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Friends United Meeting |
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March 1999
On Raising Bi-Cultural Kids
By Nancy Thomas
I remember David's amazement on our first furlough back in the United States, after a term of mission service in Bolivia. Four years old, he gazed around the Miami Airport and exclaimed, "Mommy! There are so many gringos!"
Our kids have always had unusual perspectives on life. David was a one-year-old when we first went to Bolivia, and Kristin was born in La Paz. Early in our missionary career Hal and I made several life-style decisions: We would, as a family, enter lovingly, respectfully, and openly into the new culture. At the same time we would strive to affirm our own cultural roots. We spoke English in the home and sent our kids to a local international school that offered a North American-based education. But the language on the playground and in the streets was Spanish. The friends we celebrated birthdays with and who joined us for picnics spoke either Spanish or Aymara.
We chose to live in modest middle-class neighborhoods, somewhere between the marginal barrios where most Friends churches are and the upper-class section where the kids' school was located. This at times made for a tricky balancing act. Kristin's school friends seemed, to her, to live in mansions, and they considered her living arrangements humble indeed. But when her friends from church came to our house, they admired the indoor plumbing and the fact that David and Kristin each had their own room. Roasting hot dogs in the fireplace (very North American) became a favorite meal for a small group of her Aymara friends who liked to spend Saturday evenings at our place. We prayed that our kids would become flexible and appreciative, rather than schizophrenic!
Whenever possible we included the kids in our ministry. After one trip to visit churches in the tropical Yungas valleys, I wrote in my journal, "Raising my children in another culture isn't going to be easy. A few incidents this past weekend pointed that out. On Saturday, for example, David wanted to play in the dirt. Fine. But as he sat down the village children crowded around. All the kids wanted to pat his blond head, tell him how cute he was, hand stones to him. He was literally the center of an admiring circle." I went on to muse, "I realize that part of my job as a mother is to help David develop a good self image. But isn't this going a bit far? Will he grow up thinking himself the center of the universe? What will happen when he goes home to the States and finds no admiring throngs?"
Going "home" did prove to hold its own special challenges, and all of us found we no longer quite fit in. We discovered a color metaphor that helped us wrestle with our identity as a cross-cultural family. With blue representing the home culture and yellow the overseas culture, we found that we were neither one nor the other. We had become green. That's what happens when blue meets yellow in a life changing experience. And, as Kermit the Frog observed years ago, "It's not easy being green."
It's not easy, but it can be good. My friend Anita has taught in a Christian high school for years. She recently told me she loves it when "missionary kids" join her classes because their perspectives on life seem so much broader. I hope she's right. Other values our kids have picked up include a deep respect for all people, a special understanding for people on the margins of life, an enjoyment of differences, and a willingness to take risks. They've learned to travel light and tend to define belonging in terms of family and calling rather than place.
When David and Kristin became college aged, we took an extended leave of absence from mission work to be together in the time of adjustment to US culture. It was a rocky but valuable time (ie. "green"). Since college graduation and marriage, David and his wife Debby have lived in Belgium, Switzerland, Madagascar, and, now, Rwanda. They are currently working through the practical decisions of how they will raise their own bi-cultural kids. Kristin and her husband Jon have worked in Korea, Saipan, and Ecuador.
Missionaries and other overseas workers are not the only people concerned with raising bi-cultural kids. The multicultural nature of life in the US provides people this opportunity without ever leaving home!
But deeper than this, all Christians who seriously seek to live according to the values of the kingdom of God find ourselves with the imperative to raise bi-cultural kids. Those of us who are parents, grandparents, friends, teachersanyone somehow involved with children or young peopleneed to creatively help our kids face the tensions of living in this world and contributing to it, while, at the same time, being kingdom people. Talk about two radically different cultures! Scripture teaches that our real situation in this world, as children of the kingdom, is as pilgrims and sojourners. "Aliens," Peter calls us (1 Pe. 1:17, 2:11; cf. Heb. 11:13). Apparently we're not supposed to get too attached.
Green people understand the tension. Raisingand beingbi-cultural
kids is a task that belongs to us all.
Nancy Thomas is a member of Northwest Yearly Meeting serving in Bolivia.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting