Should kids learn about Pride?
Our latest update is an opportunity to teach kids how we can celebrate our differences and support the LGBTQ+ community.
Another Pride season is here and the Pok Pok app is joining in the festivities! You can find updated content across multiple toys to honour the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and teach our kids the importance of not just accepting others, but embracing and celebrating our differences.
The easiest thing for kids to do is love—it is their default mode. However, they also become a reflection of their environment. As they grow, they may learn from others that specific groups of people don’t deserve this love. If we don’t intentionally teach our kids this is wrong, they can easily fall prey to learning hate.
Unfortunately we, and many other companies, receive criticism for showcasing support of Pride month and LGBTQ+ rights. However, this goes to further show why it’s important to educate ourselves and speak up when we encounter prejudiced and hateful behaviour towards these communities.
Where did Pride start?
What we now know today as “Pride” started with a march on June 28, 1970, to commemorate the Stonewall Riots which occurred just a year before. The uprising by the gay community and allies was in response to Police raiding the Stonewall Inn, a LGBTQ bar in Greenwich Village.
In 1999, June was declared as Pride Month in the USA and since then, cities all around the world have adopted it. To many, Pride is known as a joyous time of coming together for events, but it is also a time to honour the work of change-makers and activists of our past + present who continue to push progress forward. In the past few years, there have been a number of great kids books released to help introduce the topic and you can find a list here.
How Pok Pok is celebrating Pride Month?
While there is no perfect way to represent the 2SLGBTQIA+ community visually, Pok Pok has always shown Pride imagery, same-sex parents, and individuals who don’t neatly fit into the stereotypical gender binary of male or female. Now, in this update, the Town Event Space, House, and Shops have come alive with more rainbow festivities than usual!
Real-World Imagery
At Pok Pok, one of our guiding principles (that also falls in line with Montessori), is that we strive to ground our app in reality. This also means that we cannot show the beautiful diversity of the world we live in without representing 2SLGBTQIA+ families and individuals.
Offering Mirrors and Windows
Children need a window into the vastness of our world to see things that are different from their own situation, to widen their perspective and grow empathy. They also need a mirror to recognize themselves and their families as valued and as of equal importance to everyone else. While this is improving in kids media, representation is still lacking and we will continually expand upon ours as well.
No “Hidden” Agenda
After including visibly queer people in Busy Book in the early days, we received some of our first 1-star reviews and negative feedback about the content. Some people feared that we were “pushing the gay agenda” or “sexuality” onto kids and this comment is still one we receive to this day. However, there is nothing inherently sexual about displaying Pride content or queer couples, just as there is nothing sexual about displaying a cisgender mother and father.
We are also sometimes told that we have a “hidden agenda” when the fact is, we are not hiding it. We feel very strongly about trying to create an app where everyone feels welcomed, seen, and to normalize/give humanity to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community for families who have not had the pleasure of meeting anyone in it.
Unfortunately, when folks are less familiar with these identities, they can consume inaccurate information and biased stories from the media that dehumanizes 2SLGBTQIA+ people.
This disinformation is extremely harmful as it leads to support for laws that threaten the safety of not just adults, but children as well. While progress is being made in some areas, 2SLGBTQIA+ folks all over the world are still fighting every day to have rights and that many of us take for granted.
At Pok Pok, we feel we have a unique opportunity to contribute to a more equal and just world in the small ways that we can. On that note, our team will be making a donation towards organizations Egale and Outright International, and we invite you to check them out and support them in any way you can (even if it’s just through social media)!
We hope you enjoy this update as well as any Pride celebrations in your community this summer!
We’ve been so inspired by the unique approach of each child who plays with our toys and can’t wait to hear what families like yours think of this one. Receiving your feedback, videos and ideas for new updates is so important for the growth of Pok Pok so please say hello at hello@playpokpok.com or on social media @playpokpok.
Join our community to get insights from our educators and take a peek behind the scenes into our toy design process over on our Instagram and TikTok!
