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Multi Racial Families: What Do Kids Need to Know?

Jamie Ivey

"I think adoptive parents have a great role in educated their kids about issues that we have in America today with the racial tensions and the discrimination and white supremacy and all of these things."

"One of the hardest things for me as a mom of two black children is to kind of break my kids' innocence a little bit because I feel like they're pretty safe in my home. I have a really close friend who is a black woman. She said, "You got a great opportunity to break that innocence little by little in a very safe place." As parents who are parenting children who are black or biracial or Hispanic, whatever it might be as a minority race, they have a really unique opportunity to prepare their kids. I think what you might want to is shield them and just cover their ears so they don't know anything, but it does a disservice to them. Every time we talk about racism, you should always go back to what does God's word say? What does God's word say about why this is not okay?"

"I'm pretty passionate telling people who don't have kids that look different than them, so a white mom and a dada and white kids. It'd be really easy for you to go without talking to your kids about these issues because it doesn't affect them like it affects my kids. I think that you're doing your kids and my kids a disservice by not talking to your kids about it. I think everybody, whether you are in a trans-relational family, two white parents and two white kids, two black parents and two black kids, whatever it is, I think we all need to be talking to our kids about these issues and pointing them back to God's truth about why it matter, that people are loved because God loves them."