Video 1 Reflections

Video 1 - Felix and Amanda

  • Making friends who are different from themselves really is child’s play for Amanda’s and Felix’s girls.

    What is your attitude towards exploring differences?

  • How do you feel about getting to know people who may be very different from yourself?

  • It seems for us adults, just like for Felix and Amanda, things are a bit more complex. We tend to focus on differences as barriers and we may anticipate difficulties. Sometimes those anticipated barriers stop us, even if they are not real.

    Both Amanda and Felix talk about some of the barriers they felt. Amanda talks about being nervous about the language barrier. Felix talks about his fear about the dogs in Amanda’s house.

    Imagine you were in Amanda’s shoes. What would you have worried about?

  • Imagine you were in Felix’s shoes. What would you have worried about?

  • But Felix and Amanda just followed the lead of their girls. They trusted that the friendship of the girls and their other kids knowing each other from school would be enough to enable them to manage the language barriers and explore cultural differences.

    They trusted their kids, they took the time, they were respectful of each other’s experiences and now, as you can see, there is quite a bit of trust between all of them.

    What would it take for you to make a move, to move outside your comfort zone, to step outside the usual and make someone, who is very different from you, feel welcome?

  • As Amanda says “I didn’t realise that such a small gesture… made such an impact”

    Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and trying to imagine the world from their point of view is one way of breaking the ice and starting to connect with another human being.

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