Social Justice Parenting “ROCKS!” w/ Dr. Traci Baxley

They are supposed to serve and protect and because of the history of our country, because of things going on, that's you know, unfair. Sometimes the police officer thinks somebody's a bad guy just because of the color of their skin. We have to nuance it for our children so that they don't always say cops for the good guy. You know, somebody else is the bad guy. How Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's Crib. I'm so stoked about today's episode.

It is continuing our much needed work that we began to get into in last seasons of Katie's Crib. I have the one and only Dr Tracy Baxley here today and we are talking about social justice, parenting and this incredible book She wrote that everyone needs to run, not walk, to go get if you are a white mama, if you are a mama of color, if you are a

caretaker in any way. I mean, this book just lays it out for us, like lays out how to have conversations about race and how we can hopefully help our kids generation to just do and be better than mine and my parents before and their parents before them. Dr Tracy Baxley is a professor, consultant, parenting coach, speaker, and

mother to five biracial children. Five children. She's also the creator of Social Justice Parenting and author of Social Justice Parenting, How to Raise compassionate, anti racist, justice minded Kids in an Unjust World. Dr Baxley has been an educator for over thirty years with degrees in child development, elementary Education, curriculum, and instruction. She specializes in diversity and inclusion, antibias curriculum, and social justice education. Thank you so much for coming

on Katie's Cribs. Dr Baxley, thank you for changing the world, and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me and to our listeners. You all Katie's Cribbers who listen know that I always have specialists guests experts on my show to selfishly make me a better parent, And here's one of those examples. So thank you for coming on. Can you tell us Dr Baxley, why did you write this book? What in your personal experience made you write this book. I think it's been a culmination

of life experiences. But there was one in particular incidents in my life as a mom where my son who was having anxiety and really in a place of irrational thinking. He had just been recently diagnosed with O c D, and he left the house in that state, and all of the things that I thought I had taught my kids about saying safe about the world, about racism, about their skin and all those things, it all came crushing down on me like did I do enough? Is me

teaching him this enough to keep him safe? And at that moment, I wasn't sure that me doing that was enough? And it was kind of the turning point. I really believe in this idea of a village and what do I need to do to make sure there's a village around my children, and how I can be a village

for other people's children. I have such goose bumps. There's a part in your book where you talk about it's not just my child, Your children are kept safer by helping other children know about our world and other parents. How do we speak about race to our children. All of this effects our children personally, which is great, But really what's great is it it helps the larger collective

of children. It just became such a community effort. Yeah, because here I am like in this paralyzing fear on the floor in my bedroom, and my kid is now running around in my predominantly white neighborhood, and I am freaking out about is he safe? Did I talk to my enough of my neighbors? Do I know enough of my neighbors and know this is my kid? All those thoughts you know that you thought you've kind of protected them from or that you have prepared them for, it

all came crashing down. Hm. We are misaligned if we think that we are just raising our own kids. You know, I believe in that idea of parenting as activism. You know, the things that we do and set our homes, They're going to show up in public spaces one we or another. And so the question is how do we want our kids to show up in the world and how we want the world to show up for them. I love this and how help us, help us? Help me? Okay?

What is radical love? Yeah? Radical love is this notion that we are loving beyond the people that are in our circles. Right. It's about this idea of really showing up for people in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Right. It's focusing on looking at perspectives, actively listening to other people. It's about seeing the humanity and all of us and let that be the starting space for how we build relationships. And often we we have limits around our love, right,

or we have check boxes around our love. But radical love is about me loving your kids the way I love mine, right, Me showing up for them every day, things that I do, the things that I teach my children. I'm doing that with the thought of how it's going to impact your children. Yes, we are all responsible as a collective. I'm hoping that through this work on Katie's Crib and your book and others like us, our children and our children's children will be in a better, more

radical love place. Part of the book really is talking about how we help our kids to self advocate. It's our job to model for them how to use big emotions in ways that make sense in the social context. In your book, you state this word rocks, reflection, open dialogue, compassion, kindness, social justice engagement are qualities in what you're talking about a pro justice home. Can you tell us a little bit about rocks and where this came from. Yeah, I

don't know where it came from. Like, I don't want it together, right, I'm like, these are all the things that I want to do to make sure my kids are doing for themselves. Right, We're doing in our family, and we're going to do it in the community. It's those three kind of lenses in which we need to practice. How are we doing it for ourselves, How are we doing it in our family and teaching our kids, and then how our family is going out into the world

to teach it. So they're they're kind of like the building blocks of social justice parenting. I think a lot of people, first of all, they get freaked out by the social justice. Right, we're trying to make the words social justice something that it's not. It's not this thing that we have to be on one side or another about. It's not something that we should use to weaponize in any way. It's just about basic human rights. We want everybody to have the opportunity that they need to have

the best life. Right. That's what social justice about. Giving people the basic needs that they need so they can put themselves in the best position possible. Nothing should be controversial about that, agreed. And yeah, so the rocks are really the building blocks on which social justice parenting is built.

