Children are extremely special and beautiful and I realized this more after becoming a mother. Earlier, I nurtured a more biased behavior towards kids, and was mostly nice to the kids I found cute and adorable. However, when I became a mother, my attitude towards kids changed a lot and I became nicer to all kids. I realized that every child is worthy of love and affection.
This brings me to the @steemiteducation homework for this week: What is the most important thing, according to you, to teach children of all ages?
There is not one, but lots of important things that we need to teach kids of all ages, but right now, there is one important thing on my mind which I teach my son and try to teach any kid that I come across- acceptance and compassion.
Why Children Need to be Taught to be Accepting and Compassionate towards Others
When I became a mother and especially when I put my son into school, I started thinking a lot about my son suffering from bullying. I hope, wish and pray that he and no child goes through that ever in their life. The reason I feel bullying is so widespread is because children aren’t taught how to be accepting and kind towards others. Just like I was biased towards kids before, children often nurture a biased attitude too.
Instead of realizing that all of us are unique in our special ways and have something special to offer to the world, we are often unkind towards those who seem different to us. This is one of the major reasons behind bullying. Not only bullying, but a lack of acceptance and compassion often results in other issues such as racism, inequality, lack of patience and ignorance.
When we aren’t accepting towards different ideas, culture, ethnicities and concepts, we are likely to support a judgmental and racist attitude. For instance, there are many people in my family who think being dark skinned is a shortcoming and the same attitude is passed on to their kids. Similarly, they often make fun of people with different ethnicities because of a lack of acceptance.
When I see such attitudes prevailing in my society and family, I become extremely scared because all of this is negatively influencing my son and may shape him into a judgmental and less accepting individual too which is something I don’t want for him. This is why I try my best to teach Faateh to be more accepting towards everything and everyone and nurture compassion. He is an extremely empathetic boy and is kind towards everyone so I don’t need to work much on teaching him how to be compassionate. He shares his lunch with the janitorial staff in his school; does not like if anyone is crying; and makes sure everyone around him is happy so he is quite a lovely boy.
My job now is to teach him to be more accepting towards different ideas, people, concepts, beliefs and religions so he does not judge anything and label it as bad, but tries to ponder on things, explore them and figure out what he wants for himself instead of doing what he is told.
When we teach kids to be more accepting towards others, we teach them to be open to different ideas. Naturally, if a kid does not nurture a judgmental attitude towards a new idea, he/ she is likely to accept it and then even explore it and see if it works for him/ her.
Similarly, acceptance leads to less bullying and judgment. For instance, if a child accepts another child with a different ethnicity or one with a special medical condition, he won’t make fun of him or ridicule him. Instead, he is going to accept that kid the way he is and is likely to be compassionate towards him too. He is not going to be mean towards a child with special needs or one that seems timid or weak to him, but will be kinder and nicer to him.
When a compassionate and accepting kid grows into an adult, he/ she is likely to be more accepting and open to different things around him including religion. In my country, there are numerous religious sects and many of the people belonging to the different sects nurture a harsh, judgmental and mean attitude towards the other sects. Labeling their beliefs as the best beliefs and coming up with plans to ridicule other sects is quite common here. This is something I disapprove of and something I wish to change for the better. This can only happen if we start teaching our kids to be more accepting. Only when they are more accepting towards different religions, they will accept each religion as it is and won’t nurture a demeaning attitude towards it.
Not only that, but I believe acceptance also helps you choose the right career and profession for yourself and build for yourself a more meaningful life. Often, people are unhappy because they fail to build a more meaningful life for themselves and one of the major reasons behind this is not being in a profession you feel passionate and excited about. For instance, there are many people here who cannot pursue music as a career because their elders think it is not a respectable profession and one that won’t benefit them much. Personally know of a guy who couldn’t pursue music and had to take up medicine as a means of earning a living. That guy feels miserable about his life and badly wishes he didn’t listen to his parents back then.
If we are more accepting towards different professions, we won’t have to stay stuck in fields we don’t like and will be able to build more meaningful lives for ourselves. So you see, acceptance is a wonderful thing and if you teach kids to be more accepting and kind towards people, ideas and beliefs, you will shape them into considerate, confident and strong individuals who will go on to shape the world for the better.
How to Teach Kids to be Accepting and Kind
For me, leading by example works really well and this method works effectively with my son too. If I want to teach my son to be accepting and kind towards everyone, I need to first do the same. So I make sure to talk nicely and politely to people, particularly the beggars and be accepting towards everyone. When Faateh sees me being nice and accepting to others, he starts to nurture the same attitude.
What in your opinion is the most important thing to teach kids? Would love to read your ideas on it.
Thank you for going through my post and being patient enough to read my super-long blog-posts.
Love and light,
Sharoon.
If you liked this post, you may also like the following posts as well:
@sharoonyasir/things-i-am-grateful-for-in-2017
@sharoonyasir/how-i-let-go-of-judgments-a-dialogue-between-my-judgmental-and-more-accepting-minds
I am a part of some wonderful communities that I encourage you to join as well.
@ecotrain which is a wonderful place to meet inspirational people
#steemitbloggers which is the brainchild of the wonderful @jaynie
