Teaching Your Child to Respect Other Cultures

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The world is so vast, beautiful and diverse, and is also one of our greatest gifts. Children will of course learn about the globe and how we have hundreds of different cultures, customs and a huge amount of history to uncover through school, but that doesn't mean we can't help expand on that at home too. 

There are so many different things for children to learn, explore and discover when it comes to other cultures and it is important that children also learn about respecting one another's cultures, race, religion, gender and customs. The more they learn about these themes, the better they will be at understanding different cultures and people from across the world, their struggles and showing that there should be no discrimination. 

With this guide from this private girls school in London, we show you how to teach your child respect and support of cultures around the world. 

Discover celebration days for different festivals around the world 

A fun and exciting project for children to get involved in is creating days where your child can get involved in celebrations from across the world. Celebrations like Eid, Hanukkah, Diwali and Chinese New Year are great examples of events that happen in the UK within different cultures. You may find that your child already has friends that celebrate these! Dedicating a day to a few of these that your child may be interested in is a great way to delve deeper into the traditions, heritage and reasons for a celebration day and why it happens.

 

The different food, customs and traditional celebrations of these events will be hugely educational for your child. Not only that, they’ll be really fun for your child to understand how other cultures celebrate and why, and maybe even how their friends celebrate each year giving them a better understand of some of thing things their friends celebrate and why. 

Read books with them about different cultures 

Non-fiction books are great for educating them on a general level on how each country can have their own set of customs and traditions depending on the time of the year. Books are particularly useful as they can be referred to time and time again and books have a great way of capturing a child's imagination through words and pictures. 

 

Fictional stories also have a great way of showing different cultures to readers, even if the groups mentioned could be completely made up for the purposes of the story, these are particularly useful for younger children too. The functions of culture and understanding their purpose are still found in stories, so your child is still being shown a greater perspective in an easier to digest way for younger children that they can understand. 

Try foods from around the world 

There are so many foods from around the world that are waiting to be tried and trying new foods can be super exciting for children. Why not make a buffet of world foods for your children to try? This is a great opportunity for them to discover what foods they like and don’t like and to learn about what different countries eat and why too. You could even get your children involved in making the food so they can see how food is prepared differently in some cultures. 

 

A lot of superstores now provide world foods for consumers, but visiting a local restaurant or takeaway to try different foods is another way of tantalising the taste buds and requires a lot less effort if you are wanting to avoid having to spend lots of money on different ingredients or spending lots of time in the kitchen. 

Do you talk about other culture and traditions with your children? If so how do you do this and does your child (or you) have a particular interested in any specific culture other than your own? Let me know in the comments below. 

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**This is a collaborative post**