It's about this idea of reflecting on our own shit really right, the things that we we are coming to parenting with, being able to separate what's great about it and what we need to get rid of it right in our parenting. The O is for open dialogue and this is like real conversations you have to have with yourself, but being honest and where you are in your parenting, where you are in your biases and your stereotypes are

all the things that you hold. And then how we have these heart conversations with our children often messy, sometimes we don't know how, but we have to have them. It's the only way to get through it and to change the way we all show up. And then the C and the K are compassion and kindness, which go together. Right. The compassion is the feeling the Kindness is the action. How are we showing up for ourselves? Right? That's my heart part. And self compassion is something that I'm working

on every single day. That's the hardest for me. Um, So our kids need to see us doing it for ourselves. We need to be showing up for our kids when they make mistakes, you know, are they forgiven immediately? Do we hold grudges with their kids? You know? We have to think about how we are aligning what we do with the values that we're trying to teach our kids. And then the kindness are the little things that we're building habits around where kindness becomes normalize in our homes.

And then the S is social engagement. So how do we see these things going on in the world. Whatever those things are for your family that are most important, could be an environment, it could be homelessness, whatever that thing is for me obviously, it's it's about racial justice is part of it. And how do we teach our kids to care outside of our home enough to want to make change? Yeah, how do you get them to be proactive? That's what we need. We need proactive behavior.

We were so lucky on Katie's cript to have Dr Lee Beverly Tatum the show, and she said, we're all just walking on this like one of those magic carpets at an airport conveyor belt, and so we're all just walking on this conveyor belt. And if even if you're standing still, you're still moving in a racist world. And unless you walk in the opposite direction of the conveyor belt, that's being proactive, that's being anti racist. And you're like, oh shit, Like okay, I got to teach my kids,

like that's right. How are you active in your community? How do you actively seek change? And that doesn't have to be necessary, it's how it is authentic to you, but it needs to happen. You talked about this open dialogue. What would be dialogue you would recommend children use in these hard and unexpected situations. For example, you have an experience at an eight week boot camp fitness class before you had kids. Can you tell us some how full

ways a child could have responded? Yeah? Yeah. So the moral of the story is the director's child said the N word. And my girlfriend I were the only black people in the boot camp that we had been in for eight weeks, and we thought we were all like family and at that moment, nobody stood up for us. Right, we just felt like, what the heck? You know, we had no allies at that moment and we were caught off guard. But sometimes the ally ship doesn't have to

be anything big. Right if somebody had just touched me on the shoulder to say that I felt that I wasn't invisible, right, that that their presence was was there. Kids can say I don't like the way that feels for me, or I am standing with you. It's not a big gesture in that moment. People need to feel seen and they need to feel protected in a certain sense, right that supported and um, sometimes it's just a touch,

Sometimes it's just moving near. So we could teach our case to just stand next to the person who is being marginalized in some way, and and and sometimes that silence of just standing next to them is enough. I'm a big proponent and role playing. I think we have to say, what if this happens, What are some things that we can do that align with our core values of in our home that stand up for other people,

because that's something that's really important to us. What if your friend says this about somebody else, let's name three things that we can do if this ever happened, What if that happens to you? What can you say back this way? When the kids are in those situations, they don't have to think or be caught off guard because in the back of their minds, in their back pockets,

they've practiced it. So it will automatically. It become automatic after a while because they will already have these things ready, rehearsed and ready to use. I mean, they'll be looking for situations to use it right because they practice them so much. Also, it's important that your kids see you

doing the same thing. So when you see things that aren't right, you should be having those conversations with your children about it, even when you don't stand up and you can say, you know what, I want to talk about what happened yesterday. Remember when we heard that ladies um say something negative about the other man in line. I really wanted to say something, but I was I was afraid that is not the way I want to

show up the next time. So the next time that happens, here are some things that I think I'm gonna do differently, So they know that sometimes fear will get in the way. But we were coming up with ideas to do when when fear takes over and we really want to show up in a different person. HM. As as far as a parent is concerned of how to address being an ally, UM, I think it's even harder for us as parents because we have lived a life where we haven't done it.

