Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.
I want to talk about growing up bi-culturally.
We know that everyone in this beautiful world has some perspective or some bi-cultural experience. So, today we are going to learn what it means to be bi-cultural, bilingual and mixed up in other cultures and traditions. Then we are going to discuss something about raising kids bilingually, bi-culturally, and the experiences that we have firsthand with being bi-cultural.
It is quite common these days that we are accepting all cultures and their traditions. It doesn’t matter if it is belonging to the Eastern or Western culture. I know very well that it is quite difficult to start living in a different country.
This happens because we don’t know anything about the culture and traditions which help us to understand their languages and practices. But after we start learning about their languages and the practices little by little, life improves.
It is more difficult when it comes to children who are born and brought up in a country other than their parent’s original country.
They are totally different from their parents because they only know one side of life.
But it is their parent’s duty to teach them their own original language and culture to make their life easier in the future.
If their kids are having difficulties to understand two cultures then they might need our assistance to explore both cultures and traditions. It will definitely help them in the future to get more enhancements in the practices in their own country and other countries.
It is a hot requirement for us to have the experiences of living with more than one language because nowadays it is more useful to sustain a job in different countries for the growth of the companies and organization.
In USA most every single company prefers people from different regions and with a multi-culture background and who are multi-lingual.
It will help them to understand the need of people from different areas or communities.
Let’s have the example of the Hispanic people in California. These people are working in all the big multinational and multi-billion dollar companies.
It will make it easy to serve the Hispanic community and all other peoples just because they know Spanish and English as well.
Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.