Welcoming Families From Around the World

Welcoming Families From Around the World

• About 195 different countries exist in the world today

• According to the U.S. census bureau, the United States’ population includes individuals and families from 150 different countries.

                                                                                             Scenario:

You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice—a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. You receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you know nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin.

Sri Lanka is the country of origin of "my" family.

Country in South Asia

Five ways in which you will prepare yourself to be culturally responsive towards this family

1. I would learn about the culture and about the family roles.

2. I would learn some basic words such a "hello, how are you, goodbye, friend, play", and    other words that will help me communicate with this family just incase they are not fluent in the English language. 

3. I would go to my local public library and get books about Sri Lanka and also books in their language. 

4. I would get material that represents their culture (posters, toys, etc.).

5. I would also have baby dolls and other dress up clothes for the child to wear. 

• A brief statement describing in what ways you hope that these preparations will benefit both you and the family

I would hope that these preparations would benefit both myself and the family in the ways that they will help them feel welcome and part of the classroom family. It would also help us to communicate with each other and help begin building a partnership. 

Social and family life

Everyday life for Sri Lankans

Parents and children

In Sri Lanka, a family should have its own household which, at least symbolically, is identified with cooking. A wife will cook for her husband and children, even when living in the same house as other family members.

While any public show of affection is not well received amongst adults, children are highly adored and everyone, both men and women take care of them and are affectionate with them.

Traditionally, infants are kept with their mothers, although when growing older, fathers pay more attention to boys and mothers, to girls. Even if Sri Lankans like to have male children, they prefer that their first child would be a girl, so that she can help and be a good influence on younger siblings.

The ultimate authority in the family is the oldest male member of a household, whether that is the father, husband, brother, or son, and corporal punishment is common towards younger boys.

As children grow, they are taught to develop a feeling combining shyness, shame, modesty and fear. This feeling is taught both within the family and the school. As a consequence, Sri Lankans tend to be calm and not loud when speaking (except for merchants) and when greeting others, it usually is with a smile more than with words (Justlanded.com).

Languages of Sri Lanka. Several languages are spoken in Sri Lanka within the Indo-Aryan, Dravidianand Austronesian families. Sri Lanka accords official status to Sinhalese and Tamil. The languages spoken on the island nation are deeply influenced by the languages of neighbouring India, the Maldives and Malaysia (Wikipedia.org).

References

https://www.justlanded.com/english/Sri-Lanka/Sri-Lanka.../Social-and-family-life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Sri_Lanka