Children and Prejudice – Teach your Child the Natural Way

By TheNanny612 On August 24, 2007 · Leave a Comment

Have you ever been
in the awkward position of having your child make a prejudiced statement
in front of other parents? This is mortifying for most adults because they want
others to believe that they are teaching their children right from wrong when
it comes to the important issue of prejudice in our society. But when you step
away from the situation and get your ego out of the picture, you’ll usually
find that your child had no bad intentions and that the statement doesn’t
actually reflect poorly on your social teaching skills. Instead, it reflects
on the fact that your young child is noticing differences in the people around
her and she wants to know what that’s all about. Each opportunity that
comes up – whether awkward or simply mundane – should be thought
of as an opportunity to teach your children about prejudice.

Children
who start learning about prejudice in a natural way when they are young
are less likely to exhibit prejudice in their own behavior. This
is because it is just common sense to them that all people are to be treated
equally. But this can’t be achieved by pretending that all people
are the same. While we may all be equal, there are obvious differences that
your kids are going to notice. The color of skin, gender of bodies and texture
of hair vary from person to person and it makes sense to acknowledge that
difference. If you don’t, then your kids aren’t going to take
much that you say seriously because it’s going to appear that you’re
blind to the world around you. So, instead of teaching your children that
we’re all the same, you should be teaching them that our differences
don’t matter.

This sounds like
a big task that involves a lot of moral conversations with your kids. While
those will eventually come up, the task of teaching children about prejudice
is really an ongoing thing that you don’t need to stress out about. It
happens every time that you teach your children about differences (“daddy’s
a boy and mommy’s a girl”) and every time you encourage fairness
amongst people in a group (including your own kids). These basic lessons
that you’re already teaching your kids are going to be the foundation
for helping them to avoid prejudice later on.

While parents may
find it awkward when their kids make seemingly prejudice statements, they find
it outright horrifying when their own children are the victims of prejudice.
This happens especially as your kids get older and start going to school with
a divers group of people. When it does, you have to be sure to work first on
restoring your child’s self esteem. Prejudice is confusing for
children and it’s your job to explain that it happens and that
it is about the person who is being prejudiced, not about your child. At the
same time, you need to encourage acceptance of all people, even the prejudiced
person, while not condoning the behavior. Every time that you teach
your child to stand up for herself as well as to stand up for others who are
being victimized, you teach your child how to cope with prejudice in
a mature manner.

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