Teaching kids about other people’s beliefs and traditions

We live in a community with very little diversity. I love where we live, but this is a challenge and is a bit disappointing for us. We came from a big city with a lot of diversity and had hopes of raising our kids in a similar nature. But here we are, coming off a pandemic with no travel, and my kids really have not come across many different ethnicities and cultures.

The best way that we have learned to expose them to diversity is by reading books about different cultures from the library and watching inclusive shows on our streaming services. If there's an opportunity for us to attend an event celebrating a different culture, we try to go. We still aren't able to travel, but hopefully soon and that would be another wonderful way to share different cultures with them.

My family grew up next to an Indian family and also a Chinese family. If there is opportunity for your kids to make friends with different families from different cultures, we found it to be the best way of learning about others. Our neighbours would welcome the kids into their home for food, religious ceremonies and celebrations so any questions were answered and observed in day to day life. We have since remained lifelong friends with these families and it is just invaluable for our kids.

Our children's foundation of respect is very crucial. At such a young age, we teach them how important respecting other people is and sometimes there are even consequences if ever they did something to breach what we taught them about this virtue. We as parents can do so much in our children's formative years that will develop certain traits which can influence them as they grow older and that includes respecting other peoples' beliefs and traditions.

And when they are faced with all these differences, we as parents can always be there to guide them in understanding how people live and everything else that comes with it. They may raise some questions and we need to answer them, especially if it involves other people's faith, political belief, and even sexual preferences. It is much better to hear it from us than from somebody else, right?

Children will always be curious. Let us take the time to guide them for them to understand the world, its people and its diversity.

We are so fortunate to like is such a multicultural world and i have found that children are often more accepting of cultural differences than adults are. Just being exposed to things such as different foods - and talking about the cultures they come from can help children develop appreciation for and understandings of the multicultural world we live in.

I think that religious aspects can be harder to explain but we have always just told our kids that 'some people believe this' and 'some people believe that'. We try to do this without judgement of others and be inclusive. All people are people at the end of the day.

My daughter's neighbor is from Nepal, and their way of life is quite different than our family. Our children were naturally curious why they do not celebrate many of our Christian and American holidays.

Kids are so adaptable. With just a simple explanation of our cultural differences, they accepted our word and never gave it another thought. We did not use any resources but simply pointed out some of their traditions and how they differ from our own. Once their curiosity was satisfied, the kids moved on to their next venture. The life of a child is simple:)