Multicultural Children’s Chocolates

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

By Stephanie Meade

A friend of mine picked up a box of chocolates (usually on my no-no list) for my kids on her last trip to Korea. Since she’s an “Auntie” to my kids, she claims she gets to spoil them with things I don’t generally allow. She’s also the one that promises them secret treats behind my back and Lord knows what else. She’s the same one I fear which stories she will want to tell my kids about me when they get older, since we’ve known each other since we were 14. Yes, I am talking about you Auntie Lauren!

These chocolates are far cooler than your usual box of chocolates. They are multicultural Pucca chocolates! (I may be hopelessly behind the times as I didn’t know Pucca until I googled, but my kids knew all about her and were pretty excited by the chocolates).



Each chocolate has a Pucca character from a different country. American Pucca is dressed like a cowboy. There’s no Moroccan Pucca but we’ll forgive the oversight!

   How iPad Language Apps are Making me Lose my Religion

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

By Stephanie Meade

flickr: Monarchcreative

I tend to be a bit anti-technology when it comes to my kids, who are three and five. I grapple with what the right amount of technology is, and whether I think technology in the classroom is a good thing. I tend to favor a Waldorf approach (although my children don’t go to a Waldorf school) of no technology in the classroom and at home. However, the iPad and its language learning apps may be changing my mind.

My anti-tech philosophy means I don’t like my kids watching too many videos (usually they don’t watch much during the week and only are allowed 1-2 hours on weekends), I don’t like them playing on the iPhone and I definitely don’t permit any sort of computer or video game. But like most philosophies and lofty ideals, reality tends to be a bit different. The reality is that some weekend nights they end up watching 2-3 hours of movies if we are at a friends and it allows us to have a long stretch of uninterrupted conversation (a rare, rare occurrence in parentland). They also frequently use the iPhone to play music and look at picture and videos of themselves.

Most recently, my husband brought home a second wife, I mean iPad. The first few days I watched my husband and kids cuddle on the couch around the screen, and decided after day four, we needed to have a talk on how much iPad use was permissible. I voted for zero, as with all things tech, kids quickly get addicted and want more and more. If they can’t have it at all, there is no whining and no more “five more minutes.”

My husband showed me the app he was using to teach them Arabic letters—both recognition and writing. Being a tad bit stubborn at times, I maintained he could do that with a pen and paper. But the next day, I observed the kids use the app. I watched my oldest daughter trace “alif” and smile when the sound indicated she was correct. I saw her try repeatedly to trace the letter correctly when she got it wrong. On paper, she gives up much faster when she can’t get a letter right. Plus, I notice she tends to lose interest a lot faster. With the Arabic app, both my kids loved it and continued to clamor for another turn. It held their interest for far longer than sitting down to work on the Arabic alphabet with a pen and paper.  Still a bit skeptical, I asked my husband, “Do they even know what they are tracing? Do they know the names of the letters? This could just be lines and dots on the page to them.”

“That’s alif,” my oldest responded as she traced the letter “a” with her finger.

I may just be starting to soften my anti-tech stance as I witness its benefits for language learning. Best of all, my kids probably know more Arabic letters than I do now. What’s been your experience with using children’s apps for learning languages?

Speaking Four Languages at Home

   Bilingual Writers and Colonialism

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

By Jan Petersen

_{Photo Credit: Bilingual Writers and Colonialism/ © Smith&Smith – Fotolia.com}


It’s funny how things go sometimes.

After reading Francois Grosjean’s recent article about Cherishing the Multilingual Heart, I started looking for authors that are multilingual. I have to admit that I didn’t get very far, but I didn’t have to: Francois Grosjean looked as well and he found quite a few amazing bilingual writers.

It’s a compelling list, full of names that are bound to make any multilingual proud, whether they are writing or not.

Most of the writers on the list are European or North American. My wife, upon reading the article immediately started mentioning a half dozen or so authors from her cultural background, the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia). Most of them write in French, a language they acquired at some stage in their lives because their respective countries had been under French occupation.

That made us think further: we reckon it is highly likely that in any country that has a colonial past, there will be a large number of bilingual writers.

It is simply a question of audience: the more people can read you, the better. You can have more readers and spread your ideas more easily, and you can make more money!

And upon close inspection the same seems to apply to the writers on the list Francois Grosjean compiled.

In the case of colonies or former colonies, there is also the aspect of education: while the occupying (Western) population was usually well-educated, a lot of the occupied were not. It must have simply been easier and more rewarding to write for an audience that was used to reading.

The conclusion here is given how Europeans and Americans are only a very small part of the world’s population, it is entirely possible that not just a few authors are writing in a non-native language but maybe a pretty decent number!

And there is more than just money: if you are a member of an oppressed or dying culture and your language is on the brink of extinction, you might find yourself carrying the torch, so to speak, for future generations, and write in the language that could otherwise be lost.

Maybe that is not even an exception. Sometimes finding a good niche is more rewarding then going mainstream.

   Raising Multicultural Children: A Symphony of Swishing Walnut and Baobab Trees

Monday, March 19th, 2012

By Zvezdana Rashkovich

_{Photo Credit: walnut tree on left (Jim Linwood) and baobab on right (David Barrie)}

I was born in a small Slavonian town, the first grandchild to my grandparents and niece to six aunts. We all lived together, in a red roofed traditional Slavonian house, with the requisite walnut tree in the front yard and a continually busy kitchen, where a large pot of beans and potatoes simmered slowly and cheese strudel cooled on the windowsill. Completing the idyllic Balkan image were a cat named Marko and a quarrelsome yet fiercely devoted pup, Geikie.

