Teaching Your Child to Respect Other Cultures

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Empowering your children with knowledge about other people and cultures will enable them to grow into respectful, empathetic adults who value diversity. Your child will be exposed to peers with different ethnic backgrounds and religious views and it is important that they learn to celebrate these differences whilst remembering that everyone is equal. With anything you try to teach your child, it is imperative that you lead by example. If your child sees you discussing other cultures in a respectful and knowledgeable manner, they will be more likely to adopt these traits themselves. An independent school in Buckinghamshire has shared their advice on introducing your child to other cultures.

World Celebrations
Why not start by investing in a calendar and marking down major religious and cultural festivals from around the world. On the day of each of these events, you could set some time aside to discuss each festival and how it is celebrated. You could even have your own mini celebration at home, decorating accordingly, and listening to culturally appropriate music. This is a great activity to get the whole family involved.

Get Cooking
You could also teach your children about other cultures through food. This would be great to tie into the previous point as you could have your child help you prepare traditional food to enjoy on the day of each celebration. Using different ingredients that you wouldn't typically use will expand your child's palette and give them insight into a part of the day to day lives of people from this culture. You can teach your child how the food is typically served and how it would be eaten, an example being with chopsticks.

Bedtime Stories
For younger children, you could introduce storybooks that focus on cultures other than their own, normalising hearing about other cultures from an early age. As your child gets older you can choose books together or and they can begin to read independently about other places and people. This will teach empathy for others as they will hear stories from the voices of people from different backgrounds.