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Old 01-31-2017, 08:02 AM
 
Location: Posting from my space yacht.
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My oldest son is aware of his heritage but knows that first and foremost he is an American. That does not stop him, however, from reminding me when I tell him to wear a warmer jacket that he is Canadian so he can handle it.
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Old 01-31-2017, 09:39 AM
 
Location: Southern MN
11,981 posts, read 8,310,306 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Almrausch View Post
Lodestar I agree with you. We raised our 4 kids teaching them about our heritage. They were introduced to Punjabi and German language,traditions,customs,cuisine. They spend a lot of summer holidays with relatives from both sides to get to know them. And yes I think it is important.
Yeah, Uncle Bully. Like that.


And besides, Almrausch, being Punjabi/German makes for some mighty interesting mealtimes!
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Old 01-31-2017, 09:50 AM
 
Location: Round Rock, Texas
13,441 posts, read 15,404,185 times
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Well I'm multiracial myself - Jamaican/Scottish/Mohawk on my mother's side and Brasilian (my dad is also multiracial) on my father's side. So basically Black/White/Native. My children are mixed race - my ethnic mix PLUS half Mexican (my husband is Mexican-American). With the exception of a few foods (my parents divorced so I wasn't heavily immersed in the Brasilian culture), I didn't really know much about my heritages and didn't really care to pursue them either. That's how things go when you're third/fourth generation and assimilated. My husband is also pretty removed from Mexico and his culture is more Texan than anything else. Sure, there's the food and some traditions, but him and I are markedly similar despite being of different ethnicity because we're both Americans, and the American culture predominates.

I can't quite say how I feel about this. Some part of me now wishes that I knew more about my heritage(s). However, we don't make a conscious effort to teach our own children about any of them. The truth is that they're American and comprised of many races, each of which has contributed something to the greater American culture as a whole. There's nothing wrong, IMHO, with simply being American because "American" is not a single heritage/race/etc.
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Old 01-31-2017, 09:50 AM
 
Location: Lost in Montana *recalculating*...
19,606 posts, read 22,481,604 times
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We do. We have an English/German background, a little Scots-Irish as well. We mainly practice some German traditions and my kids are continuing further to become fluent in the language. My mother-in-law came to the US in the 1960's from Germany.

We eat a lot of traditional German foods- spaetzle, roots, make our own sausages and celebrate things like St. Nicklaus.

We even own two German shorthaired pointers, or Kuzharhunds.

(Actually the GSP's were chosen only because we prefer the breed for bird hunting/companion qualities, lol.)
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Old 01-31-2017, 11:03 AM
 
12,003 posts, read 11,846,190 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by randomparent View Post
I'm just a little jealous of those who have a food culture or language other than American English to share with your children.
Hey, don't discount your English heritage! Great baked goods - each village had its own specialty - lots of folk traditions (music and dance in particular), folktales, festivals - lots to celebrate.

English country dance is enjoying a great revival in this country - more so than across The Pond, surprisingly - and the music is sumptuous while the dances are user-friendly and the dance community welcoming.

Many English stories, recipes, and songs crossed the Atlantic with the early settlers and are part of basic American tradition today. Mother Goose rhymes, children's playground and singing games (not sports, kids' games like "Go in and Out the Windows") and jump-rope rhymes are British in origin (some of them are clearly Scots). English traditions are so common in this country that they often go unrecognized!

Take a look at the folklore section of your public library - the children's department is more likely to have what you're seeking. See all the folktale collections by Joseph Jacobs, and if you can find the old Time-Life "Cooking of Britain" cookbook, you're in for a treat, as it is very readable and contains lots of fascinating and humorously recounted stories as well as great recipes and color photos.

You can also vicariously visit England (and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as many other places on YouTube. There's a large newly posted series I've been enjoying a lot, called "Escape to the Country" which features house-hunting amidst gorgeous countryside. You'll see lots of traditional housing, along with a local-interest feature in each episode.

The series would probably bore most kids, but it's great for adults yearning for a thatched cottage or a small castle or something in between. But if you can catch your children's interest first, they'd probably enjoy watching a few minutes of this program, especially if you can find an episode featuring the county associated with your ancestors.

Have fun pursuing your ancestral heritage and traditions!
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Old 01-31-2017, 11:20 AM
 
12,003 posts, read 11,846,190 times
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My maternal heritage is Scots-Irish, English, and German. The Scots-Irish seems to be the predominant thread, with lots of parlor games and songs passed down from previous generations - my grandmother was the youngest of a very large family, and no doubt those quiet parlor games were a great help in keeping the many kids occupied and involved. We also have exceptionally long generations in that line, which means that family traditions are more likely to survive intact, as they pass through fewer hands on their way down to the younger generations.

No kids of my own, but I've shared these games with younger relatives - I have a photo of two young cousins playing "Clubfist" while waiting for their lunches to arrive at a restaurant.

I've also taught young relatives how to make miniature log cabins out of sticks and strips of bark, and to carpet them with moss and furnish them with pebbles. My grandmother, who was born in 1869, also enjoyed making little houses and taught her children the skill. My mother taught me, and I teach the current crop of kids. Pass it down.

Other young relatives are very musical, and traditional music is a favorite genre. Family stories get passed down, and we are blessed to be part of a family which wrote things down, generation after generation. Some of those earlier writings are now online, which is a boon to researchers and those who aren't just interested in the "begats" but who want to know who those people were and what they were like.

