with children about what it means to discuss different ideas while still respecting those who disagree with us.”
Especially with rancor and advertising attacks, it’s important to show how discussion and active listening aid problem-solving. Attack ads grab attention. They're only part of what we need to know, or may be exaggerated to emphasize what is NOT helpful to know.
Children and teens benefit from understanding questions you ask yourself, how you find needed answers, and how you determine values that drive your political thinking. Values you impart to kids reveal themselves in reactions they see from your emotions and body language year long.
Explaining Elections to Preschool Children
“An election is a way for all the people in a community to decide who they want to be a leader, in their neighborhood or country. In the time leading up to an election, we get to learn about the different people who want to be leaders in a community,” according to the Fred Rogers Institute.
Fred Rogers was a huge proponent of reading with children, to educate but also to attach and bond.
Most years, titles reflect those running. My Little Golden Book About Kamala Harris as well as Penguin’s Who Is Kamala Harris were written before Ms. Harris became a presidential candidate; Donald Trump in the U.S. Presidents Series is about the only kids’ biography available. V Is for Voting by Kate Farrell is read aloud on YouTube.
This year’s election is history-making. Children can learn that other women blazed this trail, believing in themselves to run for office. Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress by Alicia D. Williams and April Harrison is a picture book that takes youngsters from New York City to Barbados and back to the States where people began to speak up for their rights. Through actions, Shirley rebels against limitations and shows persistence going to college, asking for jobs, and never taking no for an answer. She organizes after-school programs, rallies voters, and wins a seat on the New York State Assembly before doing the same to become the first African American woman elected to Congress.
Elementary-Age Conversations
Allow kids to see you read about current events in newspapers, magazines, and books. Discuss meaningful history and share the emotional impact it had upon you. To counter rancor kids witness, focus on getting along.
“Children really do rely on us to set the tone, to be role models, and to help them know that it is important to us that they get along and accept each other as they are,” Fred Rogers once said. “They (children) certainly understand what it means to disagree. We can help children know and see that even in deep disagreement, we can respect each other.”
Books for this age/stage include Equality’s Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America by Deborah Diesen as well as Lillian’s Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by Jonah Winter.
Show children election actions by taking them to the polls to see a voting booth. Make that plan for election day and initiate play surrounding elections.
If family members have different ideas on what’s for dinner, make signs convince one another and take a vote if you cannot all agree. Keep it light and fun, modeling how to get along.
Another tangible teaching tool is Election Night: Learn Your Way to the White House, in which kids practice addition and multiplication on different sides of the game board. With the Electoral College looming large—its complexity challenging adults—this game features strategy involved in gaining 270 votes to win the presidency as it reinforces math skills. CivicEducator.org ranked it among its ten top election teaching tools.
Teenage Rebellion, Especially With Politics
Up until age twelve, children parrot political views of parents. Enter puberty.
Preteens and adolescents often use politics to define or differentiate themselves. Their choices begin to veer from parents' choices. Grandparents, however, boomers defined by Vietnam and Watergate, may gain a teen’s ear more easily.
Key is listening before sharing thoughts. If you do, incorporate history and culture, making it less personal. Share experiences that shaped your beliefs but avoid telling teens what to believe. Understand rebellion or pushback is developmentally appropriate.
So too, realize adults are still powerful role models. If you’re too fired up about politics, that anxiety or anger could make others uncomfortable, according to the American Psychological Association.
Frame feelings in I-statements such as “Women’s rights are particularly important to me because I remember in the 1970s when a woman could not obtain a credit card without her husband's permission.”
Explanation educates about history, advocacy, hard work, and the struggle for acceptance that met with success. Since teens are visual, the Hulu series Mrs. America explains the women’s movement, featuring pioneers such as Shirley Chisholm, Gloria Steinem, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (subject of a Little Golden Book). That movement indeed made this 2024 election possible.
When it comes to election-season advertising, you can leverage teens' critical thinking ability and encourage them to ask deeper questions:
- Who creates advertising messages? Adults can point out that it’s not always campaigns but PACs, or Political Action Committees, that pool contributions and spend funds for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.
- How are ads trying to persuade? What do these people want me to believe and what’s the context that could be missing when a sound-bite from one candidate is juxtaposed into the ad of another? And, where can we learn facts as opposed to opinions?
Finally, fun at this age includes games, trivia, but more so humor. Teens gravitate to comedians, skits, and impersonations, so use these teachable moments to share likes and dislikes, and even point out where something crosses a line.
Copyright © 2024 by Loriann Oberlin, MS
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