I called my grandmother majka (mother). She wore a variety of patterned headscarves at all times, tied over her carefully coiffed and hair sprayed ringlets, an apron over her ample bosom and wooden clogs on her feet. She swayed me gently on her knees, creating a cradle between the folds of her cotton nightgown, waving a wooden spatula in my direction when I was intolerable. She spun magical tales of tree-high willowy fairies, which she swore she had seen in the forest surrounding her native village. I loved those iron-tinted drizzly afternoons, when the two of us would sit by the small kitchen window, watching the drops descend on the cobblestoned backyard and sampling bite sized pieces of salty prosciutto, spicy garlic and freshly baked country bread. Always, this memory of us endures—the scent of wet fertile earth in my nostrils, the taste of that meal in my mouth.

My grandfather was and remains my hero. His accounts of World War II, his medals and his much retold stories of valor made him a giant in his grandchildren’s eyes. He had a full head of glossy silver hair, a rascally twinkle in his green eyes and the quick temper of his ancestors. He taught me how to ride a bicycle, cheered me on in a roller skating competition (which I lost miserably) and attended my Pioneer initiation ceremony when I was seven. (This event was a must in Socialist ex-Yugoslavia.) I still remember how proud all of the kids were to wear that pointy star adorned cap and the red scarf around our necks. How I glowed in pleasure to see grandfather in the audience, seemingly unmoved by the spectacle.

Once when I was about five or six, and lay next to him as we watched some old movie, I declared with the boundlessly naïve confidence of children, “When I grow up I want to live in Paris and become a Can Can dancer!” This statement has made me the mortified victim of many family jokes, which to my embarrassment continue to this day.

Little did I know then that my life would turn into anything but that rosy-tinged childhood aspiration.

Fate, or whatever else you would like to call it, had other plans in store. I left behind the security of my grandparents’ home, the warmth of my aunts’ devotion, the soulful stirring of my grandfather’s tamburica and the soft swaying of majka’s knees. The scents, the cacophony of life in our small town, the gurgling of the murky Drava River and the comforting clang of dishes and bustle of Sunday lunch, as our big family gathered, were replaced by other sounds other scents—another family on another continent. We moved to Sudan, my other homeland.

It was there that I met my future husband. A place where I am sure now I was meant to go, if only just to meet him, and to become a mother to my two boys and two girls.

I remember vividly the day I first saw him. The girls at the Catholic school I attended usually dallied after classes, chatting and cracking pumpkin seeds, chewing on the zesty tamarind fruit while waiting for their parents to pick them up.

We watched, seemingly without interest as cars occupied with boys cruised by. Both genders faked disdain for each other. The girls, cracking their seeds, nonchalantly, the boys cruising while crunching on more seeds, blaring their best music from the rolled down windows, slouching down in their seats, as if they had happened upon us by some mistake.

My husband was the driver of one such car, a university student and much more sophisticated than the other boys. A few years later we would meet again through a series of peculiar events, fit for another much longer story.

Our wedding was as exotic and intriguing as the country we lived in. I giggled and objected weakly as my husband’s sweet aunts performed a series of beautifying ministrations on my body, from the intoxicatingly scented dilka body scrub, to the sandalwood steam session, which left the skin tinged with a radiantly golden hue. I surrendered to a three-hour henna painting ceremony that rendered my hands and feet masterpieces of art…in a glory of squiggles, flowers, dots.

Decades passed. We moved around the world becoming repeat expats, our path marked by triumphs and troubles like everyone else’s. The journey took us from Sudan to the United States and later to Qatar, then Dubai. Throughout, we rejoiced at the arrival of our four children and other times, our life was tinged with sorrow: the death of my father, the civil war in ex-Yugoslavia, starting over in many places, tearful goodbyes to loved family and friends.

Our lifestyle and the chemistry of our family is a hodge podge, a unique entity only we can understand. Our small group of six exists in a way that is not one or the other—neither European, Balkan, Sudanese, African, Arab nor American. A blend of all the things that are the best in us and from our experiences, our backgrounds patiently collected like pebble gems along the way. This variety of influences reflects itself in our children.

They have instinctively merged different aspects of their parents’ and grandparents’ cultures, sprinkled this mixture with some Americanism, a lot of internationalism and created a multicultural version that suited them each the best. I am lucky to have a small slice from each place I have loved echoed in my children.

The oldest, a golden-haired poet, resembles his Serbian/Montenegrin grandfather in an uncanny way. A young man, who sees himself more American than anything else. Who loves rap music, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, corn dogs, mac and cheese and speaks Arabic with a funky foreign accent.

I am blessed by my second child; a hijab wearing, academically gifted, yet goofily punk/rock-chic daughter. She identifies with both her Serbo/Croat and her African/Sudanese heritage equally. A biology student at Carnegie Mellon, she wants to save the world one gene at a time while playing her electric guitar and speaking five languages.

Third in line is a lanky, sports inclined seventeen-year-old, born in the US of A but raised almost entirely among the magical sands of the Arabian Desert. A charismatic chameleon, it has been no surprise that he took to the desert/Bedouin lifestyle like a fish to water. His accent is frighteningly authentic Khaleeji (Gulf Arabic), his mannerisms identical to those of his Qatari and Emirati friends. He has absorbed the culture more than the others. For that we call him Abood, an endearing and common name in the Gulf.

