"Vlad to Dad": Raising multiracial children

in our series Vlad to Dad my CBS family is helping me prepare for fatherhood so this morning I'm getting tips on raising my daughter to celebrate her diverse Heritage and feel comfortable in her identity so we met up with our dear friend and CBS News correspondent Ouija Jang she was born in China and her husband Luther is white and grew up in the South just like me they want their two kids to embrace their Multicultural background [Music] hi on most days Ouija Jang is talking about the white house here in Washington but today we wanted to talk to her about being a mom to infant Jack Lee you want to go first and four-year-old Francis May or Frankie who she's raising to embrace their cultural heritage by means of language traditions and food I think that's such a big part of raising biracial children is making sure that they have an understanding of the food that they eat or the culture it comes from we set out to cook a few recipes passed down to her by her parents who owned a restaurant while she was growing up my mom made me a lunch box when I was a new kid at a new school in fifth grade so I'm so excited to eat this food and of course when you open the lid in the lunchroom you just hear it right some kids don't feel like they belong psychology Professor Natalie Brito was born in Okinawa to Japanese and West African parents and was raised there and in the United States and her husband whose Heritage is Iranian German and Italian grew up in Saratoga Springs New York they're raising children together too I remember bringing school lunch boxes or Bento boxes and having a lot of kids tease me about that I recall sometimes throwing the food out even before you open it because you don't want kids to sort of look at you and make you feel other so I don't think conversations around culture or racism are that different from our everyday conversations I think as adults and as parents we sometimes feel like these are heavier topics and that you know we should wait to talk to them about these things it may be hard for some to imagine but as a kid I was shy and introverted a child of immigrants speaking French before I learned English having a difficult name for some to pronounce often led to feeling like an outsider I wonder if those conversations parents should have them with children even before they start schools you know it might not be sitting down and talking about you know anti-blackness or racism but it could also be in the form of celebrating your own culture and diversity and embracing your own family heritage back in the kitchen Ouija did just that and those dishes that kids once laughed at are the ones that are bringing her the most Comfort today including braised pork and steamed fish I'm just going to cut a little bit we're gonna steam it Bon Appetit we sat down for our meal joined by Luther Frankie and Jack what were you thinking about when you were thinking about naming your children we actually chose Frankie's middle name first which means it's May Mei which means Beauty I remember in grad school one of my professors said you know you're probably gonna have to change your name because no anchor is going to be able to toss to you in the field and say and here's Ouija Jang and I thought well that's their problem you did Ouija you thought that was yeah so I never considered changing my name we're very privileged in the sense that you know our children are getting to grow up in such a diverse place like Washington DC you have to to prepare your children for the day when there will be some kind of crude remark we just speaking to Jack in Mandarin I love that I realized that language is a gift that you can give your children and so I am making much more of a effort to only speak Chinese to Jack Professor burrito supports this approach it's actually best for language development it's best for brain development and kids who are stronger in that Heritage language early on actually are better at learning English so is this a smart thing to do for parents to think about this really important for us to be having these conversations coming from Multicultural backgrounds but I think it's even more important for families who might not have Multicultural backgrounds to have these conversations right I think conversations around culture around racism around discrimination are your conversations that all families should be having and if all families are having these conversations it'll make it a lot easier for our kids to kind of navigate those experiences it's so easy to get caught up in all the things you think you're doing wrong but just being there and loving that baby he is the only thing they really need so of course I'm Franco Haitian my wife Marion is East Asian she's Chinese American and one of the things weeja and I talked about is language obviously so we've got English to Chinese books our French French book but when we were growing up there were very few books about our cultures with people centered this is freedom soup by Tammy Charles about the Haitian soup jamu which celebrates Independence Day and we just sent me this Amy Wu and the perfect bow these are books that did not exist when we were growing up as children and now there's representation this book is about being mixed yeah I love them they've come together to make new colors I like what we just said language is a gift you can give your children it is but a lucky little girl you're having

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 62,400

Keywords: video, cbs, news, vlad to dad, multiracial, children, kids, raising kids, weijia jiang

Id: Z9sfDrinKlY

Length: 5min 42sec (342 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023