Social Emotional Learning Topic: Stress Management

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STRESS MANAGEMENT: 5 Key Lesson Takeaways

  1. How to Recognize the Signs of Stress: interrupted sleep, not being able to calm down, irritability and overreacting, eating too much or not enough, increased blood pressure. Source

  2. Managing Stress:

    • Take a moment to collect yourself: don’t have to solve everything right in the moment

    • Sometimes, it is more effective to take a step back from the conflict

    • Half an hour to a few hours to re-compose yourself together

    • Consider what you want to say in order to not use stressful chemicals that have been released into your body

    • Source for Managing Stress: (“Avoid, Alter, Adapt, & Accept”)

  3. Different types of stress: productive stress, tolerable stress, toxic stress

    • Productive stress: motivates us. Examples: running a race or playing a game

    • Tolerable Stress: have a buffer-- someone to help you and assist with coping. Examples: illness of a loved one or an injury

    • Toxic Stress: the absence of protection or support. Examples: violent neighborhood or extreme poverty

  4. Is Your Child An Orchid or a Dandelion?

    • Dandelion Children: resilient and will grow in any soil

      1. can get along with many people

      2. slow to recover, slow to warm up

      3. usually able to cope with hardships

    • Orchid Children: highly reactive or sensitive

      1. if given the right support, they can blossom and bloom

      2. sensitive and much more vulnerable to stress

  5. Stress Management Tools and Resources

    1. Harvard University Center for the Developing Child

    2. Headspace, also available for children

    3. Conversations between parents and their children: 52 Essential Conversations by Jenny Woo

Book Recommendations:

Breathe Like a Bear: 30 Mindful Moments for Kids to Feel Calm and Focused Anytime, Anywhere

A beautifully illustrated collection of mindfulness exercises designed to teach kids (and adults) techniques for managing their bodies, breath, and emotions.

The Gardner and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children

Hear one of the world’s leading child psychologists shatter the myth of “good parenting” and help us understand how to best support our children’s needs.

The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive

This is a book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children.

Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Stress Management with Kara

Jenny Woo: Today we're talking about stress management with Kara. Kara has been a High School History teacher for more than 10 years both domestically in the US and internationally in Israel. While getting her master's at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on developmental cognitive neuroscience, Kara has also researched adolescent development stress and mindfulness. Welcome.

 Kara Mohler: Thank you for having me, Jenny. I'm happy to be here. 

Jenny Woo: Tell us about stress management. How do we do that?

 Kara Mohler: It's really hard but it's something that's critical for everyone to figure out for themselves, especially because when you are stressed, it bleeds over into other areas of your life. And if you're a parent that means that your kids are seeing that stress also.

 Jenny Woo: Tell me a little bit more about recognizing that I'm stressed and how do I go about learning what is it that I need and what works for me.

Kara Mohler: Signs either in yourself or things that you might see in your children would be interrupted sleep, not being able to calm down, or being irritable and overreacting. It's definitely a huge sign of stress if you're snapping and reacting quickly to your kids or if you notice that your kids are really irritable. Another major sign of stress can be either eating too much or not eating enough, skipping meals that sort of thing is definitely a sign that maybe you're too stressed. The other physical markers that you see when you get stressed are increased blood pressure. Your heart pounding. Some people get anxiety dreams in the middle of the night and aren't quite sure. That might just be your body trying to tell you that you're stressed and in the body,  what actually happens is that your cortisol levels go up when you're stressed, and too much cortisol over time really impedes your ability to recover quickly with toxic stress if that last for years and years.

Jenny Woo: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and as you're naming all these signs, I can't help but checking off a lot of those myself. And I hate to say this but, I personally as a parent feel really stressed, and I wonder how I manage my own stress and my children's stress. At times, I feel like I need to do my self-care, but I feel really selfish in doing that. What should I do?

Kara Mohler: Yeah, I bet that you and every other parent on the earth feel that way. I think that what you're doing with your cards is so great with your Essential Conversations cards because you've got lots of tips for parents. Remind parents that they can take a moment to collect themselves that they don't have to solve everything right in the moment. Sometimes it's even better to step back from conflict or not react right in the moment if you're upset with something that your child did, but it's OK to take a little while, to take half an hour, to take a few hours to get yourself together and really consider what you want to say so that you're not snapping and you're not using all of those stressful chemicals that have been released into your body to react.