And then the youngest, rightly named Zeena like the warrior princess, for she is the only one born into the hot and humid Persian Gulf evenings. In her, I see the compilation of all of us. Her brothers and sister reflected in her advanced knowledge of language, pop culture and social awareness. Her sensitivity and rich experience of different cultures have infused her with an ability to do well in any setting. Through her father, she has found guidance in her faith and his protectiveness of Arabic values. She has the sense of devotion that comes from being the youngest of four.

As for me, I tried to pass onto all of them my own myriad of conflicting yet gently interlaced values and traditions. Baking apple strudel with their grandmother, long chats under a Slavonian summer sun, sharing gardening secrets and Saturday morning trips to the piazza for baskets of freshly picked vegetables and juicy blackberries. From their Serbian grandfather, I hope they have learned pride and dignity in one’s roots tinged with nostalgia and the whisper of the black forests of Montenegro. From their Egyptian grandmother, grace and words spoken softly, a veil worn patiently. From their Sudanese grandfather, perseverance, determination and appreciation for the swish of the baobab, the murmur of the Nile.

Hopefully, I have succeeded in instilling some of my love for the Balkans, for Africa and for people of many countries, races and religions. It fills me with joy that they see no black, white or brown…only the human soul. I wish that the pebbles we have collected were not in vain, but that they will continue to add their own choices to this treasure, and maybe pass them on.

I pray that all four will find harmony in everything they are…for they are beautiful, just like the joint symphony of swishing walnut and baobab trees.

   Raising Bilingual Kids Talk

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

By Stephanie Meade

I recently participated in a talk on raising bilingual kids over at The Motherhood, with many great co-hosts. We had a fantastic time chatting about different issues we have encountered in raising bilingual kids as well as trading tips and ideas on the topic. The Motherhood put together a great summary of the talk, which can be found here for more information.

A is for Manzana

   At a Loss for Words: My Foreign Language Meltdown

Monday, March 12th, 2012

By Cordelia Newlin de Rojas

Photo credit: © Johan Larson – Fotolia.com

I am probably spoiled, being brought up bilingual and exposed to many languages and cultures. Perhaps I just haven’t been adventurous enough in my travels, but I don’t ever recall finding myself in a situation where I could neither derive any inkling of meaning from the exchange nor express in any terms or gesticulations what I needed to say—that is until now.

A few days after arriving at our new home in Bangkok, I set off for the hospital with a hefty fever, bronchitis and my two kids in tow since one of them was also sick. We had an easy and quick taxi ride there, despite the dreaded traffic, and shelled out just over 50 Baht (US $1.65).

An hour or so later, wowed by the incredible efficiency of our visit and the modernity of the hospital, and carrying two stylish bags of meds for my eldest and myself, we took a taxi back home. I check if the driver knows the main artery we live right beside, since I am utterly incapable of giving detailed directions. Geez I can’t even introduce myself yet.  The driver vigorously shakes her head, yes, she knows, and off we go. I am not too worried as I have the address written both in roman and Thai characters as a backup.

Fast forward twenty minutes with no recognizable landmarks, and she makes the first call for directions. By some miracle, my 18-month-old has fallen asleep so I welcome a small scenic detour as a way to prolong her snooze. Forty minutes and two calls later, I am starting to get a little antsy. My eldest, who is now a few months shy of four, says she wants to go home, and I know she isn’t feeling very well. At this point, the driver stops and gets out to ask directions. The vendor answers confidently—it is a major road after all—and off we go, only cars have lined up behind her and she can’t back out of the alleyway, so we first have to creep down this tiny passage to head back. As we pass the vendor, the driver seems to turn in the opposite direction that has been indicated to her. I sense she is getting a bit anxious too.

After another 10 minutes, I call my husband, positive I will be able to keep my cool as he already has enough on his plate and I am determined not to be a burden. Of course, within a second I am bawling, which only freaks out the driver more. Amazingly, the baby remains asleep and my other girl is super calm. We decide I should tell the driver to take me back to the hospital but even saying the name again and again slowly seems to make no sense to her. She keeps rattling off and pointing to the paper as if accusing me of providing inaccurate information. I should probably mention that this paper was given to me by the taxi company at the airport and no other drivers have encountered any problems with the address.

While my husband works to locate someone who speaks Thai and English, my driver gets out yet again to ask directions. What’s the point, I wonder, given that four calls and two people later, she still can’t find my Central Business District address. At last, someone on the phone directs her to take me back to the hospital.

As she starts speeding back, I suddenly see a HUGE sign—you know the big green ones similar to U.S. highway signs—saying NANGLINCHI Road, i.e. the road I asked her to find. She zooms down it and past my house. Dreading the possibility of her getting lost on her way back to the hospital, I shout out to stop and turn around.

The ride that took me 15 minutes in the morning and cost me 55 Baht was now over an hour and very close to the 150 Baht mark. The building management staff kindly argued my case to the driver and explained there was no way I would pay the metered fare; I am told the fact that she tried to get the full amount illustrates the fact she was indeed very new to driving as most experienced taxi drivers here will turn off the meter if they get lost.

As I sobbed, I kept telling my eldest that sometimes mommies are tired and don’t feel well and cry when they get frustrated. She seemed to think that was totally normal and remained nonplussed by the ordeal. (Yay, one less thing for her to seek therapy for in the future). Although I felt like an idiot afterwards, I blame the exhaustion built up over the week of fighting off bronchitis and caring for two wee ones while sporting a fever, which had me exuding enough heat to merit some sort of alternative energy harnessing mechanism. I have to say, I am grateful it was a female driver as I might have really freaked out if it was a male.

