We spend the year straddled across three countries — a month or two in the U.S., three of four shorter journeys to visit my dad in Shanghai, and most of the rest of the time here in Seoul. Everyday my older son does his homework for his regular Korean school, then extra homework I assign him for English and Chinese. The daily practice maintains or improves his language skills, but the travel is what keeps him tethered to these places, through his relationships with the people there, the repeated participation in local rituals and routines, and the long familiarity with the sights, smells, foods, and objects in those places.

Being multicultural is more than being mutilingual. Multicultural means being integrated, in some way, into the social and cultural networks of a place. We travel a lot, but I wanted to make sure that each trip would help my kids accrue and understand their ongoing relationship to these different countries and people. There is also a psychological aspect to being multicultural; I train, not just my children’s linguistic skills, but their attitudes as well. So I began to develop special tools to help my kids narrate their very global lives.

The main tool is a travel book, one for each trip. The books are simple to make, especially now that we have a digital camera. In the beginning, I took the photographs from our trip and glued them to pieces of construction paper. Then my son and I went through each page and wrote down the story of our trip. I punched holes in the side and tied to together, making a book that we read together until it was so tattered that I had to laminate it back together. Now I paste the digital pictures into powerpoint and we type the story together, then I take them to a printer to be printed and bound with a spiral binding and a plastic cover.

The books are told from kids’ perspectives, including a lot of information about the food we eat, the various animals we meet, the presence of wet paint in the hotel lobby, the different rules in different places (bowing versus shaking hands, shoes on or off in the house), gifts they receive and playgrounds we frequent. As my kids have gotten older, we’ve started building the books before the trip, researching a little about the history, landmarks, and architecture of a place so we know what to look for. We pull images of flags, maps and famous buildings off the internet. We look through books from previous journeys and remember the people who live there. As we travel, my kids will now often say, “Mommy, let’s take a picture of this and put it in the travel book!” or “Mommy, this trip is going to make a good travel book!”

The travel book started as a way of reminding my sons of their connection to people they may see once a year at best. But it has become a much more important tool, teaching them not just to passively consume their travel experiences, but to be thinking like adventurers and explorers, participating in the construction of the story of their lives, and giving them the tools to develop relationships to these far-away people and places above and beyond that which my husband and I have imposed on them.

Some travel book tips:
- before: Prepare parts of the book in advance, as a way of letting your kids know what to expect. If you have pictures of family members or friends living in those places, familiarize your kids with those faces. Talk about the different rules in those places, the different languages, food, climate, etc. Talk about the process of traveling — waiting in line, airport security rules, etc., as a way of letting them know what to expect.

- during: Take many pictures — not just of the landscape but of things your kids may be interested in. Allow them to take pictures or decide what pictures they want to take. They may find the color of the police cars interesting, or a pile of pipes on the street, or a construction site — remember, this is a story about they way your kids experience the trip, the things they find interesting or jarring may not be what you find interesting or jarring. You can use the book to discuss the ways in which different places and people are the same or different.

- after: Let your kids shape the narrative, but feel free to add to it. I’m always inserting things about language (“So-and-so only speaks Chinese, and I was able to say a few words to him, which was really exciting!”) and about relationships (“Uncle Bob went to school with Daddy, that’s why they’re such good friends. I hope I can visit my friends after we’re all grown up too.”) The books are records of the trip but also ways of shaping and reinforcing your kids’ interests. My son is interested in tall buildings so we tend to include many observations about buildings. He’s also interested in “secret” things: secret passages and the like. For that reason, every time we’re in Shanghai we return to Yu Yuan and take pictures of the secret passages and hiding places in that garden.

- focus: Use the books to cement the kids’ attachment to these places, by focusing on people, activities, and familiar places. The books express and reinforce the relationship you and your kids have to those places.

* Originally written for the July 2007 issue of Multicultural Living Magazine

Traveling with Kids 1

Traveling with Kids 2

Traveling with Kids 3