Communicating with Children Effectively About Diversity and Inclusion

Children who are exposed to diversity in their daily lives from a very young age grow up to be more knowledgeable about other cultures and ways of life, as well as more accepting of them. Below are some examples of how to create an all-inclusive atmosphere into your child care home with your communications:

• Maintain a consistent positive attitude about who the children are, where they come from, what they look like, and what they learn and achieve. For example:
  
  “What cool curly hair you have!”
  
  “I really like your outfit!”
  
  “Thanks for telling me how your day was!”
  
• When teaching children about diversity, help children see people’s similarities first and then move to their differences. For example: if you ask the children what they did last night, chances are everyone will have eaten supper and spent some time with their families. There will be differences about where they ate and what they ate and how they spent time with their families. Another example: Everyone has a family. Each family is unique. Derrick’s family lives somewhere else and he lives with his foster parents. Sheena has two moms.
  
• Help the children think about what is “unfair” and “untrue”. For example, ask a child “How would you feel if you were not allowed to play the game just because of how you look or what you wear or how you talk?”
  
• Teach children their rights. Children should be encouraged to stand up for themselves. When someone calls them a name or hurts their feelings, teach them to respond, e.g., “Tell Richard he was wrong to call you names. He shouldn’t do that. If that happens again or if it happens to someone else, get a teacher to help.”
  
• When a child makes a discriminatory comment, respond to it immediately. Depending on the age of the child, do not assume that the comment was said to deliberately hurt the other child’s feelings. Sometimes children just repeat what they have heard elsewhere. Comfort the child who had the discriminatory comment directed at him. Assure him that that kind of remark is wrong and that you care about his feelings. If the child is old enough to understand what he said, tell him firmly but calmly that such remarks are hurtful and will not be tolerated in your home. Turn the incident into a lesson for the children. After everyone has calmed down, open a discussion about feelings. Have each child give examples of things they have heard that would hurt their feelings and things they have heard that would make them feel good about themselves. Continue to listen for discriminatory comments. When they arise, make sure to point them out and deal with them calmly.

Additional Resources:

Circle of Inclusion

Play Relationships: Programming for Inclusion by Anne Carr.

Including All Children by Sharon Hope Irwin.

This excerpt was taken from the Family Child Care Training Project Level 3 - Unit 5: Inclusion