Customer Reviews

Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World

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Growing up Global is a gem for parents of children ages 0-18. It offers a wealth of resources and ideas of how we can help our children build a web of connections with other cultures and religions. Some suggestions are quick and easy (keep National Geographic around the house) while others are more extensive (learn a new language). What I love most about this book is that it offers simple ways to start small. Often as a mother of teenage girls, I feel overwhelmed and underproductive. There is so much advice out there about what I should be doing and I want to do it all! I found Ms. Tavangar's approach unintimidating and realistic.

One suggestion that I found very helpful is to use our children's passions as vehicles to connect with the world. Recently my daughters, both soccer players, became Pass Back Ambassadors. As representatives for this national organization, they collect new and used soccer equipment and ship boxes of cleats and clothing abroad to countries of their choosing. This has fostered a whole new appreciation for and connection with children around the globe who share their love for the sport.

Growing up Global offers us many ways that help us link our seemingly small lives with the world. The theme that Ms. Tavangar threads throughout her book is that when we connect with others, we integrate the universal truth that we are all very much the same. As parents, if we can help younger generations develop deep, heartfelt bonds with cultures around the world, the pathway to achieving global peace will expand exponentially. Growing up Global is your encyclopedia for connecting. It is the perfect place to start!

Growing Up Global is a practical and aspirational guide to opening your eyes and heart to our neighbors around the world. Organized around the steps of making a friend (greeting, play, celebration, service), this is a hands-on how-to book for every family. Each chapter includes information, ideas, activities, and resources for engaging children of all ages.

But Growing Up Global is not a to-do list for multiculturalism or political correctness. Its foundation is the Golden Rule: treat others as you wish to be treated. As our world becomes more interdependent and connected, we need to learn how to respectfully engage with people from many cultures. It's not just a matter of doing business in the world economy, but connecting with the Peruvian mother at your child's bus stop or the Egyptian dad who coaches your child's soccer team. It's about teaching our children to be curious about our differences, instead of afraid of them.

Growing Up Global can help all families, regardless of means or background, find easy and fun ways to connect with the world. Every parent and every teacher should read this book!

Homa Tavangar's Growing Up Global: Raising Children to be At Home in the World is an excellent guide for parents eager to expand their horizons and introduce their children to a world beyond the household electronics and the local mall. In an increasingly-smaller, more interdependent world, where fear of "terrorists" and "evil-doers" often trumps intercultural understanding, reading this book offers many paths to looking beneath the surface of "the other". It's an interesting, fascinating world out there, sometimes pretty, other times not so pretty. Either way, knowledge and insight - these all take a certain effort on the part of parents, and this book can serve as a useful tool. If the trouble with the world is that there are too many foreigners (it's a joke), then this book makes the distant less foreign.

With a wealth of ideas on being full participants in the world around us, from the very young on up, Growing Up Global is more than a toolbox of information. At its heart it is a call and encouragement to service and friendship, those most fundamentally uplifting human potentials that are so desperately needed in a global culture. Using both her personal experience as a mother, and her insights from her own international interactions Ms. Tavangar addresses a wide range of possibilities from the introduction (literally...how to make and greet friends around the world) to service and giving. For those who "aren't planning to travel farther than Disneyland" with their children and those who are ready to undertake major international adventures, there is something here for you and your whole family to begin expanding your interactions with the world.

Growing Up Global is full of great ideas for helping our children - and ourselves - engage with the wider world. You'll want to dip into this book again and again to use its amazing range of activities, tips, and fascinating facts. (Did you know that Iceland's phone books are alphabetized by first name? Or that in India MacDonald's serves Maharaja Macs, made of lamb?)

But Growing Up Global is more than a list of activity ideas. It is a passionate and convincing testament to the author's deeply held belief that teaching "world citizenship as a family value" is a critical step toward building a more peaceful world. I couldn't agree more, and am very glad that Ms. Tavangar has created this rich, friendly resource for parents.

How do you say "John" in Russian or Dutch? Do you know the history of Parcheesi and noodles? At what age does a child in Mongolia recieve his first haircut? This book is packed with such thought-provoking and quirky questions. Each of its nine chapters focuses on a common childhood experience - greeting friends, playing games, going to school etc. - and presents a variety of ways this is done around the world. It's an exceedingly timely and useful book. Anyone who works with children, or has some at home, will find it lively and worthwhile.

Lee Dastur, Teacher and Librarian

I recently received a copy of this book for the Parent and Teacher Collection of my library and want to recommend it to others. If you are interested in learning about the world around you, if you want your children to be globally literate and to feel at home in the world, this book is for you. It provides a wealth of sound advice and is filled with information and activities. Tavangar focuses on raising our children in a world growing smaller each day due to technology and travel. The text is accessible including boxed sections with suggestions for creative ways to gain global literacy. There are sample tips for those that want to start by making small changes. The entire book is written in an encouraging style for all those that realize that the time has come to explore and get to know their fellow citizens of the world and starting at an early age is Tavangar's premise. She gives the example of her youngest child and how it was so much easier for her to bond with the people and pick up the language. Her pronunciation was perfect! She gives other powerful examples of how following through on teaching global literacy is necessary in this day for our children. She stresses the two fold benefits in doing this - the benefit for the future of the world at large and the benefit for our children as they expand their horizons and become "world citizens". As a true world citizen herself, Tavangar has taken a respite from her travels to take the time to encourage the rest of us to follow in her footsteps. Because of travel and technology there has never been a better time to do this. This book is really the right book at the right time!

If you want your child to be comfortable in the world --with all kinds of people --you need this book. I just had a son 8 months ago and my aunt Neda got this book for me. What a great gift! And I think the ability to feel at home with everyone is one of the greatest gifts we can give our children! This book will help us all give that gift.

Homa Tavangar manages to deliver a seemingly impossible message, being at one with the world, with natural ease. She brings to our homes ideas which can at once entice us or make us feel out of place. Growing Up Global takes a pragmatic approach to help parents find practical ways to raise our precious children as global citizens. For many of us parents or friends of children living in the U.S., my beloved melting pot of peoples of the world, this book is a real and true gift, which inspires us to partake of all the beauty diverse individuals around us have to offer. This book is an outstanding contribution to parenting literature.

You can tell that the author has a real sense of what "the earth is one country" means.

The book itself is awesome: very well thought out and put together.

If you read the Contents, you can see that there's so much in it for both adults in general working with children (educators, youth and service groups, etc), parents and children.

I loved reading about all the organizations at the end that one can access to make a difference in the world too. Sometimes a book will get you all fired up to do something and then offer no way to do it. This one covers that.

The resource list alone is worth the price of the book.