While I think the above is true, I also think something deeper is going on. I have never had a complete inability to communicate with someone (except severe crushes as a tween), and I had never felt so vulnerable and so lost.

Some people have looked at me sort of funny when I’ve told them I plan on learning Thai. People generally seem to think either “why bother” or “good luck, that’s an impossible language to learn.” The former didn’t affect me as I love languages and plan to be here a while so of course I would bother! The latter however started slowly eroding my self-confidence and I wondered if I was crazy to think I could actually learn this tonal language.

As I’ve been rehashing that morning, debating what I could have done to avoid that situation, I remembered this father I met in Denmark about 15 years ago at a dinner party. He had been living in Copenhagen for at least five years if not more. He was married to a Dane and he was actually half-Danish himself. He had two young children to whom he spoke English. As we talked about learning Danish, he told me that he didn’t actually speak any Danish other than some basic phrases (really basic). He admitted being slightly ashamed as he had recently met a young Serbo-Croatian refugee and she already spoke fluent Danish after just a few months in Denmark. He thought it was extraordinary and said something along the lines of “well I guess if your survival depends on it, anything is possible.”

Bingo. There is no reason I can’t learn Thai. Perhaps I was lucky to learn so early on that my survival, or at least a state of low anxiety given my worry-prone nature, depends on it.

Le Temp des Cerises

   Putting Down Roots and Buying Real Estate as an Expat

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

By Mary Hackett

Image courtesy: flickr - Tim Green aka atoach

For an expat family (or for this expat family, anyway) putting down roots somewhere can be difficult. The possibility of moving on is always present. The culture and language are not our own, we don’t have much family nearby and the current world economic situation means that jobs are more likely to change than not.

So how do you settle down? Put down roots? Feel connected?

In our case, the beginning of an answer to that question lies in buying real estate. We’ve finally become homeowners (ok, apartment owners).

It was a step we had intended to take for a long time. As soon as we knew we were coming back to France, the plan was to purchase. We landed in our little town without knowing anything about it and fell in love. Quiet, green, full of parks and trees, yet near enough to Paris to make it feasible to go on a regular basis. We were hooked. The downside was the price: we quickly realized that our dream of owning a little house with a small garden was pretty unrealistic if we wanted to stay in our new home. So we started looking elsewhere. Farther and farther from Paris and from the new friends we had made.

How silly this was really hit me when we were visiting yet another little house in yet another little town. The real estate agent, with that capacity, unique to real estate agents, to make the saddest, dumpiest dump sound like a palace, had led us to the last house of a row of houses. The roof dipped suspiciously in the middle. There was a garden, cut into oddly- shaped chunks around the oddly-shaped house. A large, busy street right out the front door ushered traffic past the house at heart-stopping speeds. Matthew, out in the garden, told me, “I like it, mom. But how will we get to the sandbox?” Ah, the sandbox.

In front of our rental apartment was a large, lovely garden. A lawn, rosebushes, benches, and a spacious sandbox, where all the neighborhood children gathered to play every day after school. It was a ritual that lasted all spring; meeting after school with bikes, scooters, balls, sand toys, snacks, from the time school ended until dusk. Matthew could not imagine life without his friends at the sandbox. When he said that to me, my heart clenched. I thought to myself, “We have so few connections here, why on earth would we cut off the few we’ve forged?”

As it turned out, a month or two later we visited the apartment that would become our new home. It’s about 500 meters from our rental. Matthew goes to the same school, and Ramzi goes to the creche he got a part-time spot in. The apartment doesn’t have the two things I had told myself and my husband I most wanted, a fireplace and a garden. But it does have plenty of space, lots and lots of light and enough bedrooms to be comfortable. And it’s in our adoptive hometown. We don’t have to start over yet again, make all new friends, find new doctors, pharmacists, shops and stores. What I sacrificed, a hypothetical garden and fireplace, are small beans in comparison to staying in a familiar, comfortable and friendly place.

I didn’t anticipate how this common transaction would change the way I looked at our town and how it would deepen my attachment to our neighborhood, friends and neighbors, but I can already sense new little roots digging in. All of a sudden, we are no longer tenants. We have a stake in something, a vested interest in our building and our community. I can allow myself to relax, to allow acquaintances to develop into friendships. I didn’t even realize how much I have been holding back until suddenly I ‘m not anymore. This is no longer a weigh station to somewhere else but has become our real life—a place our family will collectively remember and love.

While my logical brain still reminds me that moving is always a possibility, it now seems much further away. We’ve crossed a threshold after all these years of living here. It’s a similar sensation to the one I had after getting married to the man I’d already been living with for three years—utterly familiar and thrillingly different at the same time.

Has your expat family put down roots? How did you begin to feel attached to the place you live?

   How My Kids Made Me Like Valentine’s Day

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

By Stephanie Meade

I never cared much about Valentine’s Day until my oldest daughter was two. That year at preschool, she received her first Valentine’s Day cards. The box that they crafted to hold the Valentine’s and all of the cards within it became one of her favorite things to play with for many months. Each day, she took out the box and sorted through all the Valentine’s, sometimes ordering them and sometimes forgetting them in different places around the house. Not yet able to read, she knew who gave her each of the cards, without having to ask me the name. Witnessing how special the day was for my daughter, the simple act of giving and receiving cards from her friends, accorded me a new appreciation of the day.

