The Unique Challenge of Parenting Black Children... Parenting is a challenge for all of us. But when you’re raising Black children, raising them to be safe, happy and healthy can seem like an insurmountable task. Especially in political times like these. We’ve all seen the videos of Black children being treated unfairly by their schools, in stores, while waiting for school buses, selling water or hotdogs, going to the swimming pool and while otherwise minding their business.
Though these are extreme examples, many parents lay awake at night worrying about how their daughter is really coping with being teased for her complexion and features on the playground. Others wonder how to fill in the gaps in their children’s education about their own culture and heritage. While many parents of Black children wonder if their schools are treating their children unfairly, some worry about both the potentially harmful presence of police around our children in school buildings and the violent appeal of street culture.
Parenting Black children requires us to have conversations with our children and deal with challenges that other people don’t have. Thanks to the world we live in, we often have to consider fears that other parents don’t. That’s may be unfair – but it doesn’t mean that it’s hopeless. It’s also why we created Sankofa Parent Academy.
Our Solution
We created the Sankofa Parent Academy to serve as an online resource for parents raising Black children. This resource will provide parents and educators with the resources they need to better parent Black children in a world that was not designed for them.
Not only will parents be introduced to best practices for parenting Black children – but they will also receive tool kits and practical resources that they can implement immediately in order to make a difference in their child’s life.
Our first course is Moving Beyond the Talk: How to Proactively Address Issues of Race, Culture and Identity with Black Children. This 4 part webinar explores the role that parents play in creating an educational experience that prepares Black children to navigate a world that sometimes treats them as if the don't belong.
The MBT Course Will:
1) Challenge parents to reflect on their own personal background and relationship to issues of race, culture and identity and how that history impact their children;
2) Ask parents to examine the unique conversations that they must have in order to ensure healthy racial identity development and explore limitations of the single “talk’ approach to confronting issues of race, culture and identity;
3) Explore the research on positive racial identity and academic, social and professional success for Black children; and
4) Provide a comprehensive toolkit to empower Black parents to proactively address issues of race, culture and identity in a way that will empower their children to thrive.
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