*This is a collaborative post.
With technology making the world a smaller place, we sometimes forget about how big the world actually is. There are 195 official countries around the world, each with its own culture and way of life that we can learn from. Exploring them with your child can help them to develop respect, broaden their world view and encourage them to challenge their perspectives on life. It’s truly fascinating and something that you can do by immersing yourselves into them. We’ve partnered up with an independent school in Sloane Square to share some ways that you can encourage kindness, respect and understanding of other cultures with your child.
Teach Them About Diversity
We’re all different and unique in our own ways. It’s what makes the world an interesting and beautiful place. It’s important to teach children that despite it, we’re all the same and are equals. We deserve to be treated with the same level of respect and fairness.
Celebrate The Different Cultural Festivities
There are many religious and cultural celebrations that take place all over the world. Each has its own background and significance which provides a chance to learn and show respect. Celebrating them alongside the many others that do can help children to develop an open-mind and become more educated on the diverse cultures that are around us.
Try New Food
Despite the cool differences between each of our cultures, our love for food is the one thing that we all share. Cultural recipes have a lot of historical context and are usually ones that have been passed down from generation to generation for decades, if not centuries. The roots of them are just as interesting as their flavour profiles.
Awareness
Movements like black history month were created to help shine light on the wonderful creations developed by black people. It’s a great time in which you can educate your child on this topic. You may even learn a fact or two yourself.
I am a big supporter of diversity. We made a massive move a few years ago and moved out of London to Hertford, but we ended up moving back to London because we miss the diversity of people. I really want my kids to be very accepting of everyone. It helps that I’m Chinese, my husband is Turkish and my best friend is Pakistani. I’m always cooking different cuisines to get them used to different flavours and we try to read books educating them about different festivals over the world
I am a special needs teacher, and we teach our children about the key celebrations and special times of the year for different religions
Trying new food might be a challenge for some but trying it at markets and festivals is worth a go..
Love this! It so important to teach our kids this
Is so important to teach our children to love all
I always teach my children we’re all the same and are equals in respect of diversity. They do a lot at school to celebrate different countries which is great too.
This is so important!