Every year on Facebook, I am reminded by all of my friends in Latin America that Valentine’s Day is not just about love. It’s also about friendship: “Feliz Dia del Amor y Amistad” (Happy Love and Friendship Day). My kids’ excitement reinforces the essence of the day that we’ve somehow lost through greater commercialization. It’s not really about flowers, chocolates, expensive dinners and manufactured displays of love that often turn into unmet expectations. The essence is a celebration of all types of love and the spontaneity of the little tokens of affection–like the simple pleasure of receiving cards from all your school friends.

Here are the cards my five-year-old made this year, almost entirely by herself. She had a very strong vision of what she wanted. And we decided to add the finishing touch of writing all the kids’ names in both Arabic and English, thanks to my husband’s help.
Can you tell which one is her best friend? She glued two hearts on her card.

And here are my three-year-old’s cards. She liked the elephant theme, so I cut everything and she colored in all the hearts.

Happy Love and Friendship Day!

Speaking Four Languages at Home

   The Power of Culture in Raising Multilingual Kids

Friday, February 10th, 2012

By Jan Petersen

Image courtesy: flickr – Kodomut

TV and Other Cultural References

Through use of technology it is fairly easy for us to expose our children to all kinds of languages and cultures. Need proof? My daughters recognise the title song of a TV show called “Wickie und die starken Männer” even though we live in the UK where it will never air.

I used to watch “Wickie” (“Vicky the Viking”) when I was a kid. It is one of the few shows I remember, along with “Biene Maja” (“Maya the Honey Bee”) and of course “Sesamstraße” (“Sesame Street”). I watched these shows because when I grew up, they were the only ones around. No worries, I’m not going to go on about the good old times or anything. My point is that had my parents been expats, it would have been very hard for them to get access to any non-German TV shows or even films.

I don’t think TV is the most important cultural achievement of humankind, far from it. But nobody can deny that it is influential. For at least two generations, it has been part of our socialisation. I can easily pick out people in my age group by finding out who the resident humans in “Sesamstraße” were when they were watching (Lilo & Henning, in case you’re asking me).

There are also books, of course. I can easily buy English, French or American books on Amazon these days. Twenty years ago, I went to bookstores and they ordered them for me, which worked ok, but I was relying on some other sources to even find out what I wanted to order.

It’s clearly easier these days to get materials in about any language, so the question is: chicken or egg? Is it now easier to be an expat? Or do we have more resources because there are more expats?

Creativity with Language

A lot of people would call it “mixing languages” and they might even worry about it, but I love it when my three-year-old takes English words and modifies them so they fit into a German, French or Arabic sentence grammatically.

I am German and we like making words by stringing shorter words together. My feeling is that with the level of creativity my daughters show even now, they will be great at coming up with German words! The most important part is of course their ability to read in four languages and two totally different alphabets, something I envy them for. I might eventually be able to decipher Arabic, but don’t hold your breath.

When my daughters meet their cousin in Germany, they have the most hilarious conversations. Often, their cousin will smile or laugh about the way they say things. And then she borrows some of their expressions, creating something special between them.

Music

Music is the art form (or entertainment) that has the most impact on my feelings. It can make me happier, give me energy, cool me down or sustain sadness. I can not fully explain what it does to me, to be honest. Different music fits different situations, of course.

Music has always been fairly international. I used to listen to English music on the radio a lot when I was young, later I listened to music from France and these days I’m having trouble knowing where something comes from. All kinds of styles have crossed over and created a lot of different, interesting blends.

Those of us who are non-native English speakers might remember how as teenagers we were singing along with English music not having the faintest idea what we were singing. Sometimes this can be hilarious (there are videos on YouTube about the phenomenon), sometimes even slightly inappropriate.

When I started to understand French songs I was surprised: knowing what they were about added a new dimension to my listening pleasure. Same for English music. Now my kids will be able to listen to music in Arabic, English, French and German and understand it! Isn’t that great?

Books

Books have a similar impact as music on me, only it takes longer to immerse myself in the experience. One might almost say books are a four-course menu for the soul and music is the candy bar. What I wrote about TV, films and music applies here as well, especially because often the more obscure and specific nuances and references of written language get lost in translation.

It is very dear to me that my daughters will be able to read books like Onkel Florians Fliegender Flohmarkt by German author Paul Maar. You might have gathered that mastery of language is something I value very highly–I am only really comfortable writing in German, which makes German a special language for me. Onkel Florians Fliegender Flohmarkt is a book that plays with and bends German around and is great for kids from ages seven or eight up. I absolutely loved it when I was small. I recommend the book for anyone who can read German.

A is for Manzana

   When Relocation Adds a New Language to the Mix

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

By Cordelia Newlin de Rojas

I am now faced with another move 18 months into our Asian adventure, having not yet finished arguing with myself over how much to encourage (hyper-parent) my kids to learn Mandarin on top of our three family languages.

We are relocating to Bangkok. This opens up a whole world of new possibilities. First and foremost, it means I will be able to afford daily massages, as we will no longer be living hand to mouth. I can honestly say I have dreamt about that for the better part of 10 years. Much of Asia may be deemed cheap but Singapore is definitely not. If anything, it’s rapidly rising through the ranks of the most expensive cities in the world and has recently surpassed Hong Kong in this domain. Singapore is often called “Asia for Starters,” a totally apt description. While there are lots of things that make it so, one often overlooked fact is that English is the language of government, business and education.

Nothing screams “I’m not in Kansas anymore” than wave upon wave of unintelligible words knocking you over in confusion. I am not talking about the summer holiday in Tuscany where remnants of long-lost Latin and high school Spanish help you pick out the odd intention. I’m referring to sounds you’ve likely never heard before. And yes, many expats in Singapore will complain of the odd taxi driver who rattled off some Singlish they didn’t understand but seriously, that is not foreign language immersion; many of us live out of Tanglin Mall & Cold Storage; it is barely cultural immersion.

