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Articles tagged with: culture

10 Things All New Adoptive Parents Should Know
July 31, 2010 – 7:17 am | 11 Comments

As parents, adoptive or biological, we sometimes flounder. We get caught up in what is trendy parenting, what advice we get from family and friends, and what we feel in our gut. The combination sometimes …

Collateral Losses
July 28, 2010 – 3:00 am | 10 Comments
Collateral Losses

Whenever I sit to write, I am already at the middle of it. It’s the beginning that always befuddles me. I never know where to start.
That is because, in this conversation at least, there is …

Seeing Color: Transracial Adoption
July 26, 2010 – 8:09 pm | 6 Comments

I experienced my first moment of overt racism just months before our adoption referral. The wife of an elder at our then-church and I joyously discussed the upcoming domestic adoption of dear friends of ours, SongOfSixpence and the King (although this time the baby was Blackbird rather than ThePie). Wife-of-the-Elder patted me on the shoulder, believing she consoled me, saying, “And they got a white baby.”

Cead míle fáilte (hundred thousand hellos)
March 16, 2010 – 9:59 pm | No Comment

St. Patrick’s Day is coming up and the folks at Rosetta Stone have a fun freebie for Grown in My Heart readers– a free online trial of Irish Gaelic (not to  be confused with Manx, …

Sunday Showcase-Positive Stereotyping is Not Always Positive
March 7, 2010 – 7:31 am | 3 Comments

We missed our Sunday Showcase last week because of the Carnival. We’re back this week with a fabulous article from Uncharted Parent. She originally gave me this post,  How Much of Your Child’s Birth Culture …

Kids and Culture: What’s Most Important?
February 24, 2010 – 8:00 am | 5 Comments

Every year for Chinese New Year, our foster home celebrates the holiday by engaging in all the most common traditions – decorating the home with paper cuttings and chuen lian (door post hangings), lighting fire crackers, eating lots of oranges, making jiaozi (dumplings) and stuffing ourselves until we all want to nap. (Though the food is different, the actual cultural practice is similar to America’s Thanksgiving!)

Cultural Exchange, or so I Thought
January 10, 2010 – 7:41 pm | 6 Comments

This post is about the exchange student we have living with us, the one that is driving me crazy and refuses to become a member of our family no matter what is said or done …

Christmas in China
December 16, 2009 – 8:00 am | One Comment
Christmas in China

“Do the Chinese celebrate Christmas in China?” Well, the answer to that is yes and no. A growing number of Chinese, especially young urbanites, celebrate some version of Christmas in China, but the central part of the holiday – the religious celebration of Christ’s birth – is not typically acknowledged nor even known because less than 5% of the 1.3 billion people living in China identify as Christian.

Cultural Exchange – One plus One does not equal two
December 4, 2009 – 8:00 am | 3 Comments
Cultural Exchange – One plus One does not equal two

One plus one does not always equal two…yeah my husband would tell me I am wrong, you know the math whiz would say tell me again how you came up with that but …

Family Meals: Branching Out
November 16, 2009 – 7:27 am | 5 Comments

Last year, our family took a trip to Panama and Costa Rica with my parents.  My kids loved tasting tropical fruits that they hadn’t seen before.  These fruits come in fantastic shapes, sizes and colors, …