Don’t wait for misbehavior to happen. Try and be preventative by anticipating what struggles your children will face. I love that kids are so unaware of differences in people. They don’t care the color of size of a person. They don’t judge based on clothes or what kind of car that person drives. I wish we could just bottle that trait up and hand it out to every human being on this earth. However, things are on the horizon. Abby starts kindergarten next year and as kids get older and have a greater realm of influence, they do start to look at difference and make judgement based on that. Knowing that, I have begun talking about differences. God makes everyone of different shapes, sizes, colors, opinions, and ways. I have a beautiful woman in my Bible Study with short arms and 3 fingers on one hand and two on the other. I asked her how she felt about kids asking her about it, and she says she likes it. So, I introduced me kids to her so they could ask questions and see that people are different. I’m trying to teach her now how to treat everyone kindly. I’m talking about how we don’t comment on someone’s physical appearance unless it’s a compliment. I haven’t seen her be unkind to other kids in a judging way or with mean words (yes, we do deal with unkind behavior result from selfishness…sharing issues, etc.), but I’m trying to be preemptive in knowing what is around the bend. This type of pro-active strategy works for everything. It is sometimes so much harder to train in the moment (although sometimes that is exactly what needs to happen too). However, you don’t want to walk into a new store and have not trained them how to look with their eyes and not their hands or to stay close to mom. If you can role play or play games to teach behavior before the situation, you’re going to make life easier on yourself. You don’t want to reach puberty without talking to them about the changes that are going to occur in their own body. With this strategy, you will find yourself constantly teaching and anticipating. That’s good. Keep at it. It’s going to be a lot of hard work at the beginning that will, with God’s grace, make it easier in the end.
