Around the World in 90 Days
My husband has a good friend who lives in London. Tonight he was asking me if I would feel comfortable heading to London for what would amount to a long weekend. The key point would be that we would leave the kids at home. That’s a big deal for me. I have been a bit of a hermit the past 2 years. We simply don’t go out much. Mostly because my mother-in-law is a wonderful woman who takes care of my kids a few days a week for us. That means that we don’t really feel comfortable asking her to take extra time to watch the kids at night. We do have great friends who watch our kids once in a while, but you can’t ask your friends to do that too often. So, the result - we stay home a lot.
That being said, I don’t want our kids to grow up not knowing about other people and cultures. It made me think seriously about how we’re going to expose our kids to life outside of our little bubble. The bubble sometimes being our home, but often being our local community.
We’ve made a special effort to “value” diversity in our lives. We enrolled her in a preschool that has an amazing level of diversity (look here for pre-school ratings), and we talk to her about the way that things work in different places. She’s still a bit young, but I hope that we continue on that route.
I plan on buying her a globe and teaching her about the different lands that people live in and what those places are like. We’ll expose her to different foods, and teach her about the places where those foods come from. My girlfriend teaches Indian dance, and I think it would be great to expose her to that.
I’ve recently learned about a set of DVD’s that expose kids to various cultures. I haven’t seen them yet, but I think it’s interesting. I’m curious to see what they’re all about.
What are you doing to expose your kids to other cultures? To check out other parents talking about teaching kids about diversity and win a chance to get a set Global Wonders DVD’s check out TwitterMoms.
December 15th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Thank you for this post. I think a lot of parents face the same dilemma, but I think it’s wonderful that you and your husband have made it such a priority to expose your children to other cultures. I’m sure your example will help benefit your daughter throughout her life and that the cross-cultural friendships she’s forming now will set the groundwork of a lifetime of cultural acceptance and understanding.
-Rashmi Turner
Founder/CEO, Global Wonders