By Stacy Fujieda, Education Manager, Front Range
If you could talk to your 4-year old self, what would you say?
“You are worthy.”
“You will be okay.”
“You are perfect just as you are.”
These are affirmations the queer and trans adults I spoke with would tell themselves. These are the words that they didn’t feel or know at the time. Educators have done, and are doing, a disservice. As a student researcher in the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program, I wanted to see how I can make things better. How can I help change the experiences of queer and trans youth?
Queer and trans youth, especially youth of color, have high instances of suicide and self- harm. Children as young as nine years old are seeing this as their only way to escape bullying and the self-loathing they are experiencing. Data gathered from over 50 people who identify as queer and/or transgender, showed fear as coming up in over half of my respondents. This was either a feeling tied to their coming out and/or their present lives. Thinking of a four-year-old child living in fear because of who they are is devastating.
Are we doing a good job talking about different family structures, gender expressions, and sexualities in our early childhood classrooms? We can’t wait until later elementary or middle school to broach these subjects. By then it could be too late. When children enter our classrooms, they deserve to be seen. They have the right to see themselves represented and celebrated through materials, books and documentation. Our classroom should reflect a wholly inclusive community.
Normalization and representation should be early and wide spread. Three- and four-year olds are not too young to understand that love is love and that gender is not only within the binary. Some of them are already living this experience. Children have queer people that they love in their lives. Children have transgender or gender nonconforming people that they love in their lives. To omit these people in their preschool classroom risks pushing these children into a closet that they do not deserve to be in. It renders them, their families, their realities as invisible. Erasure does not protect children, it harms them.
Imagine a world where children are fully validated from birth. Imagine pictures of queer families on classroom walls and books about gender expansive children at story time. If a classroom promoted gender neutral language and talked about Pride month in the same breath as Dr. Seuss’s birthday, what possibilities could occur?! Would it reduce the amount of self-harm caused by feeling “abnormal”? Would bullying and self-hatred decrease? Would children know that they are “worthy” and “perfect just the way that they are”? Would they know that they would always “be okay”?
Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program has changed how I view my Leadership. I never wanted the title, but I do want the responsibility of affecting change. I feel like I can use my privilege to do this Work, not just as a leader but as a human.
“You are worthy.”
“You will be okay.”
“You are perfect just as you are.”
These are affirmations the queer and trans adults I spoke with would tell themselves. These are the words that they didn’t feel or know at the time. Educators have done, and are doing, a disservice. As a student researcher in the Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program, I wanted to see how I can make things better. How can I help change the experiences of queer and trans youth?
Queer and trans youth, especially youth of color, have high instances of suicide and self- harm. Children as young as nine years old are seeing this as their only way to escape bullying and the self-loathing they are experiencing. Data gathered from over 50 people who identify as queer and/or transgender, showed fear as coming up in over half of my respondents. This was either a feeling tied to their coming out and/or their present lives. Thinking of a four-year-old child living in fear because of who they are is devastating.
Are we doing a good job talking about different family structures, gender expressions, and sexualities in our early childhood classrooms? We can’t wait until later elementary or middle school to broach these subjects. By then it could be too late. When children enter our classrooms, they deserve to be seen. They have the right to see themselves represented and celebrated through materials, books and documentation. Our classroom should reflect a wholly inclusive community.
Normalization and representation should be early and wide spread. Three- and four-year olds are not too young to understand that love is love and that gender is not only within the binary. Some of them are already living this experience. Children have queer people that they love in their lives. Children have transgender or gender nonconforming people that they love in their lives. To omit these people in their preschool classroom risks pushing these children into a closet that they do not deserve to be in. It renders them, their families, their realities as invisible. Erasure does not protect children, it harms them.
Imagine a world where children are fully validated from birth. Imagine pictures of queer families on classroom walls and books about gender expansive children at story time. If a classroom promoted gender neutral language and talked about Pride month in the same breath as Dr. Seuss’s birthday, what possibilities could occur?! Would it reduce the amount of self-harm caused by feeling “abnormal”? Would bullying and self-hatred decrease? Would children know that they are “worthy” and “perfect just the way that they are”? Would they know that they would always “be okay”?
Buell Early Childhood Leadership Program has changed how I view my Leadership. I never wanted the title, but I do want the responsibility of affecting change. I feel like I can use my privilege to do this Work, not just as a leader but as a human.