Q.   What are the most important things to consider as I help my child learn to recognize prejudice while I simultaneously try to teach tolerance?

There's a lot of talk these days about teaching children to value diversity. Diversity encompasses so much more than ethnicity. When we want to teach cultural sensitivity to our children it means being ready to address issues concerning race and language differences, socio-economics, gender and age differences, individual interests and capabilities, etc. There are five main areas of thought to pay attention to as you help guide your child's views about people who are different than them.

I.  Examining our own biases first
If we look deep enough, we can usually admit that we all have our biases. Most of the time we don't share them verbally and sometimes live believing that we are prejudice free. Even while valuing diversity, it's difficult to recognize the subtle ways we demonstrate our dislike for someone else's ways or beliefs. As adults we need to examine our own life histories and begin to identify any one sided, narrow ideas we have about other people. Recognizing that these biases exist will help us have specific awareness about not passing them to our children.

II.  Choosing our words wisely
When speaking to children about people's differences, try to use words that convey a feeling of acceptance and inclusion. Instead of saying, "they don't speak our language", you could say, "they speak a different language than we do." It's more inclusive to say, "there are children from many different cultures in your class", rather than, "there are many minorities in your class." Your thoughtful choice of words can be a wasted effort if you say them with sarcasm or a negative tone in your voice. Try to stay positive.

III.  Seizing the moment
Young children freely express what's on their mind without putting it through a politically correct filter first. They sometimes ask questions about people at the most inappropriate times. Your child doesn't understand why you look angry and embarrassed when she has just called another child in the line at the grocery store a "fatso". Seize the moment, don't let the comment fade away because you feel your child didn't really mean any harm. Speak in soft tones but be direct and say, "It makes me sad when you say hurtful things to people." If you are at a loss for words at least tell your child that the two of you will be discussing it later. Then turn to the child or parent and apologize to them yourself. Trust that modeling how to say sorry to someone is more effective in teaching children to apologize than forcing them to say they are sorry in the heat of the moment.

IV.  Building resilience
If your child becomes the target of hurtful comments made by others. Help him/her talk about the incident, acknowledge hurt feelings and then discuss the value in skills like ignoring, walking away from, treating meanness with kindness, recognizing the other's insecurities, and the importance in having pride in one's self. The children's librarian is a wonderful resource for picture books and stories about resilience to discrimination.

V.  Exploring similarities to understand differences
The way most of us explored different cultures when we were going to school usually involved activities like having a luau with classmates to learn about Hawaiians even though there were no Hawaiians in the class. This is what is now negatively termed the "tourist approach" to multicultural education. The tourist approach tends to stereotype people into a "history book" idea about what people are like. Ethnic differences are paid more attention to than similarities between humans. If there is a Hawaiian child in the class it's much easier to refrain from the tourist approach and learn about being Hawaiian from the Hawaiian family in the group. In early childhood it's best to start with the people you know and their cultures. They are real to your child. In this way, even holidays and other cultural celebrations are experienced via authentic models, even if the models were born and raised in America. Children need to see that families of different ethnicities are actually very much alike in everyday ways. Everyone eats dinner even though we all have different traditional foods. Practice exploring similarities between people in order to understand the differences.

Sylvia Ford, Parent Educator at Peninsula Parents Place