You’ve been in Shanghai for some months now, but to you, it’s still a strange, confusing place. Then you realize with a start that your children have just ordered directly from the Chinese menu while you’re still looking up the word for “fork” on Pleco. Why is it all so easy for them? After some years of watching mine and other’s children make the transition from fresh-off-the-boat to fully-fledged Chinese foreigners, I’ve decided there are seven recognizable steps.

1. Goodbye Stranger-danger
Your children have abandoned their usual “stranger-danger” approach when someone requests a photograph with them. Within a month they will start striking ke’ai poses and will try charging amateur Chinese photographers one kuai a picture.

2. We're Not Cold
After bu yao, the second most useful new phrase your children learn is bu leng (not cold) to counter the militant armies of Chinese grandmothers who believe they are severly underdressed. Bless their little hearts, I found my two vigorously defending my poor mothering skills one day when I let them go out without a coat for a quick run around, surrounded by a gang of nainai shooting withering looks at me from afar.

3. Time for Tea
They start drinking tea. Like it’s totally normal behavior for a 5-year-old.

4. Firecrackers What?
The excitement of firecrackers suddenly wears off after three Chinese New Years and several neighbourhood weddings and store openings. First, they just stop flinching when firecrackers go off in their immediate vicinity, then they lose interest completely in pyrotechnics. “Come and see the fireworks!” you say. “Busy. Reading,” they reply. Utterly jaded.

5. Spit Blindness
Your children develop Spit Blindness, and can walk right past someone throwing a thick globular oyster from the back of their throat to the pavement without involuntary shuddering.

6. The Zodiac
When you tell your children they need to wear red underwear every day for the next year, because their zodiac year is coming up, they believe you. For a few minutes.

7. New Study Habits
Your children now go to a Chinese school and consider it perfectly normal to study seven hours a night, with a few hours off on Sunday afternoons or for major festivals. Unfortunately, they also have to attend their own parent-teacher conferences so they can translate for you.

How have your kids picked up on Chinese culture? Tell us your experience in the comments below.