Introducing your children to novelty is a weekly and reliable duty for each and every parent. While safety is a must, slowly unpeeling these layers of security as they grow is essential for healthy development. Otherwise, they would fail to develop into real people with capable function. One of the core thematic pursuits of the great American novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ eloquently describes the feeling of wanting to completely shelter and protect our children from the outside world. While every parent can understand this urge deeply, they must also walk a tightrope of balance between secure introduction and allowing them some form of free agency as they grow.
Of course, not all decisions as a parent will be bound by this binary of security and exposure. Some decisions will be easy to make because they will lend your family a great deal of fun and the chance to craft memories together. It’s healthy to do so, and this is likely the reason you once envisioned having a family in the first place.
It’s healthy to introduce your children to new cultures. Doing so can open them up to new ways of thinking, new understandings of how humans interact, among many other possibilities. For a full list of the benefits you can experience with this effort, and how to put it into practice, consider our helpful tips:
Art
Cultural art, such as those found in museums or thinktanks, can be a great way to help your child learn the history of a culture. From mandala designs to ancient pottery, spending the time to enjoy viewing this with your child can not only help you both learn something quite deep about the culture that developed these beautiful creations, but also helps you spurn creative interest in your child.
Cultures are often best explored through their art, through the depictions of the world they found necessary to make. Viewing this and learning the historical context can make a culture come to life, and help your child become deeply interested in this amazing process of lifelong learning.
Games
Just like art, games are interactive pursuits that can help your child learn more about a particular culture. It might be that the digital recreations of Assassin’s Creed: Origins’ exploration mode can help you explore a recreation of an ancient culture (in this case Egypt) with a sense of real insight and awareness of architectural representation. In this instance, you needn’t actually play the real game, but simply enjoy the available educational content together.
Of course, it can also pay to find a cheap virtual reality headset and become introduced to the wonder of new apps that are being developed, such as the art of tombs or exploring Google Earth in all its glory. This might sound shallow, but this can be an exceptional method of helping a child visualize a new culture, provided they are at the recommended age to engage with those interactive devices.
Language
Language can often help us all interface with a culture more appropriately. There have been studies to show that learning a new language deeply can help you think in that culture, as language is intimately tied with thought processing and the ability to cultivate new attitudes. While we’re not suggesting that you ensure your child becomes fluent in a language by the end of the week, making a personal family project to become more adapted to a certain language of interest can help spurn a love of culture. Children learn more easily than adults in this vein, so perhaps trying to find new programs at school or in extra-curricular activities you can help establish some real connections further on.
Food
If you want to understand a culture, there is a certain school of thought that states you should eat like them. This can provide quite a wonderful opportunity for you and your family to enjoy some real bonding activities as you cultivate new meals together, try and sample them or visit restaurants with authentic cuisine. It’s likely that if your home country isn’t so famous for its food worldwide (such as England,) then sampling foreign food could truly be a delight. This will likely be the heading in this list that requires the least amount of temptation for you to interact with, especially if choosing a European or Mediterranean culture to sample the cuisine of. Eating well and properly can help a culture come alive in your senses.
Travel
Of course, if you hope to absorb a culture properly you will need to travel to it. Taking the time to do this can seem quite intense at the beginning, especially if you’re not a traveling family, but it’s so worth it. Heading to humble hotels or beautiful converted bed and breakfasts, or making the most of Airbnb to establish a base for your cultural exploration can help you and your family come together with an experience you’re not likely to forget.
You may decide to spin a globe and place your finger on a country at random, or stay a little more targeted and visit the wonders of the world. It might be your child really wants to see the waterway streets of Venice or perhaps you decide that visiting some of your foreign relations is appropriate. All of this can contribute to the goal of traveling and help you enjoy the process even more.
Living Abroad
Of course, sometimes travel doesn’t cut it. If you have the chance to, moving abroad for work or for a period of change can help you in some really distinct manner. It might be that selling your home or gaining an inheritance has allowed you some extra money to play with, and looking for foreign realtor firms such as this Singapore Property website can help you find out what life may be like in an exciting and relentlessly refreshing new environment. The ultimate step to absorbing a culture is to live there,and to count yourself among its people.
With these efforts, you are sure to introduce your children to new cultures and enrich your family as a result.
*collaborative post
