Whether in an apartment with kids from a dozen countries, or in the United States in one of the least diverse school districts around, we have made it our intention to raise cross-culturally aware kids.  This month we’ll be posting weekly tips on how to foster cross-cultural and interracial sensitivity in your kids–and your self. Tip #5: Different families have different rules For better and for worse, children are like sponges.  They will probably accept and copy differences in the... Read more

Whether in an apartment with kids from a dozen countries, or in the United States in one of the least diverse school districts around, we have made it our intention to raise cross-culturally aware kids.  This month we’ll be posting weekly tips on how to foster cross-cultural and interracial sensitivity in your kids–and your self. Let’s say the naughty “R” word together: Racism. I grew up believing racism was a thing of the past, confined to the eras of slavery... Read more

Whether in an apartment with kids from a dozen countries, or in the United States in one of the least diverse school districts around, we have made it our intention to raise cross-culturally aware kids.  This month we’ll be posting weekly tips on how to foster cross-cultural and interracial sensitivity in your kids–and your self. Tip #3: Set the example Examine your own behavior and friend group.  Do you have cross-cultural relationships that go deeper than superficial greetings?  Are you... Read more

Whether in an apartment with kids from a dozen countries, or in the United States in one of the least diverse school districts around, we have made it our intention to raise cross-culturally aware kids.  This month we’ll be posting weekly tips on how to foster cross-cultural and interracial sensitivity in your kids–and your self. Tip #2: Know Thyself As parents, our natural first priority is to pass on our own traditions, values, habits, and core beliefs to our children. ... Read more

For the first six years of our daughter’s life and the first five of our son’s, they spent more time in foreign countries than our own.  Their playmates included kids from China, Congo, Zambia, Sudan, Burundi, Germany, and South Africans of three different official races.  That list conjures up glowing pictures of smiley kids speaking half a dozen languages and bouncing in and out of each others’ houses like one big happy colorful family. Just because we lived in such... Read more

I used to think life ended with parenting.  Not end like I’d die, just end like the Me who had purpose, direction, career, style, romance, humor, and friends would dissolve into an unrecognizable smear in the parking lot of Babies’R’Us.  Or two burglar characters from a movie I never chose to watch would tie that Me up in the newly painted pink and yellow nursery bedroom closet.  These intruders, “Mommy and Daddy,” would hold my life hostage. As if through... Read more