Raising Children can be difficult for any parents. Raising them as 3^rd culture can be more difficult than 1^st culture. Let me explain what I mean.

A 1^st culture child is a child whose parents are both from the same country, and THAT is the country the child is born in. Example being a Canadian Child born in Canada to 2 Canadian parents. This Is probably the easiest situation to raise the child as the parents know their culture, and what is expected, and where to go for things.

A 2^nd Culture child is either: a child whose parents are both the same nationality, but they live abroad. Like an American family living in Japan. A 2^nd Culture family can also be where 1 parent is a local to the area lived in and the other parent is not. Example might include a Chinese mother married to an Australian father living in Melbourne (Australia).

My family is 3^rd Culture and I have been living in Beijing for the most part of 10 years now. We have three beautiful children who were born and raised here for the most part. My Wife is from the Philippines, I am from Canada, and the Children are being raised in China.

Every child should have grand memories of playing outside. They should have the option to go to the park, and play with friends, running around or climbing on things. I have fond memories of hours of wandering the forest near my father’s house with my brothers or friends. So as a parent I expected there to be options for outdoor play here in each place we lived in. Those Expectations have sadly not been met.

Playing outside has been a difficult thing for me to arrange with our children. When I was a child, we used to go across the street to the school and play on the playground there during the weekends, or after school. The school our children study at (and I work at) in Beijing does not have a playground. There is a field. Long time ago, back when I started with the school, there was a jungle gym with a slide and a climbing net. It was nice. But When My oldest son was about 2 years old, somebody fell off of it and got hurt, so the school had the playground completely removed. 2 years later, they installed some climbing bars, parallel bars, and chin-up bars. Well, again when my eldest was in Grade 1 someone fell off of the climbing bars, and got hurt, so the school dug them up. There is nothing there now. Last year the school invested in a set of swings, and guess what happened? Somebody got kicked in the head, and the school removed the swings. The school playground area is not accessible after school hours anyways. Schools here are locked down like a fortress, after school, only staff can be on the grounds in Beijing. When we lived in Canada for 1 year, the school playground was open all day, every day for anyone to play at. I took the kids there to play on the equipment often, however we usually were the only people there, and the kids had no one to play with, except each other. On the off chance there was another kid there they were much older, and not interested in playing with them.

Since School playgrounds are so difficult to access, or find playmates at, we looked to apartment compound playgrounds for our outside play areas. Our first apartment in Beijing had no such place to play. Our second apartment had a few small children’s playgrounds, and we would take the kids there, but it was rotting and falling apart. We also noticed, no other children ever played there. We would see children pass by on their way from school to their after-school classes. They would longingly eye my children as they climbed around the slide and things, but they were always ushered along by their grandparents to their next class. We lived in that apartment for 5 years, and I don’t remember any child staying to play for more than 5 minutes with our children. Our current apartment has a playground, but the playground is not designed for children. It is designed for Senior citizens to exercise on. This is the more common style I have seen over the years. There are equipment to help practice twisting their hips, or keeping your shoulder turning correctly. The kids sometimes play here as our compound’s equipment is often empty, and recently falling apart.

Since Apartment compound playgrounds are off the table, city parks are the next option. I have fond memories of going down to one of the parks in my hometown and playing on the equipment there, or running around on the grass playing tag. In Beijing, our local park is half swamp half nature preserve. It has nice hiking trails, (it’s not that big, but pretends to be by design). But again, there is not much for the kids to do but walk and look at the trees. There are 3 or 4 Senior citizen playgrounds in the park, and an amphitheatre that as far as I can tell hasn’t been used in over a decade. I’m not saying that there are not nice parks in Beijing, apparently there are quite a few that are very nice for the 20 plus crowd. We have yet to find one that has swings or slides or stuff for kids to play on.

When we lived back in Canada, My brother used to take us on these nature hikes, and while nice, is just not my family’s thing to do on a regular basis. When we visited my hometown, the kids discovered the city parks I remember and played for hours on it while we had a picnic with friends.

Since the City parks have mostly been a bust for us, we turned to amusement parks. The amusement park selection has been quite good. Each Amusement park has large expanses of grassland, rides, and food. Generally you pay an entrance fee, as a lot of people just go to walk around in the natural park parts. Once inside you can pay for rides separately, or food separately. This has been hit or miss with us. We have a favourite amusement park, it is on the far side of the city. The one we have gone to nearby we always seem to be there when the rides are not staffed and turned on. So we just walk around an empty park.

I would ideally like for the kids to go outside to play with the other kids in the area. This is difficult, as when we get home, at 4:30~5:00 from school, all the kids in our compound are at their afterschool classes (Mentioned earlier). Chinese children in our area generally play outside between the hours of 7:00pm and 11:00pm. Usually they play with their mother, or grandparents, but sometimes with other children. I am a big fan of the idea that children need at least 8~10 hours of sleep at night and since they have to wake up at 6:00am for school, they go to bed at 8:00pm each night. We usually have dinner around 6:30. So going out to play with the kids at this time is not an option for us. We do sometimes get lucky and the kids can play with the other foreign kids in the area, but this is not always an option, and generally they play with them about three times a year. When they do get together the kids have a great time.

In both Canada and the Philippines, the children were able to just go outside at any time after school and there were children just playing in the courtyards, or nearby that they could join and play for hours with.

So what we have been doing is taking the children to indoor playgrounds. They are quite common at malls, and the kids pay a fee for 2 hours and they go inside and play on climbing walls, and ball rooms, and slides. One nearby has trampolines and tire swings. Here the kids can play with other kids, climb around and do kid stuff. But I feel it isn’t a free as it should be, as here they are under the ever present eyes of adults, and the kids don’t practice social skills like problem solving or how to get along with each other, when adults and parents are always right there correcting the kids and solving the problems for them.

Even something as simple as playing outside can be a huge headache when your child’s culture is different from the culture around them, and finding playmates is like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. As always constructive suggestions are always helpful, but please don’t post suggestions like “Move to namethatcityorcountryhere” as this is not a viable option at this time.

Thank you

Baldwins Abroad.