How To Make Kids Understand World Culture and Diversity? A Guest Post By Lyla Morris
How To Make Kids Understand World Culture and Diversity?
‘Why does this man look like that?’ asked your kid (maybe pretty loudly).
Have you ever got publicly embarrassed with such a question?
Well, this might be a quite common scenario for all the parents out there, especially those who love to travel. In such a situation, a typical parental reaction could be an attempt to quiet the child and move fast. However, you should do exactly the opposite.
C’mon! They are children and being ignorant at times is acceptable from them. They are not yet conditioned to avoid sharing what they think or ask what is intriguing to them. Moreover, it is a proven fact that children become aware of the difference in the way people look and behave faster than adults.
According to Phyllis A. Katz, a professor at the University of Colorado, studied that babies who are as young as six months of age keep on staring for a significantly longer at pictures of adults who look different than their parents. This research underpins that children are capable of noticing differences in race, ability, family composition and a multitude of other factors much more than you and me.
Therefore, as a parent, you should culture this attribute in your kid and enlighten them about varied and unique cultural diversities present around the world.
How can you make it happen?
Get Your Kid Introduced With A Passport:
Any international travel can’t be done without a passport. So, boost up the chapter of foreign adventure for your kid by creating one first. However, before you begin travelling with them, address the reasons to your child why we should use a passport and how does one look like.
Next, let your child maintain a small booklet to serve as a passport of his/her own. Its pages should be blank on the inside. Now, when you travel with your kid, ask him/her to draw what he/she observed, use a sticker or paste the country’s flag where your child has visited etc. This way, your kid can stamp the pages of his/her passport as he/she ‘travels’ from country to country. This could be one of the most creative ways to let your kid learn about world cultures.
Encourage Them To Celebrate Others:
Children have their books as wonderful resources for developing his or her sense of identity as well as for understanding people who are from different race and religion.
Thus, make use of them to keep your kids updated. You can visit your book library and start reading copies of The Skin You Live In (depicting acceptance), Same, Same But Different (depicting culture and geography), Where Does God Live (depicting religion), The Family Book (depicting family configurations) etc. to your child. Don’t forget to describe every bit of detail written in such books to keep your kids updated up to the utmost level.
Shop While Being Culturally Inclined:
When you travel to a foreign land, make sure you are taking your kids along while shopping. And let such episodes be influenced by the culture of that specific country where you visited.
Suppose, if you are in Bangkok, you can opt for buying things like religious amulets, pet squirrels etc. which denote that land’s culture. Look for jade or haggle for smart electronics in the markets of Hong Kong. When it comes to Ireland, stick to horse-drawn delivery carts.
And while you shop for such products, let know your children how your purchase is influenced by the lifestyle and philosophy of the place. Also, you need to ensure that such family shopping sessions are different from the typical ones from malls. You should sit with your kid, learn about the marketplace of each country, read articles, watch videos and so on.
The more you explore, the better your kid will learn about cultures.
Cook Authentic Recipes At Home:
Food is one of the best ways to explore any culture. As different delicacies from different countries will make your kid drool, he/she would be more excited to know about which country it comes from.
So, try cooking different dishes which you will find in a typical menu of various countries around the world. Ask your kid to accompany you while you are in the kitchen and make the cooking episode and interactive, fun, and informative one. Let him/her know how the dishes (that you are cooking) from different countries relate to the culture of those lands.
Help Your Kids Find A Penpal:
Yes! Go back to the old days when technology was not that smart but communications used to be warmer. People used to write letters to their pen pals who belonged to certain foreign lands.
Let your kids practice this approach and it will definitely act as a hidden yet smart lesson in terms of language, arts and social studies. Look for a penpal in the country about which your kid is inquisitive to know.
Fortunately, there are many free websites which might help you to match your children with their pen pals from around the world. This pen pal primer can skyrocket your idea of making your kid culturally enhanced.
Teach A Foreign Language:
Learning a language which they don’t know is often an interesting feat for kids. If you want your child to explore world cultures, it’s smart to let him/her learn foreign languages.
This way they will be more interested to know about the country which the specific language belongs to, people who speak the same and so on.
So, might be just a couple of weekly foreign language classes for your kids and they will be more updated about the world.
Simple!
Right?
Celebrate Foreign Holidays:
To keep your children updated about different cultures around the world, celebrating holidays of foreign countries is a great trick. For instance, Boxing Day is famous in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. If you are living somewhere in the US, do your bit to celebrate this day with your kids.
All that you need to do is just think in a smart and creative way and that’s it! Typically this holiday is all about donating money and charitable donations to people and organizations which/who are needy. What you and your kid can do is pack some canned foods for the local food bank or donate old stuff to any non-profit organization.
Make sure that you are explaining the significance of any such foreign holiday to your kids while celebrating the same. Thus, he/she will become aware of the culture of that particular country.
Summing Up:
What are you waiting for?
If you want to give your kids a good global cultural exposure, keep the aforementioned tips in your mind. And follow them practically to keep your children learned about the world.
Author Bio:
Lyla Morris is a Founder & Editor at Lylamorris.com. She loves to write about Parenting and Health Care tips also.
http://bit.ly/2Y98Cqs
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Lyla was born Lyla Emilia Velazquez Gonzalez. She was born and raised in Midway City until she was three. It was then the whole Incubus thing happened. She had ended up wondering out in the street after it was done which is how she bumped into Rick Flag. Who adopted her and she became Lyla Emilia Flag Velazquez. Lyla was often around the Squad and picked up on calling them Aunt and Uncle, unless Rick is in a relationship with a member of the Squad, Lyla loves her dad. She doesn’t like when he goes on missions, but understands it.
Following the canon events of The S.uicide S.quad Lyla is devastated upon learning that her father was killed. Her Aunt Harley took Lyla in and she was raised by Harley and Robert. Lyla would follow in her dad’s footsteps and end up going to West Point and graduating near the top of her class. On her eighteenth birthday Harley had told her that Peacemaker was the reason her dad wasn’t around. So it became kind of her mission to take him out. Her notoriety in the military caught Amanda’s attention and she herself got recruited to keep Task Force X in line. Amanda isn’t any the wiser that she’s waiting for her shot at Peacemaker, and she’ll make it look like an accident.
If there are threads that deviate from the canon ending of the new movie. Rick and Lyla go away for a while. She’s told much sooner about Rick’s fight with Peacemaker, and while she still doesn’t like him. She isn’t as driven to take him out. She is still going to make his life difficult, but less likely to outright get rid of him.
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