If you watch the news, you’d think the world has grown increasingly divisive. You can’t turn on the television without one group of people blaming another for all their problems. It’s enough to make you think that many adults never evolved much from their playground days.
Perhaps the way to a more peaceful and accepting world starts with youth. After all, the heavy-handed politicos spewing today’s venom weren’t born with a passionate dislike for “the other side” — they learned the behavior. It’s time to stop the trend. Here are five tips for encouraging inclusivity in your young children.
1. Provide Sensory Play Spaces
People perceive the world differently. To encourage inclusivity, you should honor that diversity and learn from it. Take an attitude of healthy curiosity, understanding how various people experience the same things in unique ways due to how their bodies process sensory information.
Encourage this spirit in your children by creating sensory play spaces at home and seeking public parks that include such elements in their design. For example, features like drums and chimes engage hearing, while slides with rollers create a unique physical sensation.
It’s also vital to create a quiet escape when emotions hit overload, and your little one needs to retreat and center themselves. From their earliest ages, begin to associate going to your room for quiet reading and coloring time as a positive, not a punishment.
Model this behavior for your little one, saying, “I’m not feeling like my nice self right now. I’m dealing with some big feelings, and I’m going to take some time alone to soothe myself.” When your kiddo sees that you welcome your “time out,” they’ll start to emulate your behavior.
2. Introduce Them to Many People
What does your social circle look like? If it consists of only one or two other couples who look like you and believe the same things you do, perhaps you should expand your horizons. You’ll benefit from new friends, and so will your child.
For example, when you take your kids to the playground, do you chitchat with the mom wearing a hijab or only those dressed like you? Are you hesitant to talk to transgender individuals or do you include them in your circle, using age-appropriate explanations to answer your child’s questions about what makes someone a boy or a girl?
3. Explore Different Ways of Worship
You might have strong religious beliefs in your family and introducing your child to their spiritual side at a young age fosters their development. However, there are scores of religions, many of which preach similar messages of peace and unity despite differences.
Introducing your little one to other ways of worship helps your children see past denominational differences and enjoy learning about various belief systems.
For example, if you regularly attend Christian services, do you have friends who worship at a mosque? If so, why not offer to participate with each other in the spirit of learning and curiosity? Give your little ones a crash course in etiquette before you go to feel more comfortable.
Afterward, share your experiences and ask each other questions, deepening your understanding of each other’s faith. Your children will get a valuable lesson — and you’ll strengthen your adult friendship.
4. Encourage Friendships Across Socioeconomic Lines
Many adults recall their childhood caregivers forbidding them to play with “those” kids from the “wrong side of the tracks.” Emulating this behavior encourages elitism and separation — the opposite of inclusivity. While it’s natural to worry about your child’s safety when going to certain parts of town, you shouldn’t forbid them from inviting friends to your home regardless of their parents’ socioeconomic situation.
Much of today’s divisiveness stems from invisibility. Many people perceive, perhaps rightly, that those who are doing basically okay can’t understand how hard it is for those who are not. Not everyone who’s poor became so because they used drugs or committed crimes.
Even those who do often commit such acts out of a desperate need to self-medicate or survive. They often had no healthy role models to learn alternative coping strategies from.
According to research, it can take 20 years with nothing going wrong — no family illness, no job loss, no landlords capriciously raising the rent every year — to pull yourself out of poverty. By forbidding your kids from playing with others based on where their parents live, you help perpetuate the poverty cycle, denying these children’s basic humanity and need for friendship, leaving them with few alternatives to others in similar circumstances.
The bottom line: take action if you sense your child is in danger, but otherwise, keep your judgment to yourself. Don’t blame your child’s friends for who their parents are.
5. Travel
Mark Twain once wrote that travel is fatal to prejudice. If you have the means, take your kids to as many foreign destinations as possible, immersing them in various cultures.
If you have a more modest budget, take shorter trips that expand your horizons. If you live in the country, a drive to the big city is an eye-opening experience for little ones. There’s a considerable cultural and attitude difference between the industrial Northeast and the more laid-back southwest — can you swing a road trip?
Encouraging Inclusivity in Your Young Children
The world seems more divisive each time you turn on the news. It sometimes makes you wonder if people will ever put aside their differences long enough to appreciate the beauty and diversity in human existence.
Encourage inclusivity in your young children with the five tips above. Attitudes form with the young — let’s work to create a more accepting world.