I think when God formed me He said,
This one is going to be a melting pot! As everybody knows I'm a multicultural person. I grew up in Brazil eating rice and beans with chopsticks. I learned how to read and write the first two forms of Japanese before Portuguese. I married an American, lived to U.S.A for several years, and became an American citizen. Then, we moved to South of Spain where we've been raising our son.
When I look at my little guy playing with the spaniards kids my heart smiles! I'm now raising a melting pot too! Not only through his ethnicity background but also through exposing him to different cultures and languages! Nicholas has no shame to play and to communicate with the other kids. There is no awkwardness, no walls, no limits.... he is just there with an open heart that takes all in. He eats all the different food we give to him, he explores all the interesting places we take him, and he smiles to all the accents and languages around him.
He speaks a mixture of words he knows,
dall done (all done), mais, papple (apple), cacua (agua), bye-bye, hi, hola, shoes, camon (caminhao), bird, leitin (leitinho), no quer (nao quiero)... and he signs. And though the kids might not understand him all the time he still manages to have fun. I noticed actually that my little guy is very popular among them
. They are always calling him to play,
Nicholaaaaas (they emphasize the end of his name) or
Camcam (Nicholas used to call trucks camcam) and it amazes me cause all the kids speak to him in Spanish and he in English/Portuguese/sign language and they still get along pretty well.
Being a multicultural family has also its challenging when raising kids. For example, dealing with three languages at once (I gave up on Japanese for now) can be overwhelming. How many times both hubby and I have heard,
so what language is he speaking? Are you guys teaching him Portuguese, English, or Spanish? Or when we choose a parenting method that might conflict with one of the other cultures can sometimes surprise or even offend people. I remember when Nicholas wasn't even one year old yet, a Spanish lady from a bakery gave him a lollipop and I kindly had to tell her he can't have candy yet. Or when Nicholas after couple months on eating solids started eating what we would eat and American moms were very surprised that I wasn't following the baby feeding chart. Or even when I said no to chocolate milk while I was with my Brazilian family I got a,
Why not?
The truth is we're not a conventional family. We don't do things according to only one culture. We don't speak only one language. And we are not family and friends with people from only one nation. We're a melting pot family who daily speaks three languages, who loves meeting people with different nationality, and who eats a variety of food everyday! Some days we're up to a juice hamburger and french fries. Other days we're craving some
feijoada. There are days we're into some
sushi and
sashimi. And there are days that all we want is a big
paella de marisco.
Being a melting pot family doesn't make us better than any other families. It just makes us to approach the circumstances in our life differently.
And here are some pics from other interesting place we took our munchkin: Castillo de Lorca - Fortaleza del Sol.
