Top 10 Reasons To Keep Your Adopted Child Connected To Their Culture

By Holly Allen

• It is important that your child joins your family with a good sense of self.
  
• Honouring your adopted child’s culture will help your child grow into a happy adult.
  
• Research has shown that children are more successful integrating into an adoptive family if their adoptive family is open and honest about their child’s birth family; each birth family is unique and has their own cultural norms and beliefs.
  
• In school children are taught genealogy; it is important that they know their birth family and their adoptive family’s history.
  
• Celebrating your child’s culture with them is sending the message to your child that it is alright to embrace all their family.
  
• Sometimes children will not know who their birth family is and it is our job as adoptive parents to connect our children to their culture through food, customs and language.
  
• Children need to believe in themselves and it helps if they know that you accept their whole self, the birth child and the adopted child.
  
• Culture is a part of every family locally or internationally and helps shape who we are as people.
  
• You can always add more love and more culture to a child but it is so important to make a space for the history and traditions your child was born with so that they can tell their own story.
  
• Culture in adoption is a triangle of love that connects the adoptive family, the birth family and the child.