Neighbor Tuesday: Raising neighborly kiddos
When my kids were little (and cue tears), I took them on a safari around the world. Ok, ok, it wasn’t a real safari. It was in my house and involved lots of stuffed animals. I remember my husband coming home at lunchtime from the church he was pastoring, and telling him “don’t worry about the trail of random paper plates in the hallway or giraffe in our bathroom” or something like that. I had made a paper plate trail of “rocks” to find the hidden waterfall. My daughter’s bedroom was Africa and my son’s room was Asia. I made a quick treasure hunt with a map of the world I printed off, and off we went.
Please envision us walking in a line, singing the Dora song about the map, and me making loud proclamations of “Oh my goodness, do you guys see that dolphin? [when we crossed the Atlantic Ocean]” or “Watch your step! There’s snakes here in the forests!” We traveled to the starting point (aka, the living room) with our map and flashlights and backpacks to the hidden waterfall while jumping over rocks (read-paper plates). We climbed up the huge mountain (3 stairs) to get to Africa.
At each stop, I had a few stuffed animals found in each continent and a picture book of a country in the continent. We would stop and read the book, mark the country off our map, and go on to the next stop. We finally ended up back in our living room where the finale treasure was a plate of cookies and icing – met with lots of squeals and way too much sugar before naptime. We ate lunch on a picnic in the living room that day and I wrestled two wound-up kiddos down for a nap.
It wasn’t fancy or instagrammable and didn’t cost anything. I was a PhD student at the time and we were a pastor’s family at a lovely, small church. I got books from the library and used whatever we had in the house. But I wanted to instill neighboring and loving the globe from a really young age.
I guess I’m trying to say that you don’t have to be fancy to teach your kiddos how to be a neighbor. You just need, well, you to be one too.
The first section of my book talks about how neighboring like the Good Samaritan did is like an ‘And/Also’. Giving food to a food pantry and/also calling out systemic racism when we see it. Donating money to an organization at Christmas and/also understanding how we spend the rest of our money reflects neighboring too. Anyone can do the former. The latter is much harder to do and requires lots of inner heart-type-work. In other words, the latter is a change of worldview, a posturing of the heart where neighboring comes as natural as breath.
I’m convinced when we become that type of neighbor - the one who does the hard work of neighboring in a world positioned to do quite the opposite without even thinking about it, the one that “stops on the side of the road to help” without even thinking about it, the one that neighbors with respect and honor instead of “othering” and judgement – it’s much easier to teach it to our kids. I guess I’m trying to say that our kids learn what they see and hear, who they see us love and hear us say.
This post is not about the inner-heart-type-work. (My book is though and I’d love to share what I’ve learned about that if you want to read it.)
This post is more of ‘what can we do on a normal Tuesday to instill the And/Also type of neighboring in our kids’. I’m still in the middle of raising t(w)eenagers, so you better believe I’m not an expert at all! But, I do remember a few things that we did as a family when they were little that were both fun and (hopefully) seeds in my kid’s hearts to grow up as And/Also type of neighbors.
Use what you have and take a trip around the world. Go grab several fun books at the library of places around the world. Try to get a book from each continent and bonus points if you tell your kids to pick out places they would love to go one day. Let them be a part of it! Then, print out a map. I printed one that showed the whole world and had my kids color it before our big “trip” to start talking with them about the continents and oceans and cultures. Then get creative! You can have certain rooms or sections of the house be each continent. You could have food from each country you go to for snacks. You could have a station for tea when you visit Asia. I had popcorn when we visited Africa because I had a friend from Ghana who taught me how to make caramel popcorn. (I also tell you about that story in Chapter 6 of my book, but I need to tell you again that it was so good!). Use whatever stuffed animals you have or find animals from the countries you visit in coloring books to have ready to go. Pull up Google Earth and pretend flying to whatever country you are in.
Talk about taking care of the earth through recycling. One of my best memories is when the kids raided the recycle bin and made a train out of it. Ok, in all honesty, that was a time-out activity for arguing. ha! But, it worked. And, we could have a great conversation about how recycling and loving the earth can help us be good neighbors. (If they are teenagers+, I have a whole chapter on climate change and neighboring they might enjoy.)
Another fun event we did was celebrate the summer and winter Olympics. During the Olympics, I would have our TV on more than we usually did and just let it play continually with whatever event was on that day. Then when the kids walked by, they would see a competition but I was really hoping they would see one thing – the flags of the various countries that were there. We would watch the opening and closing ceremonies, and I’d point out the colors and outfits and traditions. One year, I made sugar cookies and we decorated them with the colors of the Olympic rings. And we talked about the flags.
