This is exactly the way I would have explained it too. He was too young to understand Klingon culture when he was rescued, and being surrounded by humans would have most likely made him feel insecure about his appearance, and all his other differences. To combat this insecurity, he overcompensated. Researching all he could about Klingons but most likely never meeting another Klingon in person until the episode "Heart of Glory" in season 1 of TNG. He does take part in the Klingon death ritual, and the Klingons tease Worf for being in Starfleet, which makes sense considering he's the first of his species to serve, and these Klingon characters don't support their society's peace with the Federation.
Worf often says "Klingons do not..." or a variation of this phrase to try and educate his human colleagues and sometimes to justify his own behaviour and choices. In this episode, he notably states that Klingons do not take hostages, as it is a cowardly act. This is likely a rule of official Klingon military conduct, however there are a few times where we see them blatantly disobey this stipulation, supporting the idea that Klingons often ignore their own honour based system for personal glory. The best one is "Klingons do not laugh!"
Worf is not a typical Klingon then, and he is better off for it. He understands and respects his people's code of honor more than pretty much every other Klingon he interacts with in TNG and DS9. At the same time, growing up and working with humans helped worf to understand human behaviour and values and made him more aware of the flaws of his own people. He often has to wrestle with these two sides of himself during moral dilemmas, but still manages to justify his "Klingon-ness" perfectly every time he needs to.
This is why I love Worf. Not just because he is inadvertently humourous and he always wants to fire phasers first, ask questions later. His storylines and character development showcase the rife hypocrisy of the "real" Klingon Culture and if anything, Worf follows his own by-the-book idealised version of their teachings...The Way of the Worf, if you will.
His stalwart upholding of his own cultures ideals made him in many ways the perfect Klingon.
SPOILER ALERT
So much so that he almost became the Chancellor of the High Council, essentially the leader of all Klingons, when he killed Gowron in single combat. But worf was too cool for politics and yielded the position to Martok.
Worf is my favourite TNG character now
