Anti-Oppressive Policy

[playfelt]

Some lessons like that are best not taught until the child is ready to experience it. At the same time they are only coming to grips with the fact they have a mom and dad and other kids have a mom and dad and you have to be careful. Every child has a mom and dad somewhere if you want to get into the whole biology thing. Just because two men or two women live together does not make them the same no matter what certain people think so no matter what you teach you will be stepping on toes best left untrodden.

What you want to do is make things open in the sense of if two children are playing and want to both be mommies and have a doll baby then you say nothing. Whereas in times past they would have been immediately corrected and one of them told to be the daddy.

Your job is to have toys and teaching aids available, to be accepting and to show the children how to be accepting but you have to take into consideration their ages and developmental level. Have multicultural dolls, toys, music available. Serve a variety of ethnic foods.

I have the opinion that to be accepting of the world a child first needs to come to terms with their own existence. Then they branch out and learn about the world around them but start with what is in their realm of understanding. People live in different kinds of houses - apartments, condos, houseboats, trailers. People eat different foods. People dress differently. etc. What you are doing is from a young age teaching children that while people are different they do things the same - live, eat, dress, play. That is the lesson you teach to toddlers/preschool.

If you are going to do this 100% you MUST make that clear in your ads, contract, discussions with parents because you will likely only be able to attract families that are living in diverse situations. Other parents will want to reserve the right to teach their children their own belief systems in their own way and time.

Generally speaking I only deal with an issue like this if it presents itself in daycare such as a divorce situation where a child's daddy isn't able to do any pick up or drop off because he lives in a different city.