An old friend, who has been living in Shanghai for the last three years, congratulated me on our upcoming move to “real” Asia. With this move comes the introduction of a new language—Thai, which will topple our already unstable Franco-Spanglish trinity. To a certain extent, I can predict the impact of this. For my husband and me, this means putting French and Spanish respectively on the backburner while we try to acquire a working knowledge of Thai as quickly as possible. I am sure it will be hard. For my husband it will inevitably be frustrating since he has the added pressure of needing it for work in his 98% local Thai office. I don’t doubt it will be hilarious for many around us. Hopefully, we can remember to laugh at ourselves.

The real concern that keeps me up at night is how the language change will impact our children. At 16+ months, Baby C should be ok. She has mostly heard English, French and Tagalog, with some Spanish on the weekends from Papa. She will start attending a bilingual French-English nursery and any frustration she experiences will probably be manifested as screams and tantrums; I can write it off as age-related and teething, ridding myself of any guilt from inducing language confusion.

Not so with Miss P, who is nearing four. She’s a highly sensitive child who doesn’t like trying new things and is very easily frustrated when she can’t get it perfect right off the bat. Her English is growing stronger everyday. Following an 18-month hiatus, she’s finally re-sowing French words and expressions into our conversations. She also makes a good Spanish effort even though it seems clear to me she is struggling to understand quite a bit of it. After months of exposure and lessons at school, she has a newfound affection for her Mandarin teacher and hence the language. Now she will be switched from her English-Mandarin school and put into the French lycée. She will have lost her English-speaking amah (nanny), whom she loves and will likely be replaced with someone who only speaks Thai. Thai will be spoken everywhere. And Spanish will still struggle to keep its foothold in our lives.

I want my mother’s intuition to be wrong. I want my kids to be way more resilient than I imagine. I want P to remain unphased by these linguistic upheavals. I want to suffer and struggle on their behalf. And perhaps most importantly, I am gaining a better understanding of why some people chose not to give this “gift” of multilingualism.

Speaking Four Languages at Home

   The Holidays in Multicultural Families

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

By Jan Petersen

Nearly one year ago, for the first time in my life, I was responsible for Christmas.

Well, I didn’t suddenly turn into Father Christmas, of course, but it felt like I was anyway.

Expat Holidays

Like a lot of expats, we spend most of our travel budget on visiting family. The two yearly trips to my mum around Christmas and my in-laws in summer are usually all we do.

I have also lived at least 800 km (ok, 500 miles) away from my parents since 1990 and so I usually went home in late December. Even when I met my wife, I still went home, mostly because she doesn’t really do Christmas and so we naturally went to Germany every year.

Our third daughter was born in November 2010 and we felt it was too much for us to travel with her so early in her life. (I guess we didn’t want to repeat the early years of our oldest daughter, who on her second birthday, had over 30 flights under her belt.)

So we had our first ever family Christmas at home in 2010, and because it falls under my share of our cultural melting pot, I was obviously responsible for the lot. Oh boy.

Candles

I will not bore you with details of how hard it is to find candle holders in the U.K. so you can put proper candles onto your Christmas tree, something we Germans stubbornly do in spite of the alleged fire hazard. (Whatever, a Christmas tree looks so much better with real candles! We like to do things properly, you know.)

When the few candles we had (we got them secondhand via the Internet, from an elderly lady who had put them away ages ago) had burned down, my wife convinced me to put electrical candles up instead. I have to admit, it wasn’t that bad. Times are a-changing, I guess.

I wanted Christmas to feel like I was used to, but the main thing was that I wanted the girls to enjoy it. I wanted to provide a festive atmosphere, which meant of course creating it.

Grown-up Christmas

Interestingly enough, I discovered in the process that creating that festive atmosphere makes it harder for you to feel it yourself! Like the host of a party, I was thinking about the details while the girls were able to just go with it, almost as if it was some miraculous happening.

All of a sudden, I could understand all those things people say: “It’s hard to get into the spirit” and “I’m busy preparing, I don’t have time to feel Christmasy” to name the most common. I am 42 years old and you might wonder how on earth I didn’t notice before. As I said: it was my first ever Christmas away from my parents.

So the main focus for me last year wasn’t actually to have a Christmas as I remember it but to provide it. Totally different.

“How is all of this relevant on this blog?” You ask. Well…

All parents do things with their kids based on what they have known and learned throughout their lives. Their own parents gave them some of it, but a lot came from the culture in which they were immersed.

More often than not couples are from similar backgrounds and master the main events together easily. Not so in mixed-culture couples: my wife had never celebrated Christmas before she met me! Because we are a multicultural family, I am responsible for big parts of our children’s cultural background. That’s almost frightening, isn’t it?!

Mixing Cultures

In our little family, we are celebrating a bunch of different events: my wife brought Ramadan, Eid ul-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. I brought Christmas (the German way, which includes a couple of things I am currently not doing, like Advent and Nikolaus), New Year and Easter. The U.K., our home, contributes bank holidays and events we both didn’t know about, like Guy Fawkes Day and of course the Queen’s birthday.

We each try to make events feel as authentic as possible. School, preschool and the environment provide the U.K. bits. This is one aspect of being a multicultural couple that I have not read a lot about so far (apart from Americans all over the world writing about how hard it is to get a good turkey for Thanksgiving).

I don’t know whether we are still a very rare exception or whether other couples like us do not write about it. I am sure there are couples who decide to blend in with their environment and forget about their individual cultural background. It is a lot easier that way.