Where kids are younger and it may be easier for them to pick up. And what I find often is that as a parent who's learning to walk and do the work, UM, you may not get it right the first time right. But I think it's really important to know if, for instance, in that moment at the boot camp, when no other parents, no other adults stood up for me, it would have been okay for them to circle back around, you know, the next day after thinking about it, or the next week and say, you know what, I didn't

show up the way. I felt so bad. I felt paralyzed in the moment, and I didn't know what to do. Because when you say that you're paralyzed the moment, but you're still thinking about it and it bothered you. That is letting me know that you're open to learning and growing right, and then we can have conversations about what what I needed in that moment and really what I need in that moment. It's the same thing I would tell my kid to do right, stand stand next to

stand with UM, say that that bothers me. I don't feel good using that word or hearing that word that way, or looking at me and saying I'm so sorry that happened. You don't have to have the answers of what to do next, but you can just say I'm sorry that that happened to you. But I think circling back to have the conversation is really important. That's so good. Yeah, like not the worst is just pretending this ship isn't

happening or doesn't happen. That's just like yeah, and we don't like you know, we don't always make the right choices in the moment. But you have to be you have to be big about that enough to say, shit, I screwed up, I should have I could have. I'm trying to teach my kids to do that. UM, let me at least go back and and say something to the person. And sometimes too, you have to go back to the person who said it and say listen, and

maybe you want to do it one on one. I don't know when you said that to to Tracy, it was jacked up. I didn't say anything then, but now that I'm reviewing all the stuff that we said, so we have to confront the people who said the jacked up thing, because maybe they don't realize that it was inappropriate. I try to look at life through this lands of um assuming good intent, right, like he didn't mean to offend me, she didn't mean to offend me, but they did.

So let me explain to them why it was offensive, and hopes that now they know better, they'll do better next time. I think we make things more complicated than they are. Yes, racism, systemic racism is complicated. But if we can teach our kids these little things in their lives that starts to make small shifts over time, it

doesn't seem as big and daunting. Growing up in a household where we you know, we had this nineties household where we had friends that were all different colors, and my parents wouldn't ever have talked about it, and if you did, it was like that's not allowed, Like you don't say the black friend, you know, you just we were like overly washing away any sort of systemic racism like that as long as we all love each other and they're nice to each other, then we're not racist. Right,

That's where That's where I'm coming from. Now, that's a huge step forward from where their parents were coming from, which their parents were coming from, terrible language around people of color. You know, we're not friends with people of color, those sorts of things. And now where I'm coming from is this open dialogue naming race. And it's really been such a blessing to have this podcast and to learn. For example, I was at a cafe with my son.

Outside there was a black man and an Asian man at a table, and my son was like, look, he has black skin. Now I before two years ago, I would have been I don't know what to do. I'm horrified. Is that bad? Is that good? Why am I freaking out? I don't know why I'm freaking out. And thank God for the work we're doing. Like you're talking about small changes.

I say, yeah, he does have black skin. He also has this color hair, and she this woman over here has yellow hair and you have pink skin, and looked at like I started pointing out the people in the restaurant and how they everyone had different things going on about their appearance and that they were very beautiful and things were different. I feel so fortunate to know that I that that is the right move. Yeah, that's part of the reflection piece, like why am I so afraid

of this? Where is this coming from? You know? And um, how do I now start to unravel this? And I think you did great in the pandemic times especially. I feel like a lot of the younger kids have not had a lot of experiences, truthfully, like being out and about because we were isolated. And a few weeks ago, I am on a new television show on CBS called How We Roll and because we're all the show has sort of potted up together because we tested every single day.

After wrap. One day, I said, everyone come over to my yard and let's have like a pizza party. And I let my son stay up late because he was like, holy sh it, they're going to be people over. No one ever comes over anymore. So they're in the yard and the first person that walks in is this lovely actor named Taj Maori. His sister, Tia Maori, was actually

on the podcast. He's bi racial, black and white, and he has very tight, curly black hair and he walked in and the first thing my son says is, look, mom, he has the same kind of hair as the basketball players on television. Okay, so my husband is obsessed with basketball. Basketball is on in my house all fucking day, all night.

