3 Things Every Parent Can Do To Increase Diversity by Johanna Abdo
Johanna Abdo, founder of ELSA och SAM
”Would you buy a book where the main character has brown skin for your child?”
This might seem like a strange question, but the reality is that if you look at your children’s bookshelf, the main characters will probably be quite homogeneous. Today, diversity is unfortunately an active choice among children’s products.
When I browsed the largest Nordic online store for children’s books, only 5 out of the first 100 picture books had a person of colour on the front page. And that’s not really how our society looks today. Books, toys and movies are great sources of inspiration for children when playing and building relations. What signals do we send if a large part of the society are excluded?
Representation matters
Children are smart. You don’t have to say it out loud that some people are “less important” than others - they can pick up that signal from who’s important enough to be represented. The same goes with if you would ask a child how an “evil” person looks like. They all have a clear picture of that. And I’m positive that this image is not based on situations they’ve been in but largely from fairy tales.
There is a reason why children as young as 3 years old tell a friend that he/she can’t play princess with them, because he/she is brown, and princesses are not brown. This is not something they make up by themselves. These are examples of how great of an impact the children’s environment has on their actions and values. These situations are not unusual. Everyone I know with children of colour, including myself, have experienced situations like these first-hand, many times.
Why I started ELSA och SAM
My name is Johanna Abdo, and the above-mentioned situations are the reason I started ELSA och SAM. I’ve always made sure that my children were represented in books and toys that I bought. But the frustration took the better of me, when I 3 years ago was looking for Christmas gifts for my children. I was looking for a superhero t-shirt and I wanted to find a superhero with brown skin. This was unfortunately not possible. One month later I registered a company, and started looking for an illustrator to realize my vision.
Another 6 months later I launched the online store www.elsaochsam.com focusing on children’s products, with the ambition to add more diversity to the market. And finally, superheroes with dark skin are now available for children in Sweden.
With ELSA och SAM I want to raise awareness, and challenge the misconception that diversity is important only for minorities. All children, no matter of the colour of their skin, need to see and understand that we’re all different, but equally important.
I hope you want to join me in creating a change, and work towards an environment for our children that represents all of us.
Here are my 3 best tips to help your children value peoples’ differences:
1. Create awareness
Look through the children books you have at home; how does the main characters look like? Do they reflect different personalities/ gender/ ethnicities, to name a few norms that need to be challenged? Of course, there are other norms that need to be challenged as well, and it’s great if you think about other norms in your life, that also should be challenged.
2. Create a diverse environment
Make sure you have books and toys at home that invite conversation around peoples’ differences, without it being the main topic. By creating an environment that shows different sides of the society, you give your child a chance to ask questions that are important to discuss.
3. Be aware of your reactions and behaviors
Be aware of how you talk about other people. Think about how you respond, when you’re interacting with a person who might not speak your language as well as you do. Or how you react when someone acts in a way that you’re not used to. We all know that children do as we do, and not as we say.
Thank you for reading about my mission, and I hope I’ve raised a new perspective. We can all do something to create change, and if you want to get some inspiration please visit www.elsaochsam.com for fun, creative and pedagogic toys and books, and at the same time adding diversity to your children’s environment.
For more tips and inspiration follow @elsaochsam on Instagram.
If you have any questions or thoughts you can get in contact with me via e-mail on johanna@elsaochsam.com or DM me on LinkedIn/Instagram.
Let’s create a change together!
