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In this solo episode, Lindsay talks about how to approach current event conversations with your children at home. We delve into the importance of guiding your children through these conversations instead of letting them go to other, potentially unsafe, spaces to talk about things.
Using research-backed strategies and tools, we talk about creating an environment where kids can express their emotions and align their understanding with family values. Listeners will discover how to inspire active family engagement in social issues and nurture curiosity through creative outlets like sci-fi and fantasy. The goal is to equip families to enrich their dialogues and support their children's development in our complex world. Why? Kids need us—both parents and educators—to talk to them. If we don’t, they will find other places to go, including online spaces that are unsafe and might radicalize them. By fostering home environments where children feel a sense of belonging and emotional safety, children can have authentic, real, and honest conversations. This preserves humanity and prevents potential harm from predatory online communities. What? Lindsay promotes the head, hand, heart model when approaching conversations with children about current events. This refers to the idea that a child is a whole person, a whole human, and their mind, emotions, and actions are all engaged with these big topics. Keeping that framework in mind, here are some ways to begin conversations with your children: Step 1: Begin conversations by naming feelings. Ask children how they feel about a topic and where in their bodies they experience these emotions, especially if it’s hard to put language to their emotions. This helps create a safe space for dialogue. Step 2: Discuss values. Encourage children to identify how a topic aligns or conflicts with their values. Ask: Why is this important? How does it support or go against your values? You can also remind them of things they value and bring relevant connection points (e.g., “I know you think it’s important when your friends and family are honest with you. How does this relate to honesty?”). Step 3: Encourage questions. Ask children what questions they have about a topic. By encouraging them to ask questions, you are opening up a space for them to process and dig a little deeper into a topic. This promotes critical thinking, even as they grow older. Similarly, parents can ask open-ended questions back to their child to keep the conversation going. Step 4: Take action. Explore ways to engage in community initiatives or brainstorm creative solutions, especially those you can do together as a family. Encourage reading; sci-fi and fantasy are great ways to open up conversations about new ideas and possibilities, because they break free of the realistic constraints of our current society. You can dream with your children about what things could look like in your own context. Step 5: Use the color question brainstorming strategy, developed by Dr. Laura Lipton (listen to her interview on episode 220). If you’re in a conversation with several people, brainstorm your questions based on three colors. Green is for imagination and possibility (e.g., “What might happen if this policy is pushed through”), red for facts and data (e.g., “How many people have benefited from this initiative?”), and blue for opinions and values (e.g., “What’s the best way to address this issue?”). This can help spark vibrant family discussions. Final Tip: If you get stuck during a conversation, it's okay to be transparent and take time to reflect or research before continuing the dialogue. Be truthful and honest about where you are—it’s always okay to come back to the conversation again. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Staying Engaged in Difficult Conversations handout with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 236 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Hello and welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 236. And today we're talking about approaching current event conversations with your kid at home as part of a month-long family series to support families, and thinking about how to support kids in all sorts of things Current events, topics, how to discuss politics or quote unquote controversial issues, social studies, content they may be learning about in school, ela, book themes that are emerging from books they're reading in school, interpersonal conflict, conflict with friends, conflict with family members, conflict at school or with the institution of schooling or with a specific teacher, other life things like what's going on with their bodies as they go through out of lessons, like whatever the thing is that you want to talk about with your kiddos. We want to support you in talking about that thing with your kiddos, and so let's dive into today's episode and keep in mind again, it's going to be a month-long series and I think you know we'll see how everyone feels. But I would like to bring it back as a recurring series as well, because we want to support holistically everyone in a child's life, not just educators, but families as well, so that we can truly partner as a family school partnership. So let's dive in. Kids need us to talk to them, otherwise they're going to find other places to go. Basically, I'm talking about online spaces that are unsafe, that might radicalize children, and there is going to be a link in the blog post version of this