So he said that, and I allowedly to Taj, and I was like, I don't even know what to do with this, And I said, I don't know whether i'm I don't know whether I should apologize that I don't have a lot of black people in my house. In the last two years, I haven't had anyone really in my house. And oh, he sees black people on television playing basketball, and that's why he's saying that. Taj was amazing.

He thought it was sucking larrs. He didn't care, but I was trying to like, yes, he has different kind of hair, and some people a sand television also have that same kind of hair. Then Val walks in, who's my co star Pete Holmes wife? And she's incredibly short, like very very short. She I'm not she knows. My son was like, can I play with her? She's a three year old? And I said, she's not a three year old, he said, but she's so so, so small, she's not a grown up, and it became this whole thing.

So talk to me about how I should have handled that situation better and what I should have said. And I think to the pandemic has made everything kind of out of sorts, right, We're all trying to figure some things out in the pandemic that we didn't have to figure out before. I don't think that there's anything wrong with what he said, Like, I think it's our baggage. What he's seeing is totally okay. And I don't think any adult should have been offended by that, but they

weren't be offended. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if we just let go of the fact that it's not coming from us, but it's coming from a kid who is curious and who is trying to figure the world out. I mean, I like to say stuff like that is such a curious question, right. I love that you are using the things that you know to try to make sense of something new. I mean, that is very smart

of you. And it also, you know, just from a real a real perspective, it buys you a couple more minutes to try to figure out what the hell I'm gonna say, right, Like you know. Wow, that is a great question, and um, you know your curiosity amazes me, and um, I really like that question for a lot of reasons. But let me tell you what I think you know and then go on to say what you think. And then the thing the great thing about that is you may get it wrong, but you're kids will always

be open to you. Come back and say, hey, listen, last week when you asked me about miss val thinking she was a kid. Um, I don't know if I gave you the right answer. Tell me what you heard me say, right, So then you get to fill out what they're thinking and what they got and where the gaps are. If you ask me that again today, this is what I would say because I had a chance to think about it, and um, really internalize your curious question.

We get to see how much how much of what we've taught them landed, or where the gaps still are, and what we need to fill in along the way. Developmentally, at that age, kids are categorizing that's like normal developmentally appropriate behavior. And then we're shutting down them categorizing and them noticing same indifferences. Then we're it's really confusing to them because they are doing what they are developmentally are

supposed to be doing. And we put all of our adult issues on our kids being naturally curious, and then we don't want to squash it curiosity, you know, because if they say something about race and you shut them down, we are not perpetuating this idea that race is a taboo topic to talk about. Exactly, you name a number of conversation starters that families can use. This is so helpful.

This is what I love about your book. These are all big, overwhelming, scary things that again, like if you're in my situation, you were raised, like we don't talk about this. But what's so great about your book is that you give us actual life things to do. Who I'm such an overachiever, I'm like, yes, Like this is it? So you name a number of conversation starters that families

can use. It in chapter three People, where parents parents having social justice conversations with our friends with their kids, can you walk us through your favorite Yes, and let me say this too. It doesn't have to be like very formal setting, right, no, right, It should be like whatever we do it in the car. A lot of times we do the putting different hard topics and easy topics in a jar during dinner we pull them out. WHOA,

that's so good. Yeah. So there's light questions sometimes that we can laugh about, and then some of them are heavier that we need to unpack too, finding ways that makes sense for your family. It's something that you should think about, and it doesn't have to be this hardle It's now it's time to talk kind of conversations. Right. We keep hearing this on Katie's ccript all the time that it's not one one hundred minute conversation, it's one

one minute conversations. Okay, so tell us walk us through three of your favorites. I'm trying to think what I wrote in there. I think, um, I like the questions that are very open ended, and I also like things that are relevant to what's going on in the world. So I will, especially with my older kids, I will ask them what are you reading on Twitter these days? Because my big kids they get their news from Twitter, of course. So then that opens up the conversation to

like real news, fake news, what's real happening? And how do we drill a little bit deeper in this, you know? And where do we go with that? So open ending questions are really great because you get to see what your kids already know, um, where the gaps are, what's missing, and where you need to drill, where you need to redirect. As my kids get older, they want to come up with the conversation starters too, which is really cool too.

That's so cool. So you know, like my kids will come up with things like I know my fourth kid is at that stage where he thinks he can have a girlfriend, and I always say, there's no girlfriends to high school, right, So a lot of his questions that he asked are around like what is the appropriate age to start liking awesome a partner? Like? Where where? Where? Does where? Does it state that the sixteen is the magic age to like things? Around the things that he's thinking.

