Many adoptive families are transracial and intercultural, bringing together 2 or more different backgrounds under the same roof. I have had many adoptive parents ask for simple ways to teach their children about their cultural heritage, when it is different than their own. Here are 14 ways you can incorporate culture TODAY into your children’s lives- but this is not an exhaustive list! Please add your comments after the article and share ways you incorporate culture into your family:).
1) Snuggle up with a book. As parents, we read to our kids all the time. By carefully choosing the books, we can:
* explore our children’s homelands and culture (such as these books about Ethiopia)
* read stories about adoptive families (such as , Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis, Goyangi Means Cat by Christine McDonnel, or my favorite A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza)
* share stories about families who happen to look like ours, especially when the story is not about adoption. For example, my kids are convinced that the boy (African-American) and girl (blonde) in “The Cat and the Hat Knows a lot about That!” are siblings, and he must be adopted.
2) Feast. Searching out restaurants and supermarkets from your child’s culture has double
the benefits: not only will you be exposing her to ingredients and flavors from her heritage, you also will meet people who share the same culture. Learn to make dishes from their homeland- not only for dinner. Try to find out typical snacks or breakfast foods. My boys are extremely proud to announce to the family “we’re eating kinche from Ethiopia!” or “tonight we’re having dumplings from China!”
3) Become part of the community. Community centers and churches are gathering places in the local community for many ethnic groups and immigrants. We have been welcomed into our local Ethiopian church, who recently invited adoptive families to their Easter feast. The outdoor buffet was brimming with injera and different kinds of wot, and crowds of kids were running around playing basketball, soccer, and visiting the face-painting clown. For Chinese New Year, the Chinese Consulate opens their doors for the celebration: dancers, music, games (how many grains of rice can you pick up with chopsticks?) copious amounts of food, and a gallery of photos from China. I 
have heard parents express their discomfort at being in the minority at such events: step out of your comfort zones and experience what minorities (and your children) may experience on a daily basis. My children love being surrounded by people who look exactly like they do.
4) Celebrate! Learn the traditions and customs for festivals, celebrations, holidays, birthdays and select some favorites to incorporate into your family. Start small: research the top holiday (or top 2, 3, etc) and find out where the closest celebration is. If possible, attend the event, parade, or party as a family. If there is nothing close-by, re-create it in your home: watch clips on youtube, talk to friends of the same culture to gather details, research it on-line to learn more. Don’t stop at home- bring the celebrations to your children’s school- who doesn’t love a reason to party? Here’s an example lesson plan that I created for preK- elementary school for Chinese New Year.
5) Learn some new words. Language is such an important part of any culture. If you cannot enroll your child into a language class, try to learn some conversational phrases: Hello, How are you?, What’s your name?, Thank you, I love you, etc. Use apps, CD’s, web sites, books, DVD’s to showcase your chosen language.
6) Surround yourself with cultural beauty. Appreciate the artisans typical of your child’s country with by hanging and displaying art and artifacts from your travels there. Cultural home decor, eclectically mixed in with your other art shows your children some of the beauty from theircountry.
7) Naming fun. Names are a part of our identity. Parents have the right to name their child, and sometimes adoptive parents change their children’s names when they bring them into their home, for various reasons (such as passing on a family namesake). Consider keeping part of their name intact by using it as a middle name, or nickname. My son Tonito was swimming when a little girl at our pool asked him his name. He told her, and then asked hers. She replied “My name is Sarah, but my Chinese names is Ju Fang” (a common practice in our area among Asian immigrants is to maintain their birth name, but take on an “American” name for school). He was ecstatic to tell her that he had a Chinese name too! Anyone can incorporate names from your children’s culture by giving your child a nickname. Our son Ricky was called “Ato Konjo” in Ethiopia, which means Mr. Handsome:). We love it and still call him that (much to his delight!). Find out what “sweetie” or “honey” or other lovey names are in your child’s native language and begin to use them. Another fun idea is to find the most popular names in their native language, and begin to use them as characters in stories you tell, or as names for their stuffed animals and dolls.
