QUESTION: What is the biggest cultural difference's that you see as people living in another country raising children from that country along with your own?
Intermingling our children with Kenyan children, living as brothers and sisters, exposes many cultural differences. In fact, we’ve actually morphed our cultures together creating a hybrid culture. (Sounds cool, huh?)
Some differences between our Kenyan family and American family we’ve noticed deal directly with parent to child relationships. For example, as American parents, we tend to be much more ‘affectionate’ with our children. We hug, kiss, wrestle, play games, etc… Our Kenyan kids were a bit uncomfortable with all this affection at first. Now they soak it up.
Another distinction between our cultures is that we tend to value our children’s opinions while generally speaking, Kenyan’s don’t. For example, when I got my little Mini, I asked the kids what colors I should paint it. I allowed them to vote. One of the girls came up to me and said, “We aren’t used to Mother’s asking us what WE (children)think!”
Also,Talking eye to eye with our Kenyan children was very difficult (and sometimes still is for them). They tend to look at the ground and whisper, but slowly by slowly, they are learning we value their opinions and are gaining confidence with their abilities to communicate with us grownups. This variant was not due to language issues at all, as I’ve noted how they interact with my bio-children in a different manner.
There are other cultural differences that could be pointed out such as table manners, hygiene, verbal manners, language (what words we deem offensive they do not, etc….), but I don’t want to make this too long.
Keep asking questions if you’ve got ‘em! And if you want me to expound on this topic, I can!
~Kate
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