My oldest daughter is 10, and she’s in that beautiful sweet spot of having a core group of best friends for about two years now. The four of them travel in a pack — going to school events together, planning sleepovers, doing class projects as a group — and my favorite thing is when all four of them are at our kitchen table, telling me about what happened in class that day or rating their favorite Taylor Swift songs. But at 10, they also talk a lot about the world around them. They are in that darling tween stage of feeling confident enough to ask questions about the state of the world but also still loving a game of hide-and-seek. And right now, they still like talking to me. So, when one of my daughter’s besties asked me who I was voting for, I wasn’t sure how to answer.
It’s not that I’m not proud of who I’m going to vote for, and it’s not that I’m a “don’t talk about politics” kind of person. It’s that she’s not my kid. And in a political landscape that has gotten harder and harder to navigate over the last eight years, it makes sense why you’d want to tread lightly before sharing that you’re voting for someone their parents were just bad-mouthing all night.
I had a good feeling my daughter’s friend’s household was voting the same way we were, so I decided to share with her… and then leave it at that. I worried she’d ask me more questions, though — Do I talk her through them? Do I ignore her requests for information? Isn’t this exactly what we want, for kids to question things and ask and feel empowered in talking about issues that directly affect them? — but that was it. She was curious about who we were voting for, and I shared it with her.
And now I’m left wondering how far into a political conversation you can go with 10-year-olds that aren’t yours. I’m sure it’s happened in every election, even before 2016, but is there a right or wrong way to go about all of this? If we want open communication with our kids and our peers, if we want to be seen as the “safe house” and the “safe mom” they can say anything to, do we need to make sure we’re covering these conversations in a specific way?
Socialization & Intention
It’s easy to worry that another parent might find out you talked about politics with their child and lash out, but as Dr. AnneMarie McClain, assistant professor of media science at Boston University, tells me, our children are being socialized all the time — even if we aren’t intending for that to happen. “Socialization isn’t just about what we say, but also what we don’t say. And also really importantly, the outside world is always socializing children, too, and that duality has different ramifications for different families with varying perspectives and lived experiences,” she says.
When I ask her about sharing who I’m voting for with my children’s friends, McClain is clear: It’s not that there’s a right or wrong answer to this; it’s that the answer on whether this is appropriate or not can vary from family to family.
While McClain shares that, based on research, she’s a firm believer in children being able to hear, discuss, and talk about politics in developmentally appropriate ways, that doesn’t mean this is right for every child and family. She says when faced with a situation like this, we should ask ourselves what our goal is for sharing or not sharing. If you’re hoping to share so you can educate a child who is not yours on policies and why you think your endorsement of a certain candidate is the right way to vote, then maybe you don’t need to get involved.
But if you’re hoping to create an open environment and let them feel empowered to ask questions about the things they hear and read and see, think about that intention. “I would encourage us all to remember that we socialize our children around politics whether we explicitly talk about politics and our voting decisions — or whether we stay silent. Socialization isn’t always verbal. By not saying something, or by saying ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ we are still sending a message to our kids and their peers. And what’s important is that we need to think about the kind of message we want to send,” McClain says.
So, what do we want our kids — and their friends — to know? “Do we want to say that politics are off the table, that we have the option to not talk about it, that we shouldn’t ask, that it’s not important for friendships, etc.? Or do we want to communicate and normalize a different approach?
Regardless of varying opinions about the answers to these questions, what’s critical is that we need to make sure that, as the grown-ups in kids’ lives, the messages we are giving — again, even unintentionally or without words — are the ones that we want our kids to not only see from us but to go out and potentially replicate themselves,” she says.
The Omnipresence of Politics
The truth is, our kids are absorbing politics all the time. They hear radio ads; they see clips on TV; they hear adults talking. So, when a child asks about politics, we have to think of it not as a conversation about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump or what policies are or what it means for the Supreme Court, but how we want them to handle this kind of conversation themselves. It’s not just the actual information about an election kids are looking for — they’re watching us to learn how to handle themselves at recess, at sleepovers, at school.
“What do we want them to know about politics and the world they’re inheriting?” McClain asks. “How do we want them to deal with disagreements? Deciding their own boundaries? Thinking for themselves? Standing up for others? These are questions that we need to think about, and that we can have explicit conversations with our kids about, as we and they figure out how to navigate the world today.”
When it comes to handling conversations about misinformation, McClain is also careful to note that everybody is different. What might seem like misinformation to me is not misinformation to the family of the child who repeated it. Instead of trying to educate them on what they’ve “wrongly” shared or trying to make a lesson out of it, McClain says to think again about what kind of behavior and message they want to see from you.
“You can ask kids questions such as, ‘Where did you hear that?’ ‘What made you think that?’ ‘How could we figure out if that’s true?’ You could interrupt the misinformation by saying something like, ‘I’m not sure if that’s true’ or ‘We’re going to need to look into that.’ And then figure out what you want to do later. You could also decide as a family that you are going to combat misinformation about all topics, or some topics, again depending on the level of safety your family feels and what your goals are,” she says.
A Lesson in Diplomacy
But again, if you’re hoping to discuss this as a way to nip some kind of misinformation in the bud, that’s not the right intention. While McClain agrees that the integrity of data and information should always be top of mind, “sometimes misinformation gets personal and relates to identity, for example, and then it can become both more imperative and more challenging to speak up about them. But what if a kid is in the room who shares the identity? What if a neighbor has that identity? What are we teaching our kids if we speak up, and if we don’t?”
Truly, it’s not that talking about politics with your kids and their friends means you should have a homemade debate and start talking policies and tax reform and what’s at stake this election. When your kids and their friends ask you a question about who you’re voting for or why you endorse a certain candidate, it’s them learning how to discuss politics.
“Making sure that kids know that they can talk to us grown-ups is really important since socialization from the trusted adults in their lives can play a major role in what our kids believe and how they respond to situations,” McClain says. While we always want to battle misinformation and keep kids informed, she says it’s really about teaching kids how to tackle that so they can be empowered and equipped to have their own conversations. Whether it’s with their peers or through their own private understanding, giving them the resources of how to talk about politics and what it can mean for different people will do them so much more good than simply knowing who you’re going to vote for.
And then they’ll be prepared the day someone asks them.