Jenny Woo: It reminded me of research that I recently heard about something like it's actually better to reflect on something that you've done later on than in the moment because your body is calmer, and I can certainly think of plenty of times where I really was kind of mean to my children and to myself. In that moment, not just feeling mean but also feeling guilty of being mean. So that sort of snowball effect of negative emotion. It made me felt really bad like I needed to rectify it, but I didn't know how in the moment.

Kara Mohler: Right. Stepping back is really critical and also just being attuned to your kids. They are looking to you, they're looking to you for their own reactions and so attunement with how they're feeling but also recognizing that they're going to look at how you are reacting for cues about how they should be reacting to the situation. It's also really important to understand. If you're stressed and snapping, even if you're not stressed and snapping with them, but if you're in the car and you've got road rage or you know you're making dinner and you're angry about something in the house, your kids will pick that up.

Jenny Woo: I can't help but ask you this because you were on Jeopardy. You actually won. You did, so no need to be humble that that's quite an accomplishment. I can only imagine being physically standing on that and having that clicker in your head. That is an incredible moment of stress. How did you handle it? What works for you?

Kara Mohler: Thinking back to that moment, it was a while ago, that was almost 10 years ago. But when it did happen for sure I had the racing heart and the palms and everything. I think that what I did in the moment was take deep breaths. Use the adrenaline in the moment but then I remember that after the show was over going to the beach in Santa Monica and just calming down with my mom and having a nice meal, having a nice glass of wine to celebrate. Really taking the time to let that stress drift away because you can't be keyed up so much in that moment.

 Jenny Woo: Yeah, and that actually reminds me of how this could tie into building resilience. Because there are good stress and bad stress. How do you distinguish that tension between the two? And how do you manage it in your students to give them high expectations, but to support them in an age-appropriate and maturity appropriate way?

Kara Mohler: Parents are the most important support system for their kids. But teachers play an important role. As kids get older, kids start to put more stress on their grades on themselves. It's important to understand what the different levels of stress are. There's productive stress, which thinks about running a race or playing a game, something that actually is good for you. A little bit of stress is fine. There's tolerable stress which basically means that you have a buffer that you have someone to help you cope with the stress and deal with it. And that's exactly where parents can come in. If your kid seems a little bit too overwhelmed, then having a parent to be that source of resilience and really to help the child support and to think through ideas and brainstorm what they could do for the problem is really important. The level that you were talking about toxic stress is really something to be concerned about because kids when they're between three and six, it's a sensitive period for the development of their brain. If they're stressed too often, those stress chemicals actually inhibit the growth of some areas of their brain. Parents have actually been shown in that case. Like, let's say a child lives in a violent neighborhood or a child lived somewhere where they're going to be dealing with stress all the time. Parents have been shown to be the factor that can actually ameliorate that stress and improve stress. But I also think that it's important to understand that kids are all different in their stress levels and something that comes from psychology is the idea of a child's temperament, which psychologists have actually said that you can tell this from when a baby is an infant based on crying times. It's something really interesting to look into. But there are kids who are resilient and in the literature, those kids have also been called "dandelion children" sometimes because they'll grow in any soil. It doesn't matter what area they're in, they basically can just get along with everyone they're Sunny sunshiny dandelion and they're really resilient. But there are slow to recover children, slow to warm up, and slow to recover where it takes them a little bit longer to get to know people. They're not super stressed but they're slow to warm up. Then there are children who are highly reactive or highly sensitive where there's lots of crying. Some people might call them difficult, but there's this really nice metaphor for kids like that calling them "Orchid Children," which means that they can be so beautiful, and you know if they're given the right support, they can really blossom and bloom. But they're also really sensitive so they're much more vulnerable to stress. And understanding where your child falls on the spectrum would be a really great idea for parents because you can probably leave the Dandelion child to their own devices a little bit more, and then that Orchid child you're going to need to make sure to support and nurture and really just give them more support for their stressors.

Jenny Woo: I love how you broke that down into different levels of need and in terms of stress. It's incredibly helpful. I mean I can think of so many different examples. For example, I have my three children and I can certainly point out who is the dandelion and who is the orchid.

Kara Mohler: In families, it happens all the time. One kid is an orchid and one kid is a dandelion and it's just...

Jenny Woo: Exactly. There were moments my husband and I were like "what's wrong with this child" or "what did we do wrong." But in fact, it's just who they are and if we could operate from a point of strength, recognizing what they need. I think that is so helpful. As a mom of three, there are certainly times where I would feel like I'm neglecting the dandelion. So, it's kind of like I'm not being fair to my children. But fairness is really everybody getting what they need on a very personal level. So, I love the example of the metaphor. Thank you so much.

