![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/chuseok.jpg\")
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I\u2019ve probably brogged about this in the past, but growing up, I wasn\u2019t really much in tune with my Korean heritage.\u00a0 I mean, I learned the language, went to Korean language school, but really didn\u2019t learn much about Korean culture.\u00a0 The holidays, the customs, why we wear hanboks on special occasions, and the reasons for holidays that didn\u2019t line up with the Western world I grew up in.<\/span><\/p>\n My parents and family didn\u2019t really do much for us American-born kids in educating us, as proud as they might have been of their culture, they didn\u2019t go out of their way to expand it or adhere to it whilst living in America.\u00a0 And it wasn\u2019t until I was much older, and wanted to learn more on my own, did I actually start to learn more stuff about Korean culture.<\/span><\/p>\n As a parent myself now, I\u2019ve always felt it important that my kids learn a little bit more about their Korean heritage than I did growing up.\u00a0 And as my kids have gotten older and to the ages of where they\u2019re in school and have shown the capability to learn, I\u2019ve always felt priority to expose them to Korean culture, whenever it\u2019s possible.<\/span><\/p>\n This past weekend was Chuseok (\ucd94\uc11d) aka Korean Thanksgiving.\u00a0 It\u2019s not like Thanksgiving in the west, where white people stuff their faces with turkey, potatoes and green beans, it\u2019s most of a celebration of the harvest moon, and to give thanks to a (hopefully) successful harvest season.<\/span><\/p>\n Since moving my dad down here to Georgia, one of the cool things is that he lives in a pretty concentrated Korean area, and they\u2019re very in-tune with the culture, which is a refreshing change considering how little of it there was when I was growing up.\u00a0 That being said, there was a Chuseok event up where he was, and I was excited to bring my kids to it, so they could see and experience some Korean culture, like folk singing, dancing, and to keep up with the times, stuff like a kids choir and K-pop dancing demonstration were on the agenda, as well as the availability of Korean snacks and consumables.<\/span><\/p>\n I planned on making a day of it, mostly so that my kids and I could spend some time with my dad, and we had done things like Kids Workshop at the local Home Depot, since my kids do enjoy creating things, banging nails in with hammers and painting wooden projects, get a nice lunch together, and go to the park if the weather cooperated.<\/span><\/p>\n And everything was going well, and the kids weren\u2019t being too big of pills with the litany of random things they decide to complain about at any given point of the day.<\/span><\/p>\n But when 2pm rolled around, and it was time for the Chuseok activities to begin, my kids suddenly decided that they wanted nothing to do with anything at this little exhibition, and the complaints started coming in rapid-fire, and killing a little bit of my soul with each successive whine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to be here\u201d<\/span> That last one really stung, but I was determined to show a modicum of respect for the people who put this little shindig together, and try to stick around at least 30 minutes of the two hours that they had been scheduled for.\u00a0 Now in my opinion, had they started with something like kids choir, or the K-pop dance demonstration, it probably would\u2019ve been more engaging to kids like mine, but I get it, this wasn\u2019t for my kids, it was for an entire community, and they had the right to line things up the way they wanted to.<\/span><\/p>\n Needless to say, we only made it 30 minutes on the dot, and I was already over my kids, already over parenting, and I didn\u2019t want to risk them causing any sort of scene or being any more disruptive than I thought they were going to be.\u00a0 Extremely disappointed, I took my kids and my dad out of the event, and prepped them to go home.\u00a0 Hopefully, my dad went back to the gig afterward and perhaps at least got some good traditional Korean snacks for the trouble.<\/span><\/p>\n Up to this point, it\u2019s debatable on whether or not I\u2019ve ever been more upset with my kids than I had been that afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 All I could feel on the long, quiet (I refused to let them have their iPads) drive home was that my kids behaved like ungrateful little shits, I felt like I was failing them as a parent if they were that against anything that was a part of their Korean heritage, or behaving so poorly when they had been treated so well up to that point of the day.<\/span><\/p>\n Nothing I said or have already said seemed to get through how much importance I put in them being aware of the Korean heritage that is half theirs, and it really bummed me out just how inconvenienced they felt at being exposed to some of it.\u00a0 They complained about not being able to understand the Korean that was spoken by the hosts, but at the same time, they complain and pitch a fit at the thought of being sent to Korean language school.\u00a0 They showed zero appreciation or understanding of people who played instruments or sang in front of a small crowd, regardless of how many years of dance and ballet classes they\u2019ve already done.<\/span><\/p>\n *it\u2019s going to happen, they\u2019re going to hate it, but hopefully, like me, they\u2019ll get over it, and one day be appreciative to have done it, much like my own personal journey<\/span><\/p>\n I get that they\u2019re \u201cjust\u201d kids, and maybe they shouldn\u2019t be held to the same expectations that I was held to when I was their age.\u00a0 But my mom definitely made me go to things I didn\u2019t want to go to when I was little, and sit through all sorts of things that bored the ever living hell out of me, but I still remember the exposure to Korean things whenever the opportunity was presented to me.<\/span><\/p>\n Their behavior ruined my day, most of my weekend, and was a bigger cause for depression than Virginia Tech\u2019s first loss of the season to Pitt.\u00a0 God forbid I want my children to have a little bit of culture in their lives, and for them to take a golden opportunity and ruin it with their impatience and unwillingness to have an open mind at that juncture of their lives really saddened me and tanked my mood for the entire rest of the weekend.<\/span><\/p>\n Like almost all facets of life, I want my kids to be better than I was at everything, including getting taught and learning more about Korean culture than I was at their ages, and it really saddened me that they resisted so much.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want my kids to be as white-washed as I was growing up, and to be able to be proud of their Korean side, and be able to know a little something about it too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve probably brogged about this in the past, but growing up, I wasn\u2019t really much in tune with my Korean heritage.\u00a0 I mean, I learned the language, went to Korean language school, but really didn\u2019t learn much about Korean culture.\u00a0 The holidays, the customs, why we wear hanboks on special occasions, and the reasons for … Continue reading Dad Brog (#176): the importance of culture<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,193,71,192,103,129,83,105,99,146],"class_list":["post-51567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-kids","tag-motherland","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-rage","tag-reminiscing","tag-triggered"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51569,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51567\/revisions\/51569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cI can\u2019t understand anything\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cCan we leave yet\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWhy do we have to just sit here\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWhy do we always have to do what you want us to do\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWe never get to do anything that we want to do\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWe\u2019re only half<\/em> Korean\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n