Developing awareness about cultural diversity has more perks to it than we think. It adds to the overall development of a child’s personality. Let’s look at a few ways in which developing cultural intelligence benefits the child in their daily lives:
Enhancement of social skills
CQ skills enable children to get along with kids from different backgrounds and cultures. It is likely that the school your child attends will be multicultural with kids as well as teachers coming from a range of diverse cultures. A set of good CQ skills will allow children to not only adjust easily and make new friends, but help them learn about diversity.
Curiosity
Needless to say, cultural intelligence waters the seed of curiosity in the minds of children. While learning how to become more accepting and understanding towards others, the child develops a sense of curiosity. Why are other people behaving the way they are? What does that body language mean? Why do they dress the way they do? Why don’t they eat certain foods? And so on. This curiosity gets transferred onto other areas of life as well forming a great first step towards building a strong and formidable knowledge base.
You may also like to read: Tips To Raise Culturally Intelligent Children
Adaptability
Adaptability is a quality that is required not just when the child has parents with migrating jobs, but life in general also. In fact, it is one of the most essential qualities to have in life. Adaptability helps us face adversities. It helps us to not only adjust to new places but to new situations as well. Cultural intelligence makes adaptation to a new environment easier. If the child grows up to develop an interest in studying abroad, a good set of CQ skills will help lessen the cultural shock.
Empathy
Once children start developing an understanding of differences in cultures and backgrounds, they tend to become more empathetic and accommodating towards others. They grow up to have increased awareness about their own stereotypes and unconscious biases which can help them adjust better to the workplace environment and even help them become great leaders.
Confidence
Children who are well equipped with adjusting to new environments and have in-depth knowledge about different cultures are more likely to grow up to become confident, independent adults. Not just in adulthood, but even in their childhood, this set of skills help them carry out conversations with others more confidently and are less anxious about novel situations.
Know more about our Cultural Navigator Course for Kids
Aᴡesome article.
Multicultural and multilingual individuals are great assets of society. Great initiative!
[…] Cultural intelligence is one’s ability to understand, relate and work across different cultures. Sports does exactly this. It brings the players face to face with audiences, fans and other teammates, all belonging from a varied cultural backgrounds. Thereby, making them work on their knowledge of different cultures as well as their own inner biases and stereotypes. Without an empathetic cultural approach, one can simply not become a good sports player. […]