Jenny Woo: Parting question: what are some additional tools, resources, information that we can find to learn more about stress management?

Kara Mohler: In terms of resources, I think that one really great place is the Center for the Developing Child. They have lots of information about stress. That's from Harvard University, but if you look them up, they've got really good videos that explain what's going on with a child and also the impact of stress. There are also many great apps for stress. You asked me what I do to destress, and I think that I didn't have all those coping mechanisms in place when I was on Jeopardy, but now for sure, I use mindfulness apps. I really like Headspace and they have it for kids. There are kid packs on Headspace and single packs that really make it developmentally friendly and there are lots of other free software that help your kids breathe and take a moment to consider what's happening to them in a moment of stress and understand their own emotions. I think that your cards will really help parents to have those conversations with their kids and to get great tips on what they're doing.

Jenny Woo: Thank you so much for so many great actionable tips. Thank you for listening to 52 Essential Conversation.

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Social Emotional Learning Topic: Perspective-Taking

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Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Perspective-Taking with Dr. Clements

Jenny Woo: Hello everyone. I'm Jenny and you're listening to 52 Essential Conversations. Today, we have Lindsay Clements joining us to talk about Perspective-taking.

Jenny Woo: Lindsay is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College. She researches how parent-child and peer-to-peer dialogue can impact early learning and executive function. She also has experience working with schools to build and implement learning support programs for struggling students and those with disabilities.

Jenny Woo: Welcome Lindsay. 

Lindsay Clements: Thanks for having me.

Jenny Woo: Tell us, what exactly is perspective-taking and why is it important?

Lindsay Clements: Perspective-taking is really what it sounds like. It's the ability to take another person's perspective into consideration. As researchers, we often think of that in a couple of different ways. One way that we can think about it is more from a visual perspective and understanding that if someone else is standing at a different place in a room or a classroom, that they're experiencing that classroom a little bit differently than we are. So, we can stop to think about what that experience is like for them--what they see and what they feel in that particular position. Another way that we can think about it is more from an empathetic or interpersonal perspective. And that's getting to know a person, understanding that they have different beliefs, likes and dislikes, than us. And understanding that because of that, they experience different situations, different people, even TV shows a little bit differently than we do and stopping to think what that is like for them. These both ways that we think about perspective-taking are important because both contribute to executive functioning and there are two ways that really happen. One is through what we call inhibition. In order to take another person's perspective, we really have to inhibit our own to take a few moments and put ourselves in another person's shoes and think about what this is like for them. The second way that supports executive function is through what we call cognitive flexibility. And that really means that we're switching in our brain between different perspectives. I'm situated in my own perspective. I take a moment to try to understand someone else's so I'm flexibly switching to their perspective and then I switch back to my own. By taking other people's perspective, whether it's from an emotional standpoint or just in thinking about what the space that they're in is like for them, we're supporting our own executive function and we're supporting kids and developing their executive functions.

Jenny Woo: This sounds like a really critical skill and I can already think of examples of when I wish my children could have a little bit more of those. For example, as parents, we've had a long day at work or just running errands coming back and there are times where I wish my children could take that perspective of mine and realize that I've had a hard day, I need a break right. Or, if my twins could understand each other and have fewer fights. Tell me, what can we do at home to encourage and build perspective-taking skills?

Lindsay Clements: One way that we can do it from kind of an activity fun thing to do perspective is to prompt children to do that. We could do that on the go. If we're driving in the car, we could ask our children "what do you think this park looks like for me versus you because I'm in the front seat and you're in the backseat?" Or, if we're at home and somebody is watching a TV show. Whether it's a children's cartoon or a show that you might like to watch, you can still comment on the different characters' emotional states and maybe prompt during the commercial break your child to role play and think about if you were this person in the show and this other thing happened to you, how do you think you would feel? You can also do that with something like a book character or even a character in a commercial.

Jenny Woo: That's great. And I know that role modeling is also very important. What can we as parents do ourselves to role model this type of perspective-taking for our children?

Lindsay Clements: One thing that's important to remember is that perspective-taking along with all executive functions are developmental skills so kids get better at it as they get older. You might want to think about how you can make role modeling more age-appropriate. For younger children, you might take the time to tell them a story in more detail about not only what happened to you in that particular story but how you felt and how someone else felt during it. Kids are beginning to understand that in any given situation there's a lot of different perspectives happening that are all interacting and cooperating. To build a different situation, for older kids you can do the same thing, but your questions might be a little bit more complex. There's a better understanding of more diverse emotions beyond just happy, sad, angry as children get older. You might ask more probing questions like "do you think they felt both happy and sad when this happened to them? What do you think would make them feel better?" And kind of just talking about how perspectives are complex and different things can be happening all at the same time.

