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.

Pocahontas’ Rule # 2 for being a princess. Can you guess what it is?

This rule sounds a lot like an old Indian proverb – “Never criticize a person till you have walked a mile in their moccasins.”

Pocahontas says it this way, “If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you’ll learn things you never knew, you never knew.”

Okay, my head singing this song now.

But what if their shoes are too big for me? Or mine are too little for them?

It makes sense to try to look at things the way somebody else might be looking at them IF I want to understand what they are thinking.

My daddy is pretty good at that. And he has NEVER been a little girl before.

Still he knows sometimes what I am thinking.

Even mommy says, “How do you know what I am thinking or what I am going to say? That’s too strange.”

I looked in my daddy’s closet and he doesn’t have a bunch of moccasins in there. He doesn’t have a bunch of little girl’s shoes either. Whew! Glad to know that.

I wonder if I will grow up understanding how other people feel. I wonder if other people will understand how I feel.

I guess I’d better just start with me.

Where’s my moccasins?

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.