Teaching Kids to Value Diversity

Cindy Lopez:
Welcome to Voices of Compassion, CHC’s podcast series providing courage, connection and compassion, highlighting topics that matter to our community, our parents, families, educators and other professionals. My name is Cindy Lopez, and welcome to today’s episode where we’re talking about teaching kids to value diversity. You know, we are all different and it’s important to help our kids understand that our differences can enrich our lives and bring new ideas and perspectives that enhance who we are and build valuable community. So how can you as a parent or caregiver, teach your kids to value diversity and see it as a strength? Listen in to today’s episode to hear from CHC experts, Tony Cepeda, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Clinical Program Manager, and Liberty Hebron, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor. Welcome Tony and Liberty. [00:01:00] Liberty and Tony, thank you again for joining us today. I’m just wondering if there’s anything you’d like to share with our listeners as we get started.

Tony Cepeda, LMFT:
Thank you very much Cindy for having both of us here. I do want to say that I have been involved in mental health for over 30 years and addressing diversity and equity and inclusion has been a passion of mine all throughout those years. So, I am so glad that you have invited me to participate today.

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
I share in Tony’s passion for diversity and equity and inclusion. I’ve worked in educational settings actually from kindergarten all the way to higher education, and I have intentionally sought out environments where diversity-inclusion was part of the dialogue. And I think that helps me in what we’re going to talk [00:02:00] about today, to know how to talk with kids about diversity, kids of all ages really.

Cindy Lopez:
We appreciate the fact that you’re speaking not only from your experience in terms of working with kids and families, but also from your heart. And Tony, as we get started, I’m just wondering, why is teaching kids about diversity so important and why should parents or educators or anyone for that matter spend their time on that?

Tony Cepeda, LMFT:
We are living in a world that is becoming more and more diverse. The work force is more diverse, schools become more diverse culturally, and we’ve functioned in a world economy, we’re not isolated. We have to be able to interact with the rest of the world. And so just having an awareness and an understanding of different cultures is becoming more [00:03:00] important. We are located in Santa Clara County and in terms of racial makeup in Santa Clara county, it’s about 52% white, 2.8% African-American, 39% Asian American, 25% percent Hispanic or Latino and 1.2% Native American or Indian. And we’re right next to San Mateo County so that county is just as diverse with about 48% white, 2.3% African-American, 30% Asian-American, 24% Hispanic or Latino and 0.43% Native American or Indian.

Now this is just racial breakdowns for diversity in the two counties that we predominantly serve. We’re also diverse in terms of religious beliefs, [00:04:00] socioeconomic status, sexual orientation. Santa Clara county is in the top five in terms of religious diversity in the United States, that’s pretty impressive. Really what it comes down to is that given that we have this context and we’re living in a more global community, focusing on diversity, learning more about diversity makes us stronger and more productive. With diversity we have more ideas, we have more perspectives and different experiences. So we get to learn more and what it does is it leads to more creativity, it leads to better problem solving, we increase and improve the range of skills that are available to us, and we [00:05:00] also increase the talent pool.

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
I also think of in terms of productivity how much more we can achieve or accomplish if we feel safe, if we feel like we belong and that idea of safety and belonging when we have such a diverse community like you’ve pointed out, if we don’t talk about it, if we don’t have these important conversations, where are we going to go with our diversity, it’s just going to stay numbers. We really have to bring it to life to make that belonging happen, to make that creativity happen. We have to have these conversations, so thanks for pointing that out Tony.

Cindy Lopez:
We often talk about how kids don’t like it when they feel different from one another, but I also think that we just kind of need to change the conversation with our kids and talk about how different is good. So diversity [00:06:00] is a strength and Tony as we think about this, and especially because you highlighted the religious diversity, and part of that is what makes people special, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit, why feeling special and feeling different is a good thing?

Tony Cepeda, LMFT:
When we embrace and we allow ourselves to be open to learn about other cultures and other communities, part of what makes that great is that we also start examining our own cultures and looking at what our beliefs are and where that came from. Liberty mentioned this a little bit previously, but it helps to build our communities and build our relationships and our trust in each other, it just makes for more opportunities for everyone involved.

What makes us special [00:07:00] is the uniqueness of our own cultures. When we embrace diversity, we open ourselves to learn more about ourselves as well. We get to find out where my behaviors come from, why do I do certain things, why do we do certain celebrations? Just as an example, why is it so important to my family that we celebrate Memorial Day and, you know, it just goes back to people in my family who have served in the military and having pride in that, so that’s an important part of my culture. Why do we say prayers at dinner time – that gives me the opportunity to examine and talk with kids about the importance of prayer and where that came from, how I learned that from my parents and their parents, et cetera, et cetera. [00:08:00] The idea of being special, we have to embrace who we are and embracing who you are and having pride in who we are, we can share that with other people. The more we know about other cultures, we can embrace those celebrations and ideas as well. So a couple important celebrations that are happening in September that I just wanted to point out: September 10th will be a Hindu celebration called Ganesh Chaturthi that celebrates Ganesha, an important god in Hindu faith, September 15th, Yom Kippor, which is a very important Jewish holiday, September 16th is Mexican Independence Day.

