My Multicultural Family – A to Z Mummy

for the third installment of ‘My Multicultural Family, let me introduce A to Z Mummy.

Here’s what she had to say about her family:

We are a family of 4 – me, my husband and our 2 boys who are 5 and 19
months. I am English and my husband is Algerian. My husband speaks
Algerian dialect as well as classic Arabic and French… oh and English,
which is a good job as I don’t speak Arabic or French! We live in
England and both boys hear English all the time at home. Z our eldest
son speaks and understands some Algerian/Arabic but our youngest son
is being brought up one parent one language. It will be really
interesting to see how this pans out. 

We are a Muslim family (I converted) and in some respects we are not at
all bothered about culture, particularly cultural practices which are
mistaken for religious practices. We just kind of do things our own way,
however certain cultural practices are very important to us and feature
in our day to day lives. Food is a big one as we cook and eat Algerian
food most days. I think it’s extremely important that the boys feel just
as much Algerian as they do English and we put quite a lot of effort
into trying to achieve this. We talk about Algerian football, watch a
lot of Algerian TV and as I said, eat a LOT of Algerian food!

My family aren’t very loud, we’re quite reserved whereas Algerian
families are loud and a tiny bit (massively) crazy. It would appear that
this craziness has rubbed off on the boys and I think if we were to ask
our neighbours they would think we were quite loud! I love it, we laugh
a lot at home and it feels like we are part of an Algerian family. I
think a heck of a lot of our day to day routine is “English” without
even thinking about it as we live here and I am the boss!

I think the biggest benefit of being part of a multicultural family is
teaching the kids tolerance and acceptance. How could they not be
tolerant and accepting of others when they expect it in return. We so a
lot of things differently and it’s fun, I like the fact that we
challenge a lot of “norms” and pick the best bits. I couldn’t care less
about table manners, food is for eating. I like having more than one
reference for what we do!

I
think a lot of what we do as a family is based around the fact that we
are Muslim and it’s liberating not feeling as though we have to conform
to either Algerian or English culture!

you can find A to Z Mummy on Facebook here and on Twitter here.