Jenny Woo: That sounds great and that actually led me to think about how this is done in the classroom. I can certainly see the type of inquiry-based method done through writing and talking. Tell me what have you done as an educator, a teacher in the schools that you've worked at?

Lindsay Clements: One thing that I have seen a lot of my students enjoy is some of the more project-based learning where children have a lot of agency or input in what it is that they're going to be doing so they can choose a topic, choose how they research it and choose what their final product is--whether it's a paper, an art project, a video, they can work with their teacher to decide what it is that's most important to them and then students can look around and see that other students have different interests for them. Different preferences for how they go about their research for what kind of project that they want to produce and that can help them understand that what I'm doing is important to me for these reasons and I can ask other people what you are doing and why is that important to you.

Jenny Woo: Very useful. Lindsay, if I want to learn more about perspective-taking and even executive function skills. Where can I go?

Lindsay Clements: Executive functioning is becoming a more popular area of research as well as a more popular area of discussion for both parents and researchers in that partnership. There's a lot of resources through different projects, one of which I work on is called The DREME project, D.R.E.M.E. And that's out of Stanford University. There's a lot of researchers working on that around the country. We do a lot of work on the parent-child connection in terms of executive functioning and also as a secondary interest in math. We have a great website that has parent blogs as well as different research projects that we're working on and little blurbs about what those mean. I would encourage any interested parents or teachers, if they have a moment, to look at that website. We also linked to other parent resources or teacher resources that might be interesting for those who want to do a little deeper research on that topic.

Jenny Woo: That sounds great. I'll be checking it out soon. Thank you so much for your time, Lindsey for being here with us. And thank you for joining us for 52 Essential Conversations.

Diversity Equity Inclusion Topic: Model Minority

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Asian American Books & Read-Alouds:

(CHINESE) Uncle Peter’s Amazing Chinese Wedding by Lenore Look & Yumi Heo

(KOREAN) Dear Juno by Soyung Pak (author) & Susan Kathleen Hartung (illustrator)

(KOREAN) Bee-Bim Bap! By Linda Sue Park (author) & Ho Baek Lee (illustrator)

(JAPANESE) Suki’s Kimono by Chieri Uegaki (author) & Stéphane Jorish (illustrator)

(INDIAN) Hot Hot Roti for Dada-ji by Farhana Zia (author) & Ken Min (illustrator)

(FILIPINO) Cora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore (author) & Kristi Valiant (illustrator)

(CAMBODIAN) A Path of Stars by Anne Sibley O’Brien 

Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Model Minority with Dr. Wu

Jenny Woo: Welcome to 52 Essential Conversations. I'm Jenny and I'm sitting next to Judy Tzu-Chun Wu who is a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD in US History from Stanford University and previously taught for 17 years at Ohio State University. Her research and teaching focus on analyzing intersecting social hierarchies such as those based on race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. She is particularly interested in understanding how individuals form identities and navigate social and equalities. She has authored multiple books including Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. Her current book projects explore the political career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color U.S. Congressional Representative and the cosponsor of Title IX. Welcome, Judy.

 Judy Wu: Thank you so much. I'm excited to participate in this conversation.

Jenny Woo: On this topic of implicit bias, when I saw your work, I said I must interview her and I'm really curious about your definition of what Model Minority means.

Judy Wu: I think this question about how Asian Americans or Chinese Americans are perceived in this country are very much shaped by this idea of the model minority of being model minorities and that idea assumes that they are the best among all the marginalized groups, which automatically pits them against other marginalized groups particularly African-Americans, Chicano Latinos, and American Indians. The assumption is that for Asian-Americans that they have worked hard, they have strong families and that they have achieved educational success, economic success, and they have done so without having to advocate for change and without having to have government intervention. 

Judy Wu:  And the idea of the model minority really upholds this idea of the United States is a meritocracy a place where anybody around the world can come in, and if they work hard, they will achieve success. This representation really erases systematic discrimination in races as well. The activism that Asian American communities have engaged in.

Jenny Woo: That's a great definition and it puts the onus on the individual: "well you know so-and-so can do it and this is how it's done. If you just put in more effort and time this American dream is going to arrive." Tell me more about your involvement in this. How how did you personally decide that this is your vision, and this was important for you.

