ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN TO BE OPEN MINDED?

Let’s play fair and teach our children how to deal with different cultures and communities and give them the chance to communicate and tackle different situations in their lives in peace and harmony.

How can we as adults and parents help our children to learn and cope with different cultures and races? I feel that we need to begin by acknowledging are own attitudes values and think about how these effect us in the way we interact with children today.

It is important to note the following:

• How do we respond to our neighbors who speak with and accent or who are from a different country to us or who are a different colour etc.
• How do we feel when we need to communicate with them? Do we feel uncomfortable around them and how do we relay our feelings to our children.
• Do we communicate with them openly and honestly and accept them as individuals and look for things that we can share with them, or do we look at them at frown and say they are not like us so let’s not talk to them and back away from them.
• Do we talk to our children about how we feel? Are we able to show our children how to express discomfort when dealing with a new or unfamiliar situation in an open and honest way?

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Are we encouraging small children to become adults to quickly by giving them cell phones and dressing them up to look like twenty year olds.

I see so many kids these days using their cell phones when they are walking down the street with their friends. They do not seem to be able to put them down for 1 second. I have especially noticed this with school kids in the 12+ age range.

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A few weeks ago I noticed a full page advertisement in our city’s newspaper titled “YOUR BABY CAN READ” which as a childcare worker got my attention.

When I began to read this I was shocked at the notion that this was encouraging children to learn to read when they are as young as just 9 months. I know that there are prodigies out there but isn’t this going a bit too far!

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