So again, you get to know what your kids are thinking because if they come up with their own questions, it's something that is on their minds. Yeah, and I like this. Uh. Some examples that go back to what I was saying with Albe at the at the cafe that we were at naming race. You know, look at your skin in your hair. That's an example, like I could say to Albie, look at your skin in your hair? What color is your skin? What color is your hair?

And your friend Caleb has black skin, and he has black, dark, dark black hair, and it's longer than yours. And I love how beautiful and different they are. How are they different to you? When we get it spelled out like that, it's just you're like, okay, I can do this, Like I can do this, rather than thinking like, oh shoo am, I just supposed to sit like before bedtime with the

four year old, be like, let's talk about race. Children's literature is a really great way to to start asking these questions, you know, from the point of view of somebody else. Huge, you know, cop and police stuff is huge for little boys. I don't know. It's in the television. It's in the shows we watch. It's in paw Patrol. Someone's dressed like a cop. Because I know about the police, I'm very like, what the fuck like this is like?

And he's a boy and he's into it. One of the examples you give, which I haven't brought up to him yet, is equity, and you can say things like we are white, we don't really have to worry that a police officer might hurt us. In black communities, many people are afraid of the police officers because of the history of being unfairly treated. What age am I going to tell him, like, cops aren't always you know, it's his mind. It's like cops are the good guys and

the bad guys go to jail. My feelings towards police are very complicated. Yeah, I think he is at a great age to introduce that to him. Right. So he's dressed like a copy, has his copy uniform on, and you could talk about the role of police officers. They are supposed to serve and protect. If you're a police officer, how can you serve and protect people? What could you do? Right? They list a lot of things. We can get the bad guy, but you know, sometimes the cops don't always

choose the right bad guy. And because of the history of our country, because of things going on, that's you know, unfair. Sometimes the police officer thinks somebody's a bad guy just because of the color of their skin. Right, So I think him being in that uniform, I don't think there's anything bad with that. I think that we have to nuance it for our children so that they don't always say cops to the good guy. You know, somebody else is the bad guy. But it's kind of an entry point.

It is. It's a great entry point. It is a great Sometimes you know, the cop isn't always the good guy, and sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they are wrong, and they unfairly treat someone who might be a criminal but is actually not a criminal. You know, whatever it is, but just starting these critical thinking in his head exactly, like it's so crazy. Let's he serving who was he protecting. Let's have those conversations. Children as change agents, listen, Let's

look at history. History is telling us everything we need to know. When you look at the Civil rights movement, right, it was the children who got everything started right because the parents were afraid of losing their jobs. They couldn't miss work, they were a little bit afraid. It was when Dr King sat in that church and all the young people, the sit ins, all of those things, that is when the change started happening. They see things as things should be just and they have the end g

That's the other thing. I think a lot of moms and dads and older they're tired, they're coming at you know, it's hard and to have the energy, which we all should. But like kids have the energy to make change be a huge priority in their life, especially if their parents, like you say, are like modeling that behavior and they

don't have that baggage called fear. That's it. Yeah, yeah, we are thinking about all the things that can go wrong and all the things that could be and protecting and and the kids are like, no, this is not right. We need to make it right. It is never too early to have challenging conversations about race and racism. Yeah, never. And your book is so helpful with this, but you

can talk about social justice issues with children. The script goes from preschool to elementary to preteen and teen years. Like we just gave the example for like a cop for a four year old versus that conversation for a white kid who's a teenager, I'm sure is very different. Right, Getting pulled over for you is a different scenario than

getting pulled over. If your friend who is black word to get pulled over by a police, his parents are having very different conversations with him, then we are with you and you need to know that. Just really, Katie, A really great point is that white families have to be having those conversations too, Like your kid needs to know that the conversation of my house is different and why that is and why we still need to have

those conversations. And I think that that gives me hope, Like I talked about that idea of active hope in the book, because there are days that I feel like I don't want to get out of bed, like things are so heavy and things are so like we're going backwards in so many ways. But is that active hope that one person that's following me asked me a question that I helped them get through that situation. One white mom is thinking about my son when she hasn't. She's

having a conversation with her son. These small little ripples are the things that really kind of keep me moving forward. When people say something like I don't see color, I don't think we can learn this enough. It really needs to learn. Why is I don't see color offensive? Because it's a lie. First of all, it's a lie, right, and your kids know it's a lie. They're like, well, mam,

I dou see color. I I can see it. And what it does, really it it negates everything about systemic racism um that we know right, what you're saying to me is my experiences my lived experiences, the injustices that I feel as a black woman is erased, right, Like, it doesn't matter because I don't see any of that.