8) Diversify homework. Diversify “school” subjects is as easy as a visit to the library or a quick look-up on google. Your kids have to read a non-fiction book in first grade? Check out an easy reader about the Terra Cotta Warriors. They need to read a chapter book? Try a Magic Tree House book, which frequently visits other countries. They need to research a famous person? Look for someone from your child’s native country. Sprinkle in lessons, combining what they are already learning with cultural figures. Having to make a poster or travel brochure for social studies? Pick a favorite destination in their home country.
9) Dance and sing. Kids don’t need a reason for a dance party! Pump up the volume after dinner with some World Music. Try Putumayo for wonderful collections from specific regions of the world, or watch youtube videos of traditional dances. My kids love to try to imitate the dancers we find!
10) Spice up movie night. Who doesn’t enjoy popcorn and a movie? Try to include some foreign films in the mix. KidWorldCitizen is slowly building up a database of foreign films appropriate for kids- leave your favorite in the comments section and I will add it to our list! Films offer us the rare chance to watch kids in their natural environment: what do their bedrooms look like? What do they play after school? How does school look? An example example is the Mongolian film The Story of the Weeping Camel.
11) Make some new friends. Make sure your kids have friends that look like them: adopted or not.
Kids don’t ant to feel different- they want to fit in. Make an effort to maintain relationships with other kids who are adopted from the same country, and reach out to new friends of the same culture. Search and join a yahoo group in your area for the culture you are interested (for example, search “chicago+korean+adoptive+families”).
12) Look for role models. It is helpful for your kids to see you respecting and interacting positively with authority figures of the same culture. I was recently speaking with a friend who had adopted from Guatemala, who lamented that the only contact her daughter had with Hispanic culture were her housekeeper and her gardener. I was taken aback because I could imagine the message her daughter was getting. Expose your children to diverse environments, including situations where authorities are of a minority race. For example, choose an African-American doctor or dentist, visit an international festival, attend Korean church one Sunday, or sign-up for a basketball team in a Hispanic neighborhood. Your children will observe your positive, respectful interactions of the Korean pastor, or the Latino coach and get the reinforced message that our racial background does not determine the quality of our character.
13) Go to camp. Culture Camps are becoming more and more popular as a way for families to get together with other families of the same backgrounds and instill cultural pride in their children. Common activities are arts and crafts, sports, music, and food of the intended culture. Not only is it an incredible learning experience, but also for one week your kids will be surrounded by other kids who are part of transracially adoptive families.
14) Host culture at home. Exchange students, nannies, or babysitters all bring an added element of culture when you invite them in your home. Not only do you get to learn about their cultures, but you also can set up a language exchange: our friends hosted a wonderful girl from Taiwan, who tutored their kids in Mandarin twice a week. You can host exchange students (or sometimes host a teacher from another country!) for as long as a school year, or as short as 1-2 weeks on special summer program. By contacting your local university, you could even become a mentor family for host students by allowing them to share Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays with you while their dorms are closed for the holidays. Our exchange student is Ethiopian, but born and raised in Norway. She teaches us about how it is to balance her double identity, and shows how she incorporates Ethiopian traditions into her life abroad.
This is great! Thanks for sharing!
David and Lucy Godwin
These are great ideas! We have had fun incorporating many of them into our family life throughout the years. Here’s another idea worth mentioning. With the Olympics coming this summer in London, why not see if there are any Olympians from your child’s birth country that you could cheer for? Watch the opening ceremony together, get the flags for their country, learn about the athletes and their sports. It’s a positive learning experience and shows pride of their culture.
I love that idea!!! I might have to do an article about that:).
I remember my friend Betsy telling me that she was taking her boys to the Chicago Marathon to cheer on the Ethiopian runners (one of her sons is adopted from Ethiopia) and that the boys LOVED it. I personally love the Olympics and always cheer on the Slovenian, Italian and Polish athletes (after the Americans, of course)! Great idea!
I love incorporating sports w/ an international theme- great idea about the races! How proud would they be when the Ethiopians won!?:)
Great site! Referring to #12 we’re part of a mentoring group thru a local university. This allows our third grade Asian daughter to hang-out and attend various events with her college Asian big sister.
