Is your child half-Pinoy?

My daughter is one and a half now, and it’s amazing the things she picks up on a daily basis. She now hums along to most songs from The Little Mermaid, pronounces words like "milk" and "butterfly," and joins us in playing "Ring Around the Rosies."

And then, when your back is turned, she’s doing the Otso-otso dance to the delight of local onlookers.

This is when you know that your child is rapidly becoming Pinoy.

True, being a foreigner, an American, I never thought about the cultural intricacies of raising a child here; I had enough to deal with worrying about my own cultural intricacies. After many years, I’ve almost come to think of myself as a local, so I’m still surprised when people point out that I’m not.

But my daughter, being quite young, has no problem whatsoever assimilating the local culture. She picked up the back-arching Otso-otso after a few viewings of local daytime television. (This practice has now been banned.) And while I’m sure it will make her a standout at Christmas performances and earn her some extra toy money, I still don’t think I’m ready for her to get jiggy with it. Not now. Not ever.

Admittedly, there’s a cultural looseness here that must make picking up local customs quite easy for foreign kids – and so much fun! Pretty soon they want to dance on TV, buy a cell phone and go out on "gimmicks." Next thing you know they’re speaking more rapid-fire Tagalog than English, and you have a generation gap on your hands by the age of seven.

I know the cultural clash must be confusing for her, too. Like, whenever our family is gathered around the home videoke system, and a picture of Mount Rushmore pops up on the screen (amid shots of other Filipino monuments and locations), my daughter points a finger at the stone-faced figures and says: "Daddy!"

Yes, I must look very different to her than most everyone else she meets. And yes, perhaps my features are closer to George Washington’s than, say, Christopher de Leon’s. But I don’t want to be identified as the stone-faced white guy.

There are already indications her personality is becoming more Filipino than stone-faced American. For instance, when she feels comfortable enough in a crowd, she automatically launches into her "repertoire," which includes half-garbled renditions of Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, Hickory Dickory Dock and B-I-N-G-O. This is quite charming, but shows no evidence of the natural caution and reserve one might expect from a foreigner.

Then there’s the aforementioned videoke. If your child gravitates toward a microphone by the age of one and a half, then it’s a definite sign that nurture, not nature, is getting the upper hand.

So, expats, how do you know if your child is becoming Pinoy? There are many telltale signs, which I shall list below:

• Is her Tagalog vocabulary starting to overtake yours? Is what you take to be baby gibberish actually the formation of complete sentences in fluent Filipino?

• Does she pick up odd dances and catchphrases that are more familiar to housemaids than to you? (For instance, does she raise her fist in the air and say "Darna!"?)

• Does she say "Patay lamok!" ("Kill mosquitoes!") whenever she swats at a flying insect?

• Has she learned to say "Akin na!" ("Give it to me!") with an outstretched palm?

• Does she play "Hide and Seek," or does she "Make Tago"?

• Does she display an affinity for carrying cell phones, bags, shoes and other fashion accessories, even before the age of two?

• Does she already enjoy local foods, such as tinola and sinigang? Does she eat rice by the handful, even without a main course?

• Does she love Filipino spaghetti sauce – which is sweet, flavored with ketchup and hotdogs, and looked upon with scorn by actual Italians?

• Does she swing her legs in the high-chair while enjoying what she’s eating? (Alternately: Does she raise one knee while eating?)

• Does she automatically "make mano" whenever confronted with an older relative?

• Does she not only wear a sando, but a folded towel at the nape of the neck so that she won’t "catch colds"?

If more than four of the above apply to your son or daughter, then yes, expats, your child is rapidly becoming Pinoy. There’s really nothing you can do about it, unless you move somewhere else, so just relax and learn to live with it.

Unless, of course, your son or daughter starts using words like "barkada" and "gimmick." Then you can begin worrying.