podcast episode to some research. It's summarized nicely in an NEA Today article, so I'll link that one. 01:33 But the person being interviewed here in this, amara Stapik-Araez, says when educators fail to engage students on issues that matter to them, students will look elsewhere, and I say this a lot in terms of education and teachers, but I also want to say it to family members. Right, I think, wherever we can have conversations in spaces that we perceive as relatively safe, in spaces where we have a sense of belonging or we are connected emotionally, relationally, to others, that's the space that the kids are going to have the most ability to be honest, to be curious, to really investigate what they're feeling or thinking, think about what others in the conversation might be feeling or thinking, and have like authentic, real, honest conversations that get at truth and preserve humanity. Online spaces do not always do that and in fact, many are predatory. Many communities or communities are used as kind of hubs, like YouTube or TikTok are used as hubs to radicalize particularly young boys. I think there's a lot of research on that, but I would imagine everyone who does not feel a sense of belonging and an opportunity for conversation in spaces in their daily lives, their families or their school systems, and so they turn somewhere for those conversations and ultimately are harmed right, or are harming others, or both right. So, keeping all of that research in mind and knowing that we want to create spaces for real conversation where students can explore and children can explore what they're thinking and feeling, let's talk about some practical entry points. So I've been thinking a lot about kind of like a head, heart, hands model that has been present in education and people have talked about this with teachers a lot. We talk about the whole child and the head, heart, hands, elements of just, you know, being a human. I mean let's kind of use that framework to approach the conversation. 03:33 I think often not always, I will caveat this not always, but often it may be easier to start with, just like name the feeling. So how are you feeling about? This is a question that you could ask a child. Right, they bring up a topic, or even you bring up a topic. There's like hey, I noticed this was happening or I saw this in the news, like how are you feeling about this? And obviously all of these questions are dependent on the age of the child, but I will say that they're generally applicable, with some modification. Or you know, selecting particular questions from this list, that we'll go through all ages. You know, like preschool to college, and so I think about you know I want you to think about you know, whatever kid of your age currently is as you're listening to this or engaging with this blog post, you know what would work best for your kid and then go from there. But generally, name the feelings. How are you feeling If you can name the feeling and if you can't, or even if you can, it's also an interesting companion question, I think, to think about. 04:31 Where in your body do you physically feel it? So sometimes I can't name the emotion but I can say, oh, I feel that in my stomach, like I feel that in my gut. My gut is like churning. My stomach feels like it's on a roller coaster. It's flipped upside down right or wow, my head hurts. Even trying to think about that intellectually is like what, like I'm so confused or kind of in a disorienting dilemma. As the change researchers say, you know, my head hurts or I'm feeling, like I may be, my fingers are tingling, like I'm really energized to like do something physically, like I want to make change happen or whatever the thing is Right. So you might be able to anchor in where in your body you're feeling it and then a kid might be able to identify how they're feeling, like name a motion, but I think, name the feelings first. 05:17 You could ask students and children about their values. I say students because I'm always talking to educators, even when I'm talking to families. Children, students, identify your values. So, for example, okay, the topic has been broached, why is this important to you? So, if a child brought it up to you, why is this important? Or how might it go against or support a value of yours? So I know you value, you know your kids, or you can invite them to name what they value but I know you value honesty. You really think it's important that me and your friends and your family are honest with you. So how does this, you know, relate to honesty, right? Or how does it violate honesty? Oh, someone lied to you. Oh, I know honesty has a core value of yours. Gosh, that's really frustrating. I could see why this is important to you, right? So, again, as much as they can lead the conversation, great. And then at times you may want to jump in and kind of, in that example that I just went through, kind of help them along or model for the first kind of time you're thinking through this and you'll all find your way. Right, we're learning this, as they're learning, and we're all learning how to engage together. So those are some heart questions, right, name the feelings, identify your core values. 06:25 We'd also get into some head questions. So, literally, ask the question what questions do you have? So, oh, yeah, I saw that on the news. What questions do you have about that? Or I heard that, yeah, you and your two friends got into an argument at lunch today, like what questions do you have about that? Or the school made this new policy. Oh, I bet there's a lot of questions that are coming up for you, like do you want to share some of them? You also can engage the head by thinking critically. 