Whose CULTURE is the best?

I have been mulling over a concern since the little ones joined our lives.  It has everything to do with language.  Those of you close to us know that even in the lives of our biological children that this has been a difficult journey… what is our best home language?  This has been a sore contention since we gave birth to Moriah-Jane.

Difficulty establishing a mother tongue with both German and English being thrown at our kids when they were little seemed to delay speech development in both Moriah-Jane (who had a number of other languages thrown at her before her second birthday too...) and Daniel.  We saw a speech therapist and she advised us to use one home language. Living in South Africa it seemed the obvious choice to us that we would stick with English.  Our biological children had to learn three Languages in primary school.

Now, with 7 kids and between us all 5 different mother-tongues… we are back in the throes of the crisis.  Well, it gets simple when I say we only know 3 of them, so that narrows the choice right?! If we have choose one then which one will it be? 

Family meeting + vote = ENGLISH… especially because it is the tongue of mama and she speaks a lot more than papa!  It has been fun for me to see which languages the girls use to talk to each other.  Yesterday for the first time I heard them address each other in two of the girl’s mother tongues.  It is beautiful.  There will be a time when it may be a challenge… but for now it works and it forces me to learn.

Now, comes the next big one with 5 languages we have 5 mother cultures and some different father cultures and before you know it we have a very cross-cultural family. The mish-mosh family!

We have decided for now we chose KINGDOM CULTURE (obviously, the little ones did not vote on this…) We are consciously sorting out ways and means for each child to learn their mother/father tongue/culture outside of the home and by those who speak the languages inside the home too. We will continue to advocate for a culture that values all people as equals and valuable beyond human measurements as our basis.

The reason the culture debate is a big one in my head right now is because we have been challenged that us taking kids not the same colour and not speaking the same language is a disadvantage to them.  We should have just left them in their community and in their culture…

However, what if like our new kids right now there is no one in their own culture who stepped up to take care of them.  If it was not for our home the next step for each of them was long term placement in an institution.  Some of their sibling are already there… and have been there a long time. 

I believe in family care… it is the original plan of God… and I think any culture is inferior to Kingdom Culture.  I do not think a family should look the same, after all we have the same colour blood and so much more in common than what separates us.