So by not seeing color, you're really saying that you don't see anything about me, any of my struggles that we can really need to work on as a society when you have just made me and my color invisible. So you're really denying that person their lived experiences when you're saying I don't see color. We can't work on something that we don't acknowledge that we see. Oh my god, come on, guys, yeah, no we can. We are so screwed if we do that. Young children's natural inclination is

to take action. This is I'm quoting you. They want to know what they can do to help. So I have a list of ideas that your family can do together. Can you give us some examples of how we can be practicing outside our home with our families social justice actions? Yes, And like I said, you know, your social justice is going to be different from my social justice. Right. When I work with families, the first thing I do is like, do you have core values? Right? What are the core

values are your family? Are they written down? Have you discussed them with your kids, to say, this is our GPS here, right, These three or four core values are the things that whenever we get off, whenever we don't know what we're doing, whatever we make mistakes, we come back to these core values for them to say, did you answer that from this perspective, then the thing that you do, how you showed up doesn't match with what we say. It's important to us as a legacy that

we're gonna leave. So that's a real proactive thing to do in your home, sitting down with your kids, creating core values, writing them on the refrigerator, putting them up on posting notes. What would some examples of core values be? Okay, So for my family, one of our core values is you are your brother or your sister's keeper. Like whatever goes down with your friends, whatever goes down in the world, whatever goes down with your parents. You got your brother's back,

so you are your brother's keepers. Is one. Another one in my house is we have little phrases to help them remember. But the other one is on your own jump. So you can't come and tell me what your teacher said to you or what your coach said to you. Until you tell me from their perspective first. So first you have to say this is what I did, you know, and then okay, now let's back up and say whether

what they did was appropriate or not. So it's taking responsibility essentially, absolutely absolutely, Yeah, so on your own jump. So those are the things that you either come up with. I mean, your kid is for so he could really start being a part of that. What are these corps? What it is important to our family? Yeah, and those need to be written down, signed off on the refrigerator, on canvas so they will always know that, you know what we I was screaming at you today and that's

not part of our core values. I need a minute, right, I need some space and grades, and then let me figure out how it can come back. You know, that wasn't in alignment with our career values. I'm gonna apologize to you. I was hungry, I was angry, I had a deadline, and you were basically the victim. And I'm apologizing for that. I'm very sorry. But now I want to come back in in in a way that is

aligned with our core values. So coming up with core values, I think it is the first thing that way, you know, what's important to you, so that when you are out in the world, whether it's through activism, through environmental issues, you know, social justice issues, donating toys, donating books, taking care of kids who are hungry, someone who's doing less, those are all great ways to start the thing that's a low kind of low hanging fruit that's easy that

you guys, that lights your family up, is a great way to start that. And then when they are comfortable doing that, that's when you get to more the heavier things. What can young children do if they want to participate in movements such as Black Lives Matter movement and other than marching and toddlers are too young to engage, I think in the internet activism, social media aspect of it.

But what other ways can they get involved? I think you creating diversity in your household, you normalizing black excellence, and the choices that you make your doctors, right, your pediatrician, your dentists, your are are any of these people people of color? Or do they all look like you? Right? So we want those faces to look like the society

at large. Right. So I think when they're too young to actually do things, the way you establish your household around diversity is really important because the messages that that you're sending to them is that we're different, but we're equal. It's your responsibility to expose them to diversity and differences and normalize that in their vives. As we're wrapping up, we always ask, parenthood is messy. That's a great one.

It's joyous and messy. Yes, that is so so great. Yeah, we're gonna get it wrong a lot, but we're going to admit it, and then we're going to take our time and figure out how we would have better liked to have come to the answer, and then come back and have like a nice not so precious conversation where we're open and vulnerable and reflective that we can then take out into our communities to make some active change. This has been so wonderful, so informative, and we appreciate

you and all the work that you are doing. Dr Baxley, thank you so much for coming on Katie's Crib. Thank you Katie, thanks for having me. This is fun. Oh, I'm so glad. We are so lucky to have you. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you got out of it as much as I did, and I want to hear from you topics, guests, things you want to talk about. I am here. You can always find me at Katie's Crib at shondaland dot com.

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