Raising Tolerant Children

While shopping with your child, you notice sudden fear and tears welling up in your young one’s eyes. You see what the frightened and confused child sees:

a little girl with a large hairy birthmark across most of her face.

In that moment, as a parent, you have several choices. You opt to….

.. grab your now crying child and run as far from this ghastly sight as possible!

or

.. take your child by the hand, embrace him, and say, “honey, there’s nothing to fear. She’s just a little girl.”

You may be surprised by your own answer to this situation.

I have encountered this type of scenario in various places with both results and everything in between.

Sadly, the more common action by the parent is to take the child and beat it, never once asking the adult who is with the little girl who has an obvious physical difference what happened to her face. Many of the parents never once attempted to tell the child that compassion is an important lesson to learn from an early age, using the present situation as a teaching tool.

When did parents become so uncaring when raising our children, our future young men and women, our future leaders and teachers? Why have they stopped teaching our children the importance of tolerance and compassion?

Just a Thought…

If we, the parents of young children, fail to teach that finger-pointing, whispering, name-calling , and mocking are unacceptable behaviors, aren’t we raising a new generation of intolerant adults lacking compassion who will in turn raise yet another generation of the same?

This must stop! As the adults, we must, consider the feelings of others and teach our babies to do the same!

Just as young parents instruct children to stay away from a hot stove, or to tie their shoes, to dress themselves, to eat with a spoon, to say “please” and “thank-you”, we must also teach them the basic principles of humanity.

… compassion
… loyalty
… respect
… tolerance
… gratitude
… unconditional love
… kindness
… family values
… honesty

Another Thought…

If you are a parent who may have been in a situation described in the beginning of this article, how did you handle it with your child?

Please share, I truly would like to know.

Author’s Note:
On June 18, 1999, Candace Chantel Battiste was born with a large, black, hairy birthmark that covered more than one third of her face. Giant Congenital Nevus

Life for this child was, to be quite blunt, anything but kind.

Cruel is the word that most adequately describes the behavior by many, many small children. Candace is the reason for my purpose-driven life. She is the bravest little girl that I have ever had the honor of knowing.

Candace is my 8 year old granddaughter who has changed my life in incredible, blessed ways.

Name- Calling

Whenever Candace encountered other children they would run from her, cry, call her “ugly”, and worse names. I often wonder why children know the word “ugly” and when to use this word. Parents must know how our children copy everything that we say and do.

When a group of 3-5 year olds taunted Candace, yelling at her to “leave them alone” and while calling her “ugly! ugly!”, my heart wanted to break into a million pieces. I wanted to find the parents of these children and ask them why their young children uttered such a terrible word at another little human being!

Please, teach our future that whenever we encounter children with physical differences to accept them without fear.

It is okay to say hello, to smile, to befriend them. Your child could have been born with a similar affliction.

© 2007 Miriam L. Jacobs, Author
Embracing Candace: Anthology One

All rights reserved.
No republication of this material, in any form or medium, is permitted
without express permission of the author.

One love
http://www.Mimi.mentorsclub.com
http://www.bryantmcgill.com/forum/index.php/topic,4268.10.html#lastPost
Introduction
http://blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=40710
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?AuthorID=66359

<a href=”http://whos.amung.us/show/rjehkxbq”><img src=”https://whos.amung.us/widget/rjehkxbq.png&#8221; alt=”who’s online” width=”81″ height=”29″ border=”0″ /></a>