Fitz- that sounds like such a great idea! I am going to contact our local universities to see if they have anything like that. My 2 sons would love to have a mentor that they could look up to, and do activities with!
I have hosted 9 students through a great non-profit organization called the Council on International Education Exchange. http://Www.ciee.org/highschool. It was wonderful!
Oh wow, 9 students! We are on our first, but it’s been such a great experience I am sure we will host again. What countries have you hosted from?
Great column, Becky! I’m linking it tomorrow on my Friday post at SlowMama.
I really liked and agreed with the article! 🙂 Made me feel like I’m doing something right… not all of it, but some. Wish I lived closer to Houston or another major city, though.
I am sure you’re doing a great job:)- as long as we are conscious of it, I think that’s already ahead of the game. Thank goodness for the internet, right?:) A great way to travel the world without leaving our kitchen!
I just read “Spotty” by Margret Rey (wife and co-author of Curious George books), about a spotted rabbit born to a family of white rabbits, to my Ethiopian born son Mesfin. He enjoyed it and raised lots of important questions about why the different rabbits made some of the choices they did. Led to a good discussion of differences.
Thank you for sharing- we are always on the lookout for good books!!
Good movie my boys like is “Duma”, which takes place in S. Africa and is about a boy taking a cheetah he rescued as a baby back to the wild.It is a fun action adventure movie with some good relationships that develop between black and white characters.
I bet my kids would love that movie- we are huuuuuuuge animal lovers. I love movies that show positive relationships too- we will have to check it out on netflix or the library:).
Great movie choices, I will need to get them. I would like to recommend all the animated movies by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Gibli. For young girls Kiki’s Delivery Service is wonderful. We have the entire collection and my 8 and 14 year olds love them all. Some are a bit much for the younger kids but watchable. All his movies have strong female characters something I feel is very important. Kids need to know that there is life beyond Disney!
I need to sit down and watch Kiki’s Delivery Service with them- we have rented it from the library and my kids have watched it, but I have never seen it:).
Your food idea is right on! I take my two Chinese girls to Indian, Vietnamize, Chinese (obviously), Mexican, Puerto Rican, Spanish and ggood old “American”. They love them all and we try to cook at home. I do need to find Ethiopian in my area. Oddly enought their favorite food is Puerto Rican style rice and beans.
I love it- we do black beans and rice once a week in my house, as it is now their favorite! I think the more exposure to different tastes textures, the more open they are to trying new ones (and they’ much easier to travel with)!
We also contacted a local Hispanic organization who helped us locate a mentor from Guatemala for our son. It has totally changed his attitude about being Guatemalan. He is now proud of his birth country. We also serve on a cultural diversity group at our children’s school and they had their first cultural fair a few weeks ago. The kids were so interested in seeing the money, animals, etc from Guatemala & Colombia.
Deanna- I am really interested in finding mentors for my 2 sons. What age do you think we should start? They are 4 and 7 now… I love the cultural fair! I did an international Week this year at school and it was phenomenal! I can’t wait to improve it for next year:).
My son is not yet 3. I’ve found it a really easy way to incorporate videos and music from Ethiopia when we are online. He loves music so we might watch Teddy Afro video. He shares a name with an Ethiopian runner so we watch races on youtube. ET TV has tons of really fun dancing videos that we shoulder shake to. And this morning we watched 10 minutes of a youtube video of a man walking down the street in Addis. This gave us lots of things to talk about from the taxis and blue donkeys to burros and gabis and banana vendors. Anything to contextualize and normalize our talks about Ethiopia.
This is fantastic! I am going to do it with my sons from ET and China too!:)
Really glad to see that hosting an exchange student is listed on this great story! As an International Community Coordinator who places exchange students with families – I have many times placed students for the general cultural expecience for adoptive families, and even to help the children to learn their native language while helping the exchange student to improve their English – a ‘win-win’ experience! Just this weekend my group of PAX Student Ambassadors and Friends was able to share a cultural festival with one of our host families with an adopted child! We had a great time, and were able to share the traditions, costumes, food, and music with her!