For me, culture is part of who I am and just like I never wondered what language to speak with my daughters (German, in case you were wondering) I don’t have to think about whether I want my girls to experience Christmas, because of course I do!

With so many different things to celebrate, am I afraid mine might not get enough attention?

Actually, I am.

I am worried that on my own, I will not be able to create the same kind of atmosphere that I remember fondly. I feel that I could or should do more for my girls or they will miss out on an important part of my cultural heritage.

Then again maybe they won’t. It is my heritage–they cannot exactly relive that. My heritage is sort of irrelevant in our situation because with our mix of cultures, they will have something totally unique. Maybe that is more interesting and more important?

I just hope they will have fond memories of all parts of their culture when they’re grown up.
And I am quite glad that for 2011, we resumed normal operations and flew to Germany to have Christmas with my family.

   Why African Time is Best for Children

Monday, January 9th, 2012

By J. Claire K. Niala

istockphoto

“Haraka, Haraka Haina Baraka.” (Rushing, rushing gives no blessings) –Kenyan Proverb

There are many jokes about African timekeeping. On one level it is true—the continent is full of buses that run behind and meetings that start late. Certainly African time is much softer than European or North American time. Part of this is historical; there is a unique African concept of ‘no time.’ With nearly all African cultures being communal—‘I exist because you do’—time also takes on a communal aspect. If you are on your own, then time does not exist. Or to put it another way, time starts at an event that involves more than one person. For example, if two people arrange to meet, time doesn’t actually begin until the meeting takes place, so in effect it is impossible to be late as long as the meeting actually happens! The emphasis is placed on the interaction between people rather than the abstract concept.

Even that abstract concept is opposite that of the rest of the world. As Kenya is equatorial, most of the year, the sun rises around six and sets around six. So 7 a.m. is actually referred to in Kiswahili as 1 o’clock. 8 a.m. is 2 o’clock and so on. It makes perfect sense. Most people get up around or shortly before sunrise, use the daylight hours and go to bed not long after dark. The first hour of the day is therefore marked by the first hour that something communal or useful could be done and is also in tune with nature. There are even specific words that do not exist in English for ‘the time just before dawn,’ ‘late afternoon/early evening’ and others.

So what does this all have to do with children?

Any harried parent can tell you that so much of the conflict that arises during the day is when children are being rushed from pillar to post, forced to follow a schedule that does not allow for their natural rhythm. African timing is so much more respectful of this natural rhythm. By taking the meaning away from the abstract concept of time and shifting it to the people and communal interactions, stress is greatly reduced. At my daughter’s kindergarten, for example, an hour is allowed for children to arrive at school in the morning. Children who get there early can play and those who need more sleep can come closer to the time the more structured day starts.

The days that run the smoothest in our home are definitely those when I am not rushed and when I actively build time into our daily schedule that allows my daughter to take her time. They are also the days that give space for the unexpected joys and pleasures that cannot be scheduled. The excitement of finding a ladybird on a leaf as we gently go about weeding the garden, the spontaneous tea and cake with friends whom we bump into at the local shopping centre. Having the time to sit and eat the watermelon that the green grocer generously gives my daughter as we pick up some fruit and veg. These are the moments that warm the heart and make the day special when we reflect on it at bedtime. They are certainly the moments I would rather my daughter remember than, “Hurry up, I’m running late!”

   Progress Report: Mission Arabic-Speaking Babysitter

Friday, January 6th, 2012

By Stephanie Meade

This past week, we have had our new Arabic-speaking babysitter everyday for a total of 12 hours all week. From day one, she told me the girls understand her 100%, which we know already, it is just their speaking Arabic that has been problematic. In case you missed it, I talked all about that in “All I Want For Christmas is Perfectly Bilingual Children.”

I have been totally unsure of my kids’ reaction to having another person in their day-to-day life that speaks Arabic. While my hope is that it spurs their own Arabic-language development, I really don’t know what will transpire. Initially, I couldn’t get much of a feel for their progress or interest. I guess I was also secretly hoping that all they needed was some added Arabic stimuli in the environment to unlock the abyss of Arabic words waiting to roll off their tongues. The babysitter told me from day one that they said words to her in Arabic, a lot of words, but it didn’t sound like she meant full sentences.

Then today, something changed. When I walked in, Jasmin, my almost five-year-old, exclaimed, “I want to speak Arabic!” She began to name every animal in Arabic, followed by telling me in Arabic what she was doing (“drinking water!” “getting milk.”) She proceeded to list off all the people with whom she could speak Arabic. (A big incentive, besides her Moroccan family, seemed to be the babysitter’s kids whom she has not yet met. She explained to me that they don’t speak English yet so she will have to speak to them in Arabic. It’s fascinating the effect that other children have on language development, something I have noticed with my kids’ interest in French, but that’s a post for another day!) So here’s the first proof that the Arabic babysitter is indeed having a positive impact:



And in case you aren’t an expert in deciphering kid-speech-over-three-year-old-singing, Jasmin says, “I want someone to teach me Arabic everyday!”

I couldn’t be more excited!

   Our Top 10 Articles in 2011

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

By The Editors (Stephanie)

If you haven’t checked out all these great articles from our most read articles in 2011, then you definitely should get caught up on them now. Here are our InCultureParent readers’ favorites over this past year.

