People are surprising

I was reminded tonight of the challenge of how we view people different to ourselves. My eldest chose, "Children just like me" by Anabel Kindersley and Barnabas Kindersley, as his bed time story. I love this book. It has wonderful photographs of children and the things/people in their lives. It reports information about different children, their families, food they eat, schools they go to, games they play in a non-judgemental, level playing field kind of way, no one way of living is presented as being better than another.

I have been thinking about ways to challenge my kids stereotypes about people different to ourselves. My eldest has been trying to make sense of the way in which people live and the way for him to do this is to think that the way we do it is good, and the way other people do it is due to some sort of deficit; "they don't know how to..." This is a trap for us too, it is easy to think that the way we live is full of positives and 'the way to do it', and that other people's way of living is not as good. All people have strengths and deficits, even us.

Many people do live very different lives to us: they might live in a one roomed house, they might be farmers, they might not always have enough to eat, they might make their own clothes, they might go to school for more (or less) of the day than we do, they might eat more junk food... The list could go on indefinitely. BUT people, whether they are rich or poor, formally educated or not, urban or rural dwellers, are resilient, creative, enterprising, clever, AMAZING. They might find a solution to a problem I certainly couldn't imagine, they might be very resourceful or audacious. People are surprising. I'm trying to talk about this to expand my kid's world when we talk about how other's live. It is important to see how we might learn from others no matter what they're like. "Children just like me", is a good book to share too, it helps us to see other kids as kids, to see that, although people are different, there are lots of things the same as well; they all like to play with their friends, family is important, all have favourite foods.

Children Just Like Me

"A unique photographic celebration of children around the world. Through colourful pictures and children's own words, readers learn about the dreams and beliefs, hopes and fears and day-to-day events in the lives of children across the globe. For young readers between the ages of 7 and 15"