Welcoming Families

You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice—a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. You receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you know nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin. In order to complete this assignment, first choose a country you know nothing about as this family’s country of origin.

I have decided to have my family come from Laos.  I truly know nothing about this country.

I would prepare myself to be culturally responsive to this family by researching the countries customs and holidays.  I would learn about their family dynamics and values, such as living arrangements.  I would learn about the countries class system and economic status.  I would also try to research recent events to understand what the current circumstances are.  But the most important way to be responsive would be to talk with them and learn about their expectations, their worries, and what they want to see happen with their child’s education. 

I believe these ideas would benefit the family and me by helping me to accept and learn about their culture.  I would hope that if they noticed I was trying to be respectful of them, and had a genuine interest in helping them, then this would start to build a structure of trust for us to maintain long term.