We also cut out circles and made our own Olympic rings. We made gold and silver and bronze medals out of construction paper. And we talked about the flags. This is always a great time to celebrate our lovely world and cultures and customs and traditions and colors! This brings me to my favorite tip:
Get a map and put it on the fridge. I say ‘put it on the fridge’ because my kids would ask for a snack or a drink every 0.24 seconds – so, it was a high traffic spot in our house! Still is with teens and tweens! =) Every chance you get, talk about the world. If you hear a certain country or language on Sesame Street or another show they watch or books they read, go to the map and color it or put a sticker on it. Any chance you get to point them to the map, go for it. Make a game out of it if you want! Again, nothing has to be fancy or costly or super-deep. I think multiple 2-minute-reminders will water that neighbor-seed more effectively than a long 30-minute-sermon. I have a hunch you do too. So, use that map as a constant reminder that the world is made up of lovely families just like ours. This is also a great time to start talking about privilege and what we do about that too. (The last section of my book goes into detail on how to do that.)
Read, Read, Read. There are some great books out there on how to be a neighbor, especially when they are older. Look for authors of color or from other countries. I would also encourage you to read the books first to make sure it doesn’t come across as white-saviourish. There are lots of kid’s books out there about the world. But, most of them have a white person going to another country to help. That can root white-saviorism into our own children, especially if you’re a white American. So, be cautious about books that denote white-saviorism, even unconsciously. Find the books where the main character is not white or trying to save anything. (This also goes back to the first part of my book that focuses on rooting out white-saviorism in our own hearts.) I also had a book that said ‘hello’ in multiple languages, which was a wonderful tool to show my kids the diversity of the world. And, that no language is better than the other. When they got older, this was a great time to talk to them about why that last statement is important, especially here in America when speaking English is used as a judgment call against people. Here’s one of a bazillion pictures I have of my kids when they fell asleep reading. Cue more tears from me.
Let them hear. I remember having a zoom call with several colleagues from all over the globe a few years ago. I told my kids that I was meeting with them, but they could come in the room to color or play as long as they were quiet and off camera. I wanted them to hear the different accents and conversations happening. Well, during the meeting my youngest decided to army crawl behind me, pop up behind me really slowly on camera, and then dart away. Y’all, it was so funny and scared me silly! But, these type of every-day conversations can be a great time to talk with our kids about people in the world. Even better, to let them hear it. I know that many of you don’t have zoom calls like that, so I would encourage you to look around you or even online. Show them the live TV from the UN (this was one of my favorite to do with my kids) or find a cooking show in another language from Guatemala or Thailand or South Africa on Youtube with captions. Don’t play it in English so the kids can hear the different languages and accents.
When they start to get older, then you can weave in conversations on “othering”. It sadly won’t take long for them to start hearing bigoted or racist or “othering” type comments from people. So, address that every time it comes up - even if they are little and even if it’s uncomfortable. Again, it doesn’t have to be a full-on discourse about it. Just small reminders that that type of talk is not neighborly. Then they get even older, and you can have harder conversations about equity and justice. Then even more on systemic racism and privilege. The earlier we start, the better! And, I think the more we talk about it, the more neighborly we all become.
Role-play with them on what to do when they hear “othering” type language. I remember the first time my daughter came home and told me some kids at the lunch table were making fun of immigrants. She told them her mom worked with people all over the world and the people I worked with were not who the others at the lunchroom table were calling them. Sadly, that was not received well at all. So, we role-played what to do in that situation if it or something similar happened again. I think these can be powerful tools for us to show our kids how to stand up and use wisdom. And, that it’s ok to not be friends with everyone. It’s ok to leave spaces that are not safe or neighborly, including lunch tables.
Engage the senses. You’ve probably noticed that lots of these tips include movement, hearing, eating, smelling, seeing. My kids needed that movement or smelling of new spices for dinner or hearing accents or seeing pictures instead of a lecture. You know your kiddos the best, so use that to your advantage. If they are motivated by food, have a night where you make something from another country. If they are motivated by having more play time outside, go on a treasure hunt and talk about the different trees in your yard compared to the Amazon.
Friends, we are about to be smack-dap in the middle of the holiday season and many of us will have lots of extra time with our kiddos. Just ask my kids, I love the holidays because of that one reason. =) Maybe you can go on a trip around the world or bake cookies like the Olympic rings or read a new book from an African author. If you’re a grandparent or a caregiver, you can too! It’s not fancy or costly or doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to come from a heart of neighboring. That’s more than enough.
Also, please don’t think that I’m a creative mom or did these things all the time. I didn’t and am not crafty at all! I was just trying to survive all of those long Tuesdays with littles! Solidarity to all of you parents of littles! It gets easier - especially when they can get their own snacks and do their own laundry. Clap, clap clap!
As I’ve mentioned in the post, my book goes into detail of how we can all be more neighborly, including some more tips on raising neighborly kiddos. Here’s the link for my book if you want to hear me over-share other personal stories. (You can also get it anywhere you love to buy books here - scroll down a bit for the links). All kidding aside, it’s a book about how to neighbor in our hearts so that our actions follow suit - where neighboring comes as natural as breathing.
Now, I’m going to wipe myself off the floor from the puddle of tears I cried while looking through old pictures of my kids. This picture is from Mother’s Day 2013.
-Emily
PS: If you do any of these type of fun things with you kiddos, will you send me a picture and/or note? I’d love to celebrate with you! I miss the little ages, so I might just have to come over to read the picture books again. =)