1. Why African Babies Don’t Cry
2. Breastfeeding in the land of Ghengis Khan
3. Reunited Outside the Orphanage Walls
4. Falling off the Opol Wagon
5. Best World Maps for Your Child’s Room
6. Diwali Craft: Make a Lantern
7. Mothers to Be: Pregnancy around the World
8. Burqas, Miniskirts and Sex: My Childhood in Egypt and Saudi
9. Is Raising Bilingual Children Worth the Costs?
10. A Few Drops Outside the Tribe

Happy reading!

   All I Want for Christmas is Perfectly Bilingual Children

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

By Stephanie Meade

When it comes to raising a bilingual child, I have several beliefs about how you can waste your time. I think it’s a waste of valuable second language reinforcement time if you don’t watch movies in the minority language, read books and listen to music in that language and most of all, have a babysitter or nanny in that second language. I would also never pay for private school if that education is not in another language. Private education is a valuable opportunity to send your kids to school in another language so why waste it on monolingual education? However despite all my lofty beliefs, we have not had many of those options available to us with Arabic. Arabic immersion school? Ha, I must be dreaming.

We have struggled with our children’s Arabic bilingualism in the U.S. because Arabic is not a language that is reinforced or supported much in the community. (I suspect that it would be different if we lived in say Dearborn Michigan, however.) I have many friends raising their children bilingual in Spanish, and comparatively, Spanish bilingualism seems to come a lot easier in the U.S. (I’m not saying it’s easy, but easier). Children actually hear that language when out in the community, giving them a sense that the language is greater than their household. Spanish books are found at every library and bookstore, we can flip on several Spanish radio stations in the car and even without cable, the kids can watch morning cartoons in Spanish. Through no effort on our part, two of our children’s preschool teachers are native Spanish speakers. When I scan the nanny listings each week and key word search for “Arabic,” I feel a ting of envy at the number of Spanish-speaking nannies. Don’t get me wrong, I love Spanish and we often think about raising our kids’ trilingual in Spanish as well, since I speak it. They already learn a little at their preschool. But Arabic is their father’s native language—it is their heritage. When it comes to language importance in the family, Arabic is queen, sharing the spotlight with English.

My husband has spoken to both of our girls since birth in strictly Arabic, never lapsing into English, which would make us a one-parent-one-language (OPOL) family. As a result, they understand Arabic perfectly. However, 98% of the time, they answer him in English. They have certain words they say in Arabic (e.g., water, sleep, pray, aunt, uncle, grandmother/father) and others which are strategic on our part as they only know these words in Arabic and not English, like booger or fart—trust me, it’s so much better in the grocery store line when my kids hold up their finger and say “look, khanuna” than “look, booger!”

Since the girls were born, my husband has also been around a lot and spends quality time with them. We do all the “right” things to encourage their bilingualism: they read Arabic language books together (although unfortunately never in the Moroccan dialect–they don’t seem to exist–even in Morocco). They listen to Arabic music daily. My kids can sing many songs in Arabic. (Funny they can sing in Arabic but are unwilling to speak it!). I get the sense my children think Arabic is something remote, a tiny, useless language spoken mainly by their father. And yes, we Skype all the time with relatives but those conversations consist of the kids staring at the screen while everyone tells them, “How are you? God bless you! You’re beautiful!” while they alternate between smiling and shy before growing bored and shirking off to play. And yet, they still don’t speak much Arabic.

We all know that kids speak a language when there is a need. My kids have never sensed a need for Arabic. They don’t need it in their community, with friends or with their Dad. He understands them perfectly fine in English. The only time that changed was when we were in Morocco a year and half ago, when they were three and 18 months old. By the end of our three weeks, they were starting to speak to each other in Arabic. “Come play.” “Here, take this.” “I want milk.” It was beautiful and died about two weeks upon our return to the U.S.

Because we know their Arabic requires more support, our priority has been finding an Arabic-speaking babysitter, preferably in the North African dialect. We would love someone who speaks limited to no English or can at least pretend she speaks no English, so that the kids finally have a need to speak Arabic. When we moved to California close to two years ago, we thought it would be easy in such a multicultural community, flush with Middle Eastern markets and mosques, to find an Arabic-speaking babysitter. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, where we had previously lived, you could count the number of Arabs on two hands. At that time too, the girls were both under three and we believed that all it took to raise bilingual children was their father speaking his native language to them all the time. OPOL equals bilingual children, right? We were naïve back then.

The babysitter search has sometimes felt Sisyphean. The first Arabic speaking babysitter we found was Yemeni, which wasn’t ideal dialect-wise as Yemeni and Moroccan are far more distant than Portuguese from Brazil and Portugal, but hey, it was Arabic. She proved to be too old school and never made it past the interview stage. Then we had a slew of finding almost-but-not-quite-right babysitters, mainly Turkish and Persian. They were all warm and kind, the type of people we would want watching our kids, but they only spoke a little Arabic, mainly from learning to read the Quran growing up. Finally, we stumbled upon an Algerian who seemed ideal–it was the same dialect. Exciting! But after we hired her, she wanted nearly double the rate our other babysitters charged and while bringing along her two-year-old. We couldn’t go broke for the kids’ Arabic (although I tried to convince my husband we could pay, we should pay, in the name of Arabic, but trust me, you don’t want to step between two Arabs negotiating, especially if one has quoted a price the other deems to be ridiculous—you may as well forget it.) Again, disappointment.

But finally, it seems I may be getting close to my Christmas wish. We found a Moroccan babysitter! She seems great with the kids so far, is available at the hours we need (no easy task when you need only part-time) and again she’s Moroccan! I can’t wait to see her level of impact on the girls’ language development. I hope that she is the missing link we need.