Cindy Lopez:
Tony, I know that you as a father have these kinds of conversations with your kids and it’s so impressive. And Liberty, I’m wondering about you too, how do you [00:09:00] create an environment where it’s okay for your kids to ask questions, you know, whether it’s part of your family discussion or if it’s in your classroom. How do you create that kind of environment?

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
I want to start by emphasizing something that Tony pointed out, which is that we often forget to explain the why of why we do things, right. So why do we celebrate Memorial Day, why do we say these prayers? And it feels for us as adults so commonplace or maybe even rote in some of our traditions and activities, and we don’t realize that kids need the explanation of why we do it. Right. In my own household in addition to English, we speak Tagalog and growing up I just understood that we had another language, but then watching my nephew grow up who is seven right now, having to explain to him, hey, that word is actually Tagalog, that word is Filipino, it’s not English so if you [00:10:00] say that to your friends they’re not going to know what you’re talking about, and we have to kind of learn that some of these things need to be explained and that’s a great place to start when talking about diversity.

I read a blog once that likened talking about diversity to talking about safety. And when it comes to talking about safety with your kids you know you have to be explicit. You know you have to start with digestible information for what they’re gonna need to know, maybe even make it rote so that they understand this is just what we do, that’d be a beautiful place to start when it comes to diversity; start with the digestible information and start with the starting point, repetition, checking for their understanding and also recognizing it’s a process that’s going to change based on their age, their development, but, you know, no one is asking for parents or caregivers to be [00:11:00] experts in diversity, to be scholars of critical race theory. We just have to be able to embrace dialogue.

As parents and caregivers, we can be afraid, we can be uncertain and we should own that and acknowledge that. There’s really no way to know all of the answers. I think any parent out there knows that kids will come up with a question and just blow your mind by those questions, but we should also know as the adults our own blind spots and find information when it comes to diversity and inclusion, find out that knowledge, seek that knowledge out. And by that I don’t mean to tokenize your brown friends and neighbors or your black colleagues, I’m talking about reading and reflecting on your own time, exploring and learning with your kids, that’s okay to do. It’s okay to be growing alongside our children. [00:12:00] We can learn alongside them too. Embrace those questions. It could be when you’re walking in the park and people watching it could be like Tony said, you know, right after that prayer before the meal, when you go to the grocery store, I think sometimes as parents, we wait for opportunities where we’re in the car to have the difficult dialogue because then we don’t have to make eye contact, it’s a prescribed amount of time, and I get that, I totally hear that and validate that and challenge our parents and listeners out there to really have the dialogue at any and all places. So just create that environment everywhere and know that it’s okay to have questions yourself.

Cindy Lopez:
Thank you for tuning in! Just a note, before we continue on with today’s episode, we hope you’re following us on social media, so you don’t need to wait a whole week between episodes to get engaging, inspiring and educational content from CHC. [00:13:00] Our social handles are linked on our podcast webpage at podcasts.chconline.org.

I see this happen all the time, so a parent and child could be walking down the street together and the child, especially if it’s a younger child, they see somebody who looks different, whether it’s their clothing or the color of their skin, or even if they’re using a cane to walk. So the young child may often ask why is that person wearing that or why is that person using a cane? And sometimes I think parents feel like that’s an awkward conversation in that moment. And so they quiet the child because they don’t want the other person to feel awkward. And I wonder if you have any comments about those kinds of situations.

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
Yeah, I totally get that feeling of the ah not right now, or you know, kids say the darndest things, [00:14:00] so you never know what’s going to come next out of their mouth or as adults we’ve really learned a lot about social norms and shame. What that basically teaches in that moment of hushing the child is asking that question is not normal or that having a different ability, different physical presentation, different clothing is not normal. Modeling and social teaching are really the strongest parenting tools that we forget that we have. It’s why our kids know our habits when we’re driving in the car or they know how to act around us because we haven’t had our morning cup of coffee, right. We’ve modeled that, we’ve sort of socially taught them that, and so hushing the child in that moment is sort of teaching them that not right now, you can’t learn in this moment and that shames the question asking. It also may make the other person uncomfortable because they want their diversity to [00:15:00] be known and celebrated. So challenge yourself, if that’s you and I don’t expect you know perfection again, maybe we all do that at some point, but loop back to it and say, you know, earlier when you asked me that question I didn’t know what to say, but I thought about it and I do want to talk about it a little bit more, it’s okay to do that too.

Tony Cepeda, LMFT:
I think it’s one of the wonderful things about children, is their curiosity, like Liberty was saying, just being open to talking about it. I just want to reiterate what Liberty said, it’s okay as a parent if you don’t know. This gives you an opportunity to find out together, to learn and explore together with your child. So this is a joint effort and you both get to learn and find out more about people. When my kids were growing up, we have a pretty diverse neighborhood here, but we [00:16:00] became really close with a family that is Sikh and they came from India and one of their strong religious beliefs is to wear coverings on their head. And so my son was very curious about that. And what ended up happening is conjointly together he and I, we asked the family, you know with respect and with honor, what does the head dressing do and so we got educated and we found out just how important that was and how important hair was and why they really couldn’t wear a hat and how that made it difficult, but it was a great learning experience for us.

