Teaching Kids how to Celebrate Women's Day
International Women's Day is on March 8th! We celebrate the achievements of women around the world in combating gender inequality.
As good parents, you try to raise your kids in a fair and safe environment. Therefore, it may be difficult for them to understand the importance of this day. While it may be a few years before they can grasp the sociopolitical elements, you can start planting seeds today that will blossom into a kinder, smarter next generation.
Here are some Kindness Tips on how to foster respect for women in your children:
Cultivate Curiosity
All trees start as a single seed, and all great changes start with curiosity.
Point out women in your children's lives. Ask your kids gentle questions about who these women are. Once your kids understand the conversation, turn the tables and have them ask the questions. In doing so, you are teaching your kids to notice the women around them.
Bonus for Sons: These conversations are a great opportunity to help the future men in your life appreciate differences. You can reshape their narrative around strength, helping them define strength in nontraditional ways by incorporating masculine and feminine power.
Bonus for Daughters: You can use these conversations with your young ladies to help them see and respect any similar traits they hold with women in their lives. These conversations will inoculate them against any attempts by future people to treat their strengths as weaknesses.
Brainstorm Appreciation
Once the seed has been planted, invite your children to brainstorm lots of fun ways they can show appreciation to the women in their lives! Encourage them to be silly, personal, and above all, thoughtful.
If they start to get off track, gently say, "What a fun idea! I see why you like it! But what do you think Miss So-and-So would want to do, if you were her?"
Bonus for Sons: If you have already been teaching your boys about love languages, then this is a great foundation for teaching them to appreciate women! They'll already understand that people experience love in different ways, so you can use that to help them think of different ways to appreciate the women in their lives. If you are just starting, here are our how-to Kindness Tips!
Bonus for Daughters: Many of the positive changes for women in the past century are due to women supporting each other. Share examples in your own life of how you've raised other women's voices, too! Teach your little ones how to notice the people not being heard in the room and to make space for everyone.
Honor History
As they say, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Give your children a primer on the history of women, as best fits their current capacity to understand. You can brush up on your own knowledge by checking out the website for International Women's Day!
Bonus for Sons: Show your sons the world as it was before and as it is now. As they learn about the monumental changes of the last century, they can feel empowered in their ability to make a better world by leading with kindness.
Bonus for Daughters: Help your daughters understand the legacy they have been gifted by the women before them. For example, you could share the story of marine scientist Rachel Carson. We always tell our little ones they can change the world! Here's a chance to show them that it CAN be done.
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