Judy Wu: I am an immigrant, so I came to the United States when I was 6 with my family and we grew up in where I grew up in Spokane, Washington, which is a predominately white community. And I definitely felt like an outsider. Like a lot of immigrants, my family experiences downward mobility. My parents were more professionals in Taiwan but in the United States they worked really long hours in restaurants and convenience stores, and they relied on family labor. I grew up helping my parents run these family stores and just experiencing being made fun of or feeling like an outcast because of language or food or cultural practices. And I didn't really initially have this the language or the concepts to understand what we were experiencing until I went to college and became exposed to ethnic studies classes. Taking classes on Afro-American literature or Latino politics and advocating for Asian record studies classes so that we could learn about each other's histories and cultures and understand where we fit within the United States and how our very presence in many ways challenges fundamental ideas about what it means to be American.

Jenny Woo: Tell me more about where we fit. This checking off the box and creating our own box is such a hot debate these days given the political context. As a parent and an educator, what do you say to your students or your children?

Judy Wu: I teach Asian American Studies at UC Irvine and I really emphasize that Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders have a very ambivalent relationship to the U.S. nation. 

Judy Wu: Before we were model minorities, we were aliens and eligible for citizenship or we were nationals because the United States had colonized places like the Philippines or different parts of the Pacific Islands. We were actually excluded from the nation. It didn't matter how long people had been in the country, but they can never become U.S. citizens under the category of alien and eligible for citizenship or they were unequally incorporated so they were not aliens but they were not citizens either.

Jenny Woo: That position of being marginalized and excluded that still persists even though there is now the representation of model minority. So when the United States engages in economic competition with Asian countries--when engages in wars in Asian countries those fears about Asia or this idea of Yellow Peril recurs and so I think the current day position being made of minorities in some ways still carries with it this fear of yellow peril that we are somehow better and more competitive that we can be a threat. Whether it's in schools whether it's in the economy, whether it's national security, I think schools are a particularly important site for trying to understand and navigate some of those racial tensions. Our population within schools are so diverse now. And sometimes the curriculum hasn't quite caught up to the diversity of the student population. I see efforts by schools to do so to really think about the diverse histories of people who are here but sometimes they're not as well equipped addressing those issues. And so those tensions can either continue to simmer or they can be exacerbated, or they can be addressed within schools as well.

Jenny Woo:  I'm really curious as far as what's addressed within schools, and what you think in that sense. But I'd love to share a little bit of my personal background on this topic. I immigrated to the United States, to Texas when I was almost 10, not knowing a single word of English or alphabet, and trying to fit in.

Jenny Woo: I really struggled, and I really tried. And I remember the first day of school there was a math problem. Of course, this is very stereotypical because we had learned more math earlier and more intensively in China. I raised my hand and used my fingers to give it a number and that maybe only a couple of numbers that I really just learned. And over the years I was one of the two Chinese students in the ESL class at the time. But later on, I begin to notice this tension within myself of trying to cover what I was really good at, so that I can fit in. But in other senses, using those values to show that I'm good at something by standing out. This tension--if that also carries within schools and for other students. So now going back to the question: how do we address this in schools? What can we do? What are some of your thoughts?

Judy Wu: Yeah, I think the pressure or assumption of being model minorities is very much experienced by Asian-American students. So sometimes they're a subject of resentment because other groups feel like: "well how are they able to succeed? Apparently so easily that it's somehow inherent to their culture or to their group." And then, there are also students in which learning doesn't come naturally. Right. And even if they are of Asian-American background they're assumed to succeed but they struggle whether it's with math or science or with language. And in some ways, they're seen as disappointments because they're naturally assumed to be culturally and educationally successful. And that can cause real issues because maybe the school does not provide intervention support programs for those students because they don't recognize that they need that it can cause issues of mental distress among the students. And I definitely see that even at the college level. People having difficulties with sleeping, with family community pressures. It is there's a host of issues that arise because there are assumptions of Asian kids being out of minorities. In terms of what can be done, I think to really consider the needs of and of those students not as a cultural group or as a racial group. But in terms of what they need to succeed educationally.

Jenny Woo: That's a great point. And there are certainly specific language or questions that I can think of that parents might ask or even comparisons: "So and so you know is doing this and why aren't you doing it?" that type of thing really sets the pressure and frames the sense of normalcy and that is really individually based and contextually defined then as a cultural group. So now let's put on the parent hat, what are some things you've learned as a parent raising children in today's age that the difficulties that you have noticed them encountering? How do you mitigate that?