06:51 So what might be the underlying need? So maybe you're talking about a quote-unquote controversial issue where there's kind of a polarization of two sides or two political parties, maybe in the news, around a legal issue or some sort of policy initiative. So you might invite them to think critically and again, think about what age they are. But what might be the underlying need? What does that person maybe need, that person who's pushing that policy, or that person who demanded that thing or took that action? Like, what did they need? Like what do you think that they were missing? Or feeling like they didn't have? What were they trying to get through? That action, right? So again, scaling for language based on how old your kid is or how ready they are to engage with this. You could also do this with an ELA text, right? Oh, you're reading a story in your class. Yeah, that character took that action. That's interesting, you know. You might be reading the book along with them, so you may have a little bit more insight into all of these pieces. But what might be a reason why that person did that right? What might they need? What might that person value, right? 07:46 So, kind of at a higher level high school level I always talk about like safety versus freedom is a very big uh kind of like. Both needs are necessary or both values are necessary for society. We want to have safety. We want to have freedom. So in a conversation about gun control, right, like, okay, so this person seems to be valuing safety. Well, safety is really important. This person seems to be valuing freedom. Freedom is really important. Like where? And then that's an entry point, right to the conversation where can we find an optimal balance, what's a good balance between those two things? What does that look like for you? Right, Okay, we also can engage the hands in the conversation. And again I say, the heart isn't easiest and I go heart to head to hands, like just how I work. But other kids might want to start with hands and then kind of bounce around, like to head to heart and, you know, enter wherever your kiddos are. 08:34 So hands, you know, maybe think about what can we do as a family to take action about this? So this is really upsetting you. Is there anything I can do or we can do together? Is there anything you can do in your local community that you can think of? How could we address this problem? Right, if it's a social issue, for example, often I find that it's helpful to support a local community initiative versus to kind of start your own. There's usually something in your local area that is already in existence that you can contribute to or volunteer at or contribute money to or raise awareness of through whatever relational or social media platforms you have. 09:10 You could rate an op-ed so you can kind of process your feelings with your kiddo, and then you know, particularly if they're younger you could be the person writing it, or the kiddo could be the person writing it if they're older, then publish that or send that to a local outlet. You can also just explore or brainstorm creative solutions. If you're not quite ready to take that step to action, or you're just not even sure, maybe, what that action looks like, or all of the action plans that seem in front of you just feel like they don't quite meet the mark and you're like I think there's something different we should do, to actually do something that hasn't been done before, or creatively think about an approach to this problem, then you could just simply, you know, hang out in the explore or brainstorm creative solutions phase first. So that might mean reading together. 09:53 I often like sci-fi and fantasy novels as a way to open up conversation about what is possible, because often they break free of the realistic constraints of our everyday society and they come up with some amazing ideas, right, and then we just have to think about how do we bring those to real life, how can we take elements of that? What do we like about that? We could also just dream, right, just like dream up what that could look like and create our own, you know, short stories or novels. If you're very ambitious and kind of like creatively dream up what is possible without the confines of reality, because art is also really important, and that's another way you can do it. Right, it doesn't always have to be writing. It can be drawing, painting, some sort of art and creative art project where we're envisioning the possible together through art. 10:43 Now I had an awesome conversation with Dr Laura Lipton, who was the co-author of Groups at Work, a book that we featured on this podcast earlier, and we talked particularly to teacher leaders in school systems. But I want to bring a strategy that they recommended in their book to this conversation, because I think one of the hardest things, right we said this at the top of the episode. I said this invite students to think about the questions that they have. So if you ask your child, what questions do you have about this? That, in my experience, particularly with the investigating history curriculum implementation in Massachusetts this past year in school year 24, 25,. That was one of the hardest things that the researchers at Tufts University, part of the Circle Project, found in their