Book of the Month: It's OK to be Different

I think 2020 will be a year that causes people to pause and reflect. The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that the most important place we can be is at home with our families. Recent events has engaged the world in an important discussion on racism, challenging us to think deeper about the impact of racism and what we can do to change.

I am pretty active on Instagram, it is my preferred social media platform. Last week there was a powerful show of solidarity in standing up for the black community with people and businesses posting black squares for #blackouttuesday. I think the idea was to give the influence to black people for the day, to listen to and learn from them. Although, I posted a black square to my stories instead of my feed. 

I wanted to participate in learning from the black community and challenge myself to think deeper about racism and what I can do personally. 

I saw this image come up a few times on Instagram and loved the message: 

I started following this artist, @ohhappydani and love how she shares important messages of acceptance through her artwork.

Change starts in our hearts and needs to be taught in our homes. As a mother, it is my responsibility to teach my children. The most important thing I want to teach them are the two greatest commandments: To love God and to love their neighbours as themselves (that includes loving themselves). To understand that we are all children of God, created in his image. 

I pondered what I could do to more actively teach my children about accepting others. I know that my Nico learns and processes a lot of information from reading books so I looked through his book collection. We have books that focus on different cultural traditions such as "My Heart Fills with Happiness" (From the indigenous culture) and books that show people of different races such as "I am Canada" and Latter-day Baby books.  Most of the Latter-day books focus on doctrine from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but some would also appeal to all Christians like their books on the Creation and the Nativity. I do really like how they show diversity in the skin colour of the characters shown in the books. 

However, I wanted to have a book that specifically talked about differences in people and accepting others for who they are. I went on Amazon and choose this book, "It's OK to be Different". 

This book really does do a great job at discussing how people are different and also how we are different too. It is an ideal book for toddlers to start a discussion on accepting differences in people. 

I have heard the phrase, "Children don't see colour" and that is not true. Dominic can tell you whether something is red, blue, purple, pink or green. I am sure he can also tell that people have different coloured skin. In fact, research shows that babies as young as 6 months old recognize the skin tone of their parents in comparison to others. I believe that it is important to "see colour", to accept and embrace diversity and learn from each other. 

What are some books you have read that teach acceptance and/or show diversity?