Judy Wu: It's interesting because my children who are now 11 and 15, they grew up part of the time in Ohio, which is a very different demographic compared to Orange County.

Judy Wu: And we also spent a year in Germany and so they've been in different types of educational environments, and the neighborhood I lived in Ohio was a very close-knit when we would go to the neighborhood library and the librarians all knew the names of our children. But at the same time, it was rather relatively racially homogenous. I remember when I first gave birth to my older son and we were just taking a walk around the neighborhood. Someone came up and said oh he's China or they might have even said it's China. It was just was not a kind of cultural understanding about how to address a child or a parent of an Asian child.

Judy Wu: Also, my husband is not Asian-American, and so we've had encounters where people have asked if he was the parent of our child, who's been a phenotypically mixed, They just assume that the father could not possibly be the parent of the child. There's that type of just daily encounters I guess you can consider the micro-aggressions although I think when you experience that they don't feel like micro.

Judy Wu: And I think sometimes that is part of the children's reaction sometimes they're not.

Judy Wu: Sometimes children are really oblivious to racial difference. That doesn't mean they learn over time. In Orange County, it's a very different setting.

Judy Wu: There is a lot of different Asian-American communities. And that's one of the reasons why I was really excited about moving here. In the school districts where we're in, these are well-funded well-supported schools.

Judy Wu: And I don't know if the students are still having those types of conversations about race and racial difference in the classroom because even when there's a larger population, there could still be those types of conversations about differences. I'd like it when my kids form relationships with both people who look like them and who don't look like them. We come from different backgrounds, who can share their interests. I went on a field trip with my younger son. They went to Riverside. I can't remember the name of it but it’s kind of like an orange citrus museum and it documented the history of the orange industry in California. But it wasn't just like a kind of a great People's History of the Orange County know, the orange industry. It wasn't just the white Anglo pioneers that created it, but it was really also about the people of color, who worked in the fields who harvested the oranges.

 Jenny Woo: And that included Asian immigrants Mexican Americans. And it also talked about the ways in which the orange traveled around the world from southern China to end up in the United States. So, I really appreciate that type of history, which I think is a much more inclusive one, in terms of race, in terms of class, and in terms of having a global understanding of how we experience what we experienced today. I really appreciate those efforts in the school district and in public institutions and public museums.

Jenny Woo: These are such concrete examples of what we can do as educators and parents to really showcase this inclusion in terms of how we describe the history of something or even the creation of a product--all the players that have participated in it in different capacities. And it's interesting you mentioned earlier: we might be alert and some of these implicit biases the undertones of micro-aggression when our children are happily oblivious to that and so, my last question is: "when is the right time or if they're just oblivious and so inclusive themselves, is it necessary to highlight that? How do you deal with that? 

Judy Wu: That's a really great question. I think for some families it's not a choice. I think about the anti-black violence that has been committed by both the police and everyday citizens. And I think in those settings it will be very hard for the parents not to tell their children as soon as possible about what it means to be black in this society. You know I think I look for opportunities to try to engage with my kids. I can't remember which child it was coming home and talked to me about what they were learning in school in terms of the civil rights movement and segregation. But they described it as black people not wanting to be on the same bus or share resources like white people.

Judy Wu: And I don't think that's what the school was teaching them. But in their minds, that's what they got. I felt like I was "no no no. Let me explain segregation."

Judy Wu: Or my son recently was doing a project related to imperialism colonialism, and I think there's this liberal approach like let's talk about the benefits of imperialism, colonialism, and let's talk about the negative impacts. I'm like No. There are no positive impacts of imperialism colonialism at least for the people who've been colonized. There are more nuanced ways of thinking about it. But I think sometimes you just have to kind of call out.

Judy Wu: Racial hierarchy racial discrimination. And sometimes popular culture is a way to do this as well. When we lived in Ohio, there was a neighbor who's white and who had adopted an African American child. And Similar to I think was Kung Fu Panda 2 have come Fu Panda 3, where Po didn't realize that he was adopted but even though his father's a goose.

Judy Wu: My son's like "Oh! I didn't realize the child was adopted!" Right? In his mind, there doesn't need to be an explanation about the parent and the child having different racial backgrounds. In some ways, I like that that he doesn't assume that there's no biological connection. But it's also an opportunity to think about how we construct race or how do we define race. I think it's really important to try to engage in those types of conversations with children when there's an opportunity but also when there's a need. 

Jenny Woo: Well said. Thank you so much for your time, Judy.

Judy Wu: Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Jenny Woo: And thank you, for listening to 52 Essential Conversations.