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The Anti-Defamation League has long championed ways to combat prejudice. Recently, the ADL partnered with Barnes & Noble to produce a pamphlet called "Close the Book on Hate." This simple booklet can help you go a long way toward helping your children learn respect for other people. Here are some of the highlights:

•Be mindful of your language. Avoid making stereotypical remarks, and challenge those made by others.

•Research your family tree and trace your family's involvement in the struggle for civil and human rights. Teach your kids about their family members' immigration experience.

•Read and encourage your children to read books that promote different cultures, as well as those written by authors of diverse backgrounds.

•Treat every child's question with respect and seriousness, no matter how awkward or embarrassing the topic might seem to you. Clarify the questions in order to make sure you know what your child is trying to find out. Answer questions as clearly and honestly as you can. Avoid preaching or overexplaining. If you don't know the answer, say so, and include your child in a plan to learn the answer. ("Why don't we go to the library tomorrow and find out?")

•Work to help your child understand what intolerance is. Always address any biased comments your child makes, and make sure he knows how to recognize a racist remark. Teach your children that words can hurt. Tell your child to come to you with any questions about names he has been called or heard others say at school.

•Be sure to give time and attention to other children who have been hurt by name-calling or biased behavior. They need to be reassured that their race, religion, gender, accent, disability, sexual orientation, or appearance do not make them deserving targets.

In addition, the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Teaching Tolerance" Web site offers useful educational tools for parents.

Look for "101 Tools for Tolerance" on the site. This guide offers ideas to combat prejudice and racism in yourself, your family, your schools, your workplace, and your community. You'll also find helpful suggestions for encouraging multiculturalism, such as listening to or playing music from differnt parts of the world, making multicultural artwork, suggestions for toys, and instructions for how to help your child discern what intolerance is by pointing out stereotypes in movies, television shows, computer games, and other media. You can also take the family to different ethnic restaurants to learn more about the culture behind the food.

Finally, you may also want to spend time with your children at "Planet Tolerance," the Southern Poverty Law Center's Web page for children, which features interactive stories about multiculturalism and real stories about the history of the civil rights movement.

-- Paige Bierma is a health and medical reporter based in San Francisco.

References

First published September 19, 2001
Last updated February 26, 2008
Copyright © 2001 Consumer Health Interactive

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