💬 Parenting Out Loud: Raising Kids in a Divided World
How are you parenting through today’s cultural and political tension?
More than ever, it feels like everyone is shouting from different sides. It’s hard to know how to navigate the storm, especially when we’re trying to raise critically thinking kids who are thoughtful, compassionate, and brave.
The divide is more than just rhetoric—it’s affecting friendships, families, and communities. How do we share our values while giving our kids the space to form their own? How do we make space for empathy and respectful disagreement while encouraging our kids to be courageous in standing up for what they believe—even when it’s unpopular?
What’s been hardest—or most helpful—for you in raising kids in today’s divided world?
💬 Share in the comments. Let’s talk honestly about what’s hard, what’s helping, and what we’re holding onto. Your approach—or the lesson you’ve learned—might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.
As a parent, I’m deeply committed to ensuring that my kids leave every room better than they found it. I want them to understand that being a productive and engaged member of society isn’t just about meeting expectations—it’s about positively impacting the people and places around them. This means embracing respect, staying open to others' experiences, and continually finding ways to contribute meaningfully to the world.
That said, I don’t believe they need to sacrifice honesty in the name of open-mindedness. Teaching my kids to seek the truth—not just settle for the status quo—is one of the most important things I can do. I want them to understand that truth isn’t about agreement; sometimes, it requires questioning and having difficult conversations.
It’s a balancing act, for sure. I want them to know we can respect and learn from others, even when we disagree. It’s not always easy, but I strive to be transparent about the challenges of walking that tightrope. The key for me is showing my kids that open-mindedness doesn’t mean abandoning their integrity or the courage to stand firm in their beliefs.
For me it always starts with reminding myself and teaching my kids that respect isn’t actually a universal value. We talk about it like it is, but the reality is that its definition is based on context, culture, and socialization. So we have to catch the ways that we perceive behavior and start with curiosity. We live in a community that has a big Korean population, so when Lucy’s interacting with her Korean friends she bows to say hi to show respect, not something she ever does with her white friends. And I always remind her that respect is malleable, it’s earned and lost through folks or organizations choices, actions, and behaviors. So we can lose respect for people, but their dignity, their inherent humanity, is non-negotiable. So if folks do or say things that make us lose respect for them we get to change the relationship or the boundaries, but we don’t get to dehumanize them. I have a cheat sheet bc I do lot of dignity based conflict work, haha. We put names to the actions and behaviors we don’t like, but don’t connect them to other people’s character, as best we can. And, we are a family that fights for dignity, for everyone to feel like they matter, so it’s a lot of thought about how do we do that.