Actions Speak Louder than Words - Week 1

Instead if taking the easy road, talking about race for 10 seconds and checking it off your "good parenting checklist (and counting the years until you have to give the 'birds and the bees' talk), parents should take action and teach young children about differences in race.

The following are ideas to begin multicultural and racial education in the home: they all begin with a verb. A verb that you can focus on week by week, and teach your children as you learn together about different races.

Week 1: EXPOSE

• Expose your children to different cultures. Big cities are wonderful cultural centers. In your own city you can find parades, festivals, art museums, and other multicultural events. Usually information is listed in a newspaper, library to town/city hall.
• Activities like this can prompt questions, and good parent-child discussions where you can share lessons and teach them about different countries, people and cultures.
  

A.L.S.W. - Week 4:

Week 4: Encourage and Find
Encourage schools and churches to teach racial reconciliation. Urban public school systems deal with diversity, and some have provided sensitivity training for teachers. For small towns, or private schools it may be a tougher subject to deal with. You may be surprised with how influential you can be as a parent. Take your concerns and racial sensitivity questions and go to a School Board Mtg and be heard.

Find multi-ethnic media. Public libraries and school usually offer many international and multicultural books. They will have material and picture books available for all ages of a developing child. Take your child to the bookstore or library and choose some books themselves. They will be excited to read them with you if they have experience a sense of ownership in choosing their entertainment material.