Teaching Diversity: Resources for Parents

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Nov 13, 1998

As a parent, my primary responsibility is to teach my children self-pride, self-control, and respect for others. I believe that if I do those three things, everything else will fall into place.

Self-pride, for me, has been pretty easy to teach. It began when they were little tikes, and I purposefully offered twice as much praise as criticism. As the experts suggested, I stayed away from vague praise, such as "Oh, what a beautiful picture you drew!" and instead looked for specific (and honest) things I could say instead, such as "Wow! I really like that shade of blue you used."

Self-control has been a harder lesson, but not impossible. My children are in middle school now, and they usually do seem to recognize that they have to live with their choices, so they better make the best possible decisions. Again, they learned this from toddlerhood. Little life lessons were everywhere. For instance, my typically very even-tempered son used to "bang" his head on the soft couch cushions when he would get mad. One day, he apparently was so angry that he couldn't wait to toddle over the couch, so he deliberately knocked his head on a table. After looking to make sure he was not injured, I said, "Wow, that must have hurt. Maybe you shouldn't do that anymore, huh?" and walked away. Sure, a huge part of me was dying to pick him up and kiss his boo-boo. But I know too many adults with no self-control, and I do not want that kind of life for my children. As far as I can recall, his already-infrequent temper tantrums ended after that.

Now, teaching respect for others, that has been the real challenge. Respect is such an arbitrary concept. I mean, how do you explain "respect" simply and effectively to kids. My problem is, I like words...I talk too much. My first instinct is to tell my kids what to do. But I've found that respect can really only be taught by actions, by observing the concept in action. This thought may make you say, "Well, duh!" but for me, it was more like, "Aha!"

Appreciating diversity and respect for others go hand in hand. Kids need to know that decent people demonstrate respect for all people, even those not in our social circle. Again, they will only learn this if they see respect for differences in action. This is why I volunteer for a local organization called the Bridge Center for Racial Harmony as well as several youth-oriented projects.

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