Cindy Lopez:
When you’re talking with your kids and you invite those questions that kind of curiosity I think promotes respect and [00:17:00] teaches respect and I wonder Liberty if you have any further thoughts about how parents can actually teach respect?

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
Respect is just one of the many aspects of diversity and inclusion dialogues, but it’s one that can be taught really at any age, there’s developmentally appropriate conversations that can exist if your child is a newborn all the way up to your child who is launched and is a young adult. Really we should be able to talk about respect and teach and learn about respect at any age. I have a one-year-old nephew and we are right now of course teaching him many things, but we’re teaching him the value of sharing and the value of consent, which are other aspects of respect. And this is the beginning of some diversity conversations too, from respect to diversity.

So we’ve taught ourselves as [00:18:00] adults and we’ve taught his older brother that we can’t just grab things from his hand, obviously barring any like true safety concerns of course, right. But like we’re not just going to take things out of his hands, we’re going to ask the question and pause and say can I have that please or will you share that with me please. Because one, we don’t want my one-year-old nephew to turn around and start grabbing things from our hands so there’s the social teaching, but we’re also talking about respect what’s in my hands or my body, my boundaries, all of those things. And that just shows developmentally we really can start no matter the age, having some of these bigger picture conversations and we don’t have to shy away from them. We’ll be able to also share some resources as part of this podcast, those will be really great resources to check depending on the developmental level of your child, what kinds of conversations you can have [00:19:00] regarding respect, but there’s teachable moments everywhere.

Cindy Lopez:
As Liberty mentioned we are going to include some additional resources online that you can find in our episode show notes. So, what advice do you have for parents about tackling some of the tougher moments in other words their kids are seeing things, reading things in the media and hearing about current events and all kinds of stuff. What advice do you have for parents about having conversations around those kinds of moments?  

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
One would be to go back to what Tony said and just embrace curiosity, remember that this is coming from a place of curiosity, it’s not meant to be this, you know, interview spotlight of the parent, it’s genuinely coming from a place of curiosity. I think some of our listeners who have older children might be asking themselves like, whoah, how do I handle this, but honestly, all parents and caregivers [00:20:00] again of any age should be ready or at least know that they’re going to get asked some of these big questions. It’s not just coming from our older children anymore, it’s really with this information highway at our fingertips you know everyone’s got a computer in our pocket or on our watches for crying out loud. So we really have a lot of information that we get inundated with constantly.

My favorite tool in tackling these tougher questions is to turn it back on the child and make sure that we are in control of the dialogue. That’ll help when we’re faced with those questions. Ask the kiddo, right, well, what do you know about that topic or what is it that you did see and what did you understand from it and that’ll give you a starting point for that tough dialogue, so that you’re not just pulling out information and citing CNN and doing whatever you feel like you have to do, slow it down and check for what the kiddo knows. It’s much [00:21:00] easier to correct misinformation than to just start from scratch and then also tying back to what we said earlier, look for those moments to have the conversation, have the dialogue, at any point, so that it’s not a tough moment. You’ve been in control of the situation and you know you’re ready to ask that question of your child. You can ask them, hey, you know, what do you know about Black Lives Matter, what have you heard at school about voter rights, are they teaching you anything about what’s going on in Afghanistan? If you’re taking the time to ask those questions of your child proactively, you’re also in control of when that conversation is happening and that way you’re more prepared, you’re more ready for these tough conversations and I think that helps ease some of that initial shock and crisis kind of, that was a really hard question, is if we [00:22:00] control when and how those dialogues are happening, that’s really great. It also is okay to table discussions. Don’t be afraid to say we’re gonna wait and let’s discover that together later on.

Cindy Lopez:
What do you hope that our listeners really hear from you today on this topic?

Liberty Hebron, LPCC:
Don’t be afraid to re-listen to the podcast as necessary, but one of my things is just don’t panic. Don’t panic when your kids come to you with curiosity and they want to know more, don’t panic when you may not have the answer or when you’ve given an answer and you feel like it’s not quote-unquote, “good enough.” Don’t panic, this is an ongoing process we all have to participate in and I am constantly challenging myself to learn, everybody should. Let’s just keep this dialogue going.

Tony Cepeda, LMFT:
This issue of [00:23:00] diversity, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge because it’s not possible to know everything there is to know about culture and differences. I’ve devoted over 30 years to this process and I’m still learning, but that’s okay. It’s okay to have the attitude of learning, it’s about discovery, it’s about getting exposed to new and different things. And I think for parents, if you have that attitude and you join with your kids in that process, it’s a wonderful way to bond with your child and learn more about yourself and your own culture and expand that knowledge to other cultures within your community.

Cindy Lopez:
Tony and Liberty, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights and perspective. And also for our listeners, Tony [00:24:00] actually did a podcast episode last season with us on Cultural Humility, so that might be another episode to look up on this same topic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

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