The other side of my family is predominately English and Huguenot French, with some very early Irish heritage as well, only recently identified as Irish after having been long-mistaken for French due to the surname. These folks left Ireland centuries before the Potato Famine, and only DNA proved their true origins. So whatever Irish cultural heritage there was through that line is pretty well gone by now, sadly.

But! One of our g-grandfather's first cousins owned a gold mine! And our surname was attached to it, making it a fine story to share with younger relatives. Of course, he also went broke and left the state in shame to start a new life elsewhere, while his family of origin claimed he was dead - wish I knew the details of that part of the story. He prospered modestly in his new location, though all that gold was long-gone. Probably a cautionary tale there somewhere.

I'm also a cousin of Jesse James, on my paternal grandmother's side. She was a very proper lady who would have been horrified by this knowledge, but my family finds the humor in it now. Jesse did have good blood, and his mama surely tried...

So - you never know what you'll find in the way of family heritage. But I encourage everyone to seek it out and be open to surprises, which will surely find you. So many stories out there, just waiting to be found and told and cherished...
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Old 01-31-2017, 11:50 AM
 
Location: Denver CO
24,204 posts, read 19,109,319 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ADVentive View Post
Not exactly countries, but I have been teaching my kids about Jewish holidays and traditions, even though we are not religiously Jewish (my family of origin is though). I have done more to teach my kids about Jewish stuff than my parents did with me, which is a little funny. My parents were non-practicing when I was growing up.

I did our family tree a few years ago and learned some interesting things about our ancestors, but they are from so many different countries several generations back that I have never really identified with any particular country of origin other than the USA.
Yes to this. The culture is tied to the religion, not to a specific country. We celebrate the holidays including eating traditional foods, my son attends weekly religious school and is learning Hebrew - enough to get through his bar mitzvah, anyway. And a couple of cousins have taken on the work of maintaining a family tree, so those connections are there too.
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Old 01-31-2017, 11:57 AM
 
Location: The analog world
17,077 posts, read 13,309,538 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CraigCreek View Post
Hey, don't discount your English heritage! Great baked goods - each village had its own specialty - lots of folk traditions (music and dance in particular), folktales, festivals - lots to celebrate.

English country dance is enjoying a great revival in this country - more so than across The Pond, surprisingly - and the music is sumptuous while the dances are user-friendly and the dance community welcoming.

Many English stories, recipes, and songs crossed the Atlantic with the early settlers and are part of basic American tradition today. Mother Goose rhymes, children's playground and singing games (not sports, kids' games like "Go in and Out the Windows") and jump-rope rhymes are British in origin (some of them are clearly Scots). English traditions are so common in this country that they often go unrecognized!

Take a look at the folklore section of your public library - the children's department is more likely to have what you're seeking. See all the folktale collections by Joseph Jacobs, and if you can find the old Time-Life "Cooking of Britain" cookbook, you're in for a treat, as it is very readable and contains lots of fascinating and humorously recounted stories as well as great recipes and color photos.

You can also vicariously visit England (and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as many other places on YouTube. There's a large newly posted series I've been enjoying a lot, called "Escape to the Country" which features house-hunting amidst gorgeous countryside. You'll see lots of traditional housing, along with a local-interest feature in each episode.

The series would probably bore most kids, but it's great for adults yearning for a thatched cottage or a small castle or something in between. But if you can catch your children's interest first, they'd probably enjoy watching a few minutes of this program, especially if you can find an episode featuring the county associated with your ancestors.

Have fun pursuing your ancestral heritage and traditions!
I understand, but after nearly four centuries of our families being on this side of the Atlantic, there's very little connection to the "Old World." I wasn't really bemoaning that, because we have had much to explore about early through modern American history and our ancestors' roles as both spectators and participants. We've shared stories about the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Salem Witch Trials, the Revolution, Daniel Boone's travels through the Cumberland Gap, the Civil War, the California Gold Rush, etc., all of which my kids' ancestors were a part of in one way or another.

I think it's really wonderful that so many people have a connection to what came before their American experience and that it's close enough to share in a meaningful way through cuisine, language, and other traditions. I guess I just wanted to point out that for some of us, being American is pretty much all we know, and that's pretty neat, too.
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Old 01-31-2017, 12:08 PM
 
Location: Shawnee-on-Delaware, PA
7,996 posts, read 7,345,287 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiethegreat View Post
Do you teach them about their ancestors and their traditions regularly,from the various countries they come from.
Or do you not bother?

My kids' heritage has become a bit splintered. They are 25% Irish, 25% Italian, 25% Ukrainian, and the rest Swedish, Danish, and German.


Neither my wife nor I have ever been interested in dressing up in our "ancestral costumes" or ethnic dancing or anything like that.


It's interesting to know where your ancestors came from, and to imagine what it was like for them coming to America, but we follow American middle class traditions in our family.
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Old 01-31-2017, 12:11 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
90,316 posts, read 120,451,232 times
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My kids are Scandinavian (Swedish/Danish) on the one side and German on the other. We did teach about their heritage, as someone else said, mostly for fun. All of my kids' grandparents, most of their great-grands and some of their great-great grands were born here in the US. One of my daughters did get into the American Girl doll Kirsten (Swedish) and did a National History Day project on Swedish immigration in middle school. We all learned a lot. One of their great-great gfs on the German side fought in the Civil War; we've learned about that, too. I learned what company he was in (26th Wisconsin) and looked it up; learned a lot of the family stories were actually true!
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