We are deeply troubled by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many other Black Americans. These events bring into sharp focus the long-standing problems of racism, bias, and inequity in our country. Information related to these tragic events continue to emerge and circulate and are played over and over again in the media.
But how do we explain these events to our children? As adults we struggle to talk about racism, so how should we talk about racism to our children?
In a recent article posted on the website for the Clay Center for Young Healthy Minds, Dr. Mai Uchida, who is a child psychiatrist in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, discusses how she opened up a conversation on racism with her young children.
Mai Uchida, MD is the Director of the Center of Early Identification and Prevention of Pediatric Depression at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She is the Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. As a clinician-researcher, her focus has been on the early identification of pediatric psychopathology. In collaboration with Dr. John Gabrieli at MIT, she has published on the fMRI based biomarkers of the risk for development of major depression.
