Teaching empathy and tolerance

Dealing with differences
In most Canadian cities, children will have friends from many ethnic groups and socio-economic backgrounds. The 2001 census showed that 13.4 per cent of Canadians and more than 35 per cent of the population in Toronto and Vancouver, for example, belong to a visible minority. By the time she starts school, your child will have noticed differences in skin colour. She may also have questions about why Mary can't come to play on Sunday morning, or why Prem's mother knows how to make curry but her own mother doesn't. Feed her interest in people from a wide range of backgrounds by reading her stories or watching movies with characters of different races.

Maybe there is a multicultural festival in your community at which she can taste different foods and see traditional dances from around the world. Take her to a powwow when you're on a camping holiday in Alberta, or to Chinatown for lunch on a visit to Vancouver. Get your takeout from a Greek restaurant, and find opportunities to visit different ethnic specialty shops, Make sure your child's cultural education involves learning about her own ethnic background, even if you don't practise traditional customs or attend religious services. A child who knows about her own culture may embrace other cultures more quickly.

When your child is six and seven, monitor her TV viewing to ensure the programs she watches represent all races fairly; avoid the programs with character stereotypes. As your child becomes a more critical television viewer, around age nine or ten, talk with her about the positive and negative ways that the media portray differences, and help her learn about stereotypes and prejudices. She'll soon be able to point out to you the programs in which all the bad guys speak with an accent or all the minority women are domestics. Talk with he about the examples she finds of positive appropriate media images of difference.

Teaching respect
Your own behaviour toward people of other backgrounds, races, and abilities will be the model for your children, so unlearn any bad habits you have. Do you describe the noisy neighbors as "those Italians with the loud radio?" If someone makes a racist joke in your house, do you laugh? Is your dentist or hairdresser or anyone you do business with a person of another race? Try to identify your own prejudices and consciously work against them; your child will learn from you.

All your attempts to prepare your child will not forestall his occasional astonishment at seeing someone or something new in a public place. He may cause you embarrassment by staring at a Muslim woman and asking, "Why is she wearing that thing on her head?" or by pointing to a dwarf and saying, "Look at that man." A quick response from you can stem the tide of questions your child wants to ask and spare the person he's pointing at any further embarrassment: "She wears her head covered as part of her faith. Let's go stand at the back of the bus." Or "Not everyone grows to the same size. You may say good morning to the man, but it's not polite to point at him." Promise to answer further questions when you get home or when you get off the bus. If he doesn't ask, reopen the subject by saying, "I guess you were wondering about why that man in the bank was so small." A simple explanation will satisfy him, but remind him that it can hurt other people's feelings to have their differences pointed out in public. You will have delivered the message that, in your family, respecting others who are different from you is important.

Excerpted from Raising Great Kids: Ages 6 to 12 by Christine Langlois. Copyright 1999 by Telemedia Communications Inc. Excerpted, with permission by Ballantine Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.