Updated: Aug 28, 2020
Book Author: Robie H. Harris
Illustrator: Michael Emberley
Titles: It's Not the Stork (Age 4+) It’s So Amazing (Age 7+) It’s Perfectly Normal (Age 10+)
Genre: Children's, Non-Fiction
General Note: I’ve read all three books but explored It’s Not the Stork the most, so that will be the focus of this review.
Content Warning: Child Sexual Abuse Gender Identity
Review:
Did you know sex education starts in early childhood? In the United States we have this collective idea that sex ed is a birds-and-the-bees lecture that happens once in adolescence in pairing with a classroom lecture about abstinence and all the diseases we’ll get if we don’t practice it. It’s been vulnerable for me to share these books with children. It’s so ingrained in me that we don’t talk about sex in “polite company,” which includes everyone except our sexual partners, apparently, and sometimes not even them. The thing is, I don’t want to be “polite company” as a nanny or parent. I want to be someone with whom the child feels safe around any conversation topic.
I’ve done my best to keep a neutral tone while reading these books to children. I want to present them with the same normalcy I’d present a book about dinosaurs or how a house is built. It’s been a self-development journey as much as a journey as an educator, to see where my social conditioning is, how I brace myself to read the sentence about how a person with a penis gets an erection and puts it into the person with a vagina’s vagina. Reading that section, I’m ready for the 4-year-old to have a big reaction and...there isn’t one. It’s not a big deal unless it’s made to be a big deal. Children love the truth, and I believe they have a right to it.
The young children I’ve read It's Not the Stork with have been especially interested in the anatomy pages of the sex identity they associate with. The song “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” is great, but not exactly comprehensive. Children also seem to love the pages about babies and specifically how a fetus grows. They’re processing having just grown out of being a baby themselves and love having context for their existence. Don’t we all? Meanwhile, while children are typically most excited about those sections, I’m most excited about the “Good Touches, Bad Touches” chapter. (In It’s Not the Stork, adorably, chapters are a 2-page spread.) That chapter defines what are okay touches: self-touch (yay--such a good message) and doctor’s exam touches, for example. It also explains what are not-okay touches: any touch you don’t want, especially in areas typically covered by a diaper or underwear. It also empowers the child with permission to say, “No,” “Stop,” or “Don’t,” if they don’t like a touch, and the part that always makes me tear up: If you experience not-okay touches, tell a grown-up. If that grown-up doesn’t believe you, tell another grown-up until someone believes you.
What I Hope to See in Future Editions:
"The clitoris is for good feelings." Simple, accurate. The clitoris is labeled on the female anatomy page, and this all I say when asked what it does. Credit to Rebecca Scritchfield of the Body Kindness podcast for suggesting that language. It may have been a different episode in which she mentions that line about the clitoris, but I was able to confirm that I learned about the It's Not the Stork series in Episode 31, “Intimate Justice with Bestselling Author Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex.”
More inclusion of intersex, non-binary, and other LGBTQ+ identities and bodies. Current editions offer a refreshing amount of representation of diverse families in the “All Families Are Different” chapter. The book talks about adoption and in-vitro fertilization, families with two mommies or two daddies or just one mommy or one daddy or grandparents, nannies (represent!), etc. Overall, though, the book still presents a binary. I know children can understand many complexities of gender. I’ve seen that the author of this series has quite a bibliography, and I’m keeping my eye out for more books for children on gender identity. The world is more beautiful with an understanding that difference is normal. I want my kiddos to have that.
TL;DR: These books were created in collaboration with and reviewed by a panel of child development experts. They’re so well done. Overall, I can’t recommend them enough. Sharing them with the children in your care sets you up to be someone they can talk to about sex, relationships, families, and gender, and gives you the language to do so in an age-appropriate way.
Updated: Aug 8, 2020
Book Author: Janet Lansbury Page Count: 150
Summary: Elevating Child Care is a book made from a compilation of blog articles by educator Janet Lansbury, who practices Respectful Infant Education (RIE), created by Magda Gerber. I first heard of RIE out to lunch with another attendee of the Positive Discipline Parent Educator training. RIE and Positive Discipline pair very well because they’re both founded in empathy and connection. I recommend RIE for anyone caring for infants. Respectful parenting means that children are valued as individuals, which is modeled through the use of consent language, consistent boundaries, and notice of upcoming changes to routine, behavior expectation, or setting.
RIE principles I’ve adopted into my childcare practice:
I tell infants what I’m going to do before I do it, especially when it involves touching their body. For example, “I’m going to pick you up to put you in your bed.” A simple, “Up you go!” and offering arms works great in a hurry.
I use my normal speaking voice and vocabulary. I recall from a college linguistics class that there are benefits to baby talk, such as demonstrating the inflection of a sentence like, “Look at the pretty birdy!” If your “normal” voice comes out as a baby voice sometimes, that’s perfectly okay. Just know your infant is learning from and connecting with you when you speak to them without that special inflection or tone too. I’ll admit I haven’t totally broken the habit of speaking in a cutesy voice to young children (partly because I don’t think it’s harmful) but I notice when I make an effort to stay in my normal speaking voice, it anchors me in a “speak the way you’d like to be spoken to” kind of way. It also encourages me to model modulations that I might do with other adults, such as softening my tone when making a correction or request. As for not simplifying the content of speech, a moment of validation came for me when an infant in my care sat in the hallway one day. I needed to open the door wider so I asked, “Can you move your leg please?” And she did. It’s easy to assume because they can’t speak, they don’t understand, but when given the opportunity to show what they know, they’ll show you a lot.
I try not to interrupt when they’re engaged with something. This one’s really cool because it challenges the caregiver to notice what the infant in their care is interested in and respect it in the same way we’d be careful not to interrupt a partner working from home. When interruptions are necessary, empathy might sound like, “It’s beautiful the way the light’s making a shadow on your toy bear. You’ve been looking at that for a while. I bet you noticed the light change. It’s time to put the bear back in the toy basket.” With children that are able to respond verbally, I may ask if it’s okay for me to interrupt (if I’m okay with their answer being “no” --that’s essential) or say, “Please excuse the interruption,” and get right to the point of what I need to say.
I let them explore physical movement without assistance. It’s a huge cultural shift to not put infants on their tummy to teach them to crawl or to hold their hands while they’re learning to walk. To be honest, I feel a loss there. I did those things earlier in my career and it felt rewarding to be a part of. The thing is, most babies will figure out how to move on their own and, when allowed to develop on an unassisted timeline, do so with grace, fluidity, and an observable sense of pride in accomplishment. Part of this is letting them take risks. I remember watching an early climber stand on a stool. He was looking out the window and about to take a side step into nothing. My instincts told me to wait, that there wasn’t a need to jump up to catch him, and my instincts were right. He felt that there wasn’t footing there and steadied himself. Let the babies surprise you with just how aware they are.
Some of the above practices came into my life from working with RIE-practicing parents, more than from the book itself, though it does go into detail about each of those ideas. The number one thing I took from the Elevating Child Care book specifically, though:
It’s been enormously helpful to me to read what Janet Lansbury wrote about boundaries. Her analogy goes, when you’re turning the corner on a steep cliff, the guard rail isn’t harsh or oppressive. You feel safer with it there. [Insert mind blown emoji.] Making space for others is necessary for connection. Setting boundaries is not the opposite of that. It offers a feeling of being grounded. As someone who’s felt mean setting boundaries in the past, this has really, (ironically), opened up my world.
Such a good analogy.
As one of my nanny moms likes to say: we love Janet.