research of this curriculum implementation around grades three and four specifically, but also grades five through seven. Search of this curriculum implementation around grades three and four specifically, but also grades five through seven, generating questions for kiddos was one of the hardest inquiry-based routines to do out of all of them. So looking at hard sources like yeah, that was hard but actually not as hard as creating questions, synthesizing and putting it together, making a claim, that was hard but not as hard as generating questions. And I think about you know all the research for you know three-year-olds, for example, ask however many it is now I can't even remember 300 questions a day or something like that and after a lot of schooling and society and let's be honest, I will raise my hands here to say that as parents we can't always answer all of the questions so through all of that lived experience, students and children kind once they get older, and so knowing that, you may want to think about an approach to inviting questions or modeling questions for your kiddos so that they are more able to do something like that. 12:29 So here is a strategy that Dr Laura Lipton suggested, so it's called color question brainstorming, and I can envision this at, you know, like a dinner table or something with a family where you have like two or three people or more, kind of taking turns and rounds here. So, brainstorming, they suggest a group of four. So if you can, great group of four. If you can't, you know whoever you have and you're going to list, kind of all of your questions based on these three color categories and then you're going to highlight the most relevant questions. So there's a little bit of critical thinking as kind of a part two, but the first part is to write questions on these three categories. 13:08 Green, green questions are about imagination and possibility. So a nice sentence starter for a question that's green might be what might happen if, right. What might happen if this policy gets pushed through, right. What might happen if we, you know, contribute to this local community initiative, right? Next color is red. Red questions are facts, figures or data. So question sentence starters here might be how many or how much, right. How many people have been affected by this social issue? How much money will this cost our city or town to invest in this cool project that I dreamed up. 13:54 Blue questions are opinions, values or needs. So why is this? What's the best way to Our question? Sentence starters here so why is this? What's the best way to Our question? Sentence starters here so why is this important to me? Why is this important to that person? Right? What's the best way to address this issue? What's the best way to hear from and gather input from many community members to make an action plan to move forward, right? 14:17 So again, this is color question brainstorming from Dr Laura Lipman and Bruce Wellman, and the categories are green for imagination and possibility, red for facts, figures and data, and blue for opinions, values and needs. And this is awesome because they're all different types of thinking. Your brain is activated in different ways. I can even actually see them now, literally as I'm recording this. I did not think about this prior to talking through this in this moment, but it actually, I think, mirrors some of the head, heart, hands as well, like what kind of things are you talking about? Are you in your head like the red facts, figures, data? Are you in your heart where you're thinking about the blue kind of opinions, values, needs the blue kind of opinions, values, needs. Are you in the green of like taking action with your hands, like what's the imagination or possibility? Oh, that's so funny, okay, well, there we go. It all comes back together. 15:12 So, as you have these conversations, if you get stuck, I just want to say, as a kind of final piece here it is okay if you get stuck, if you don't know what to say, if you just want to take a minute and say, hey, I'd love to talk more about this with you. I'm not sure what to say here. Just be truly transparent and honest. I need to do a little research or I need to think on that. That's a great question. Come back to it. You can always do that. 15:30 In fact, I will link a free resource that we developed for a nursery school, actually for preschool, preschool and for the family members there. It's called Staying Engaged in Difficult Conversations. It's a quick handout, so feel free to reference any of the tips on that sheet. You'll find that at today's blog post, lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 236. They also want to say we are opening EduBoost, our Slack-based coaching community for educators up to families, and we're super excited about it. So me and my colleague, cara Pranikoff, are here for you If you have any questions and you get stuck. You want to return to the conversation. You want to even take a brief five-minute pause from the conversation and Slack us and see if we're on in that moment. We'll get back to you in 24 hours with a response or relevant resources for your questions. So, families, we are here for you. Let's keep supporting one another. I'm so excited to learn more about how these conversations are going at home with you and your kiddo, and stay tuned for the remainder of this month's series on families.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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