Culture for Kids

There apparently was a day and time when a Korean adoptee in a small homogenous American hamlet could grow up with most everyone pretending they were just as all-American, assimilated, and, well, white as the rest of their adoptive family and town.

Well, it's getting harder and harder to do that these days. The good revolutionaries of Adoption Nation have taken care of that ... But now that the importance of celebrating a child's culture of origin is widely acknowledged, where oh where does one turn to find appropriate bilingual and multicultural items, especially if you don't live in a big multiculti cornucopia like Seattle?

One great adoption-friendly catalog is available from Culture for Kids, who also produce Asia for Kids. The print catalogs are easier to browse than the website, in part because they carry so many bilingual and multicultural books, videos, dolls, and toys - picture dictionaries, translated children's classics from Guess How Much I Love You to Harry Potter (in 8 different languages!), immigrant stories, factbooks, the Language Little bilingual talking dolls, and more ...

Region-specific adoptive family organizations like Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption (FRUA) and Families with Children from China (FCC) are also good places to turn to for ideas on raising children from other cultures, meetings of local adoptive families, local language classes, and activities like culture camps.