View this email in your browser

We’ve launched the Roammies Facebook community. Please join us! 🚀

When we were in Portugal, a kid was picking on ours at the playground.

She was just barely a baby still, and he was 4 years old. This wasn’t normal playground teasing.

This kid was straight-up mean.

And, so was his dad, when he said in Portuguese (that Max could vaguely understand):

“Kids will be bullies, no?!”

Umm…what did you just say, dude?

And, we weren’t even mad that it happened. (Okay, we were, but s*** happens sometimes.)

It was that we couldn’t respond in the language it was happening in.

Then, a few weeks after that, we were with family friends at the park. When a little girl wouldn’t give my friend’s daughter a turn on the slide, my friend stepped in with her best Portuguese and asked her to move the hell over.

(Also, where are these kids’ parents half the time?!)

Our friend wasn’t even fully confident she had said what she meant to say correctly. But whatever she said, it made that little girl move out of the way.

Unlike our friend, our Portuguese wasn’t coming along that quickly. And, if I’m honest, after that playground experience (and, all the other negative experiences we had in Portugal), we were losing interest in learning it.

No matter what — at some point — every parent raising a child in a language that isn’t their own has to decide:

Do I do my best here to step in?

Or, do I accept that I won’t always be able to defend my child in every situation and let them grow into that independent person we’ve always wanted them to be?

(Spoiler alert: there’s no right answer here).

For millions of immigrant families in the U.S., this is nothing new.

There are around 18 million children under 18 in the US who live with at least one immigrant parent. This includes about 2.5 million first-generation (foreign-born) children, with around 55% of these children living with parents who have difficulty speaking English.

And, Max was one of them:

My family came to the United States from Ecuador in the 1980s. They didn’t speak English.

And, though they both picked it up eventually, it was basic. They also lived in a heavy Spanish-speaking community, and didn’t really need English to get by.

The English they did have wasn’t the kind that helped me fill out a school form.

It wasn’t the kind that let them create strong friendships with families that didn’t speak Spanish like them.

They worked. They showed up. They loved me.

But the older I got, the more clear it became that I’d be on my own for a lot of things. That my parents actually depended on me to help with things, like translating phone calls, bills, conversations, etc.

That was my normal, as it is for millions of other immigrant kids.

It was a lot of pressure looking back for a 7-year-old kid.

And, despite Spanish being one of the top-three most spoken language in the world, it’s still not English.

Experiencing this as parents when we lived in Portugal made me realize just how difficult my parents had it. (But, again, we have the English). We had our own struggles settling in, but conversing with Mika’s teachers at daycare was difficult. We often didn’t know what was going on.

This language barrier ended up being one of the main push factors for us when we decided to leave Portugal and come to Colombia.

And, whereas in Portugal we were both in the same boat, now Hana is the one having to parent in another language that’s not her own.

The other day, Mika asked me to do a certain kind of braid in her hair. I didn’t understand what she was asking for.

But. my friend — her friend’s mother — did.

It was such a small thing. A braid.

But it felt bigger than that.

All these thoughts started running through my head.

(Note: Mika has always spoken Spanish with Max, and we knew this day would eventually come. But, since we never thought we’d live in a Spanish-speaking country, it’s now become the prominent language.)

Of course, many of our friends do speak English, and because we are a part of the Jewish community, there’s comfort in knowing we do have more things in common than things we don’t.

The holidays feel familiar. The history is shared. The parenting instincts often overlap.

But even inside this shared culture, the language barrier still makes me feel like I’m hovering at the edge of the conversation all the time, not fully understanding it all.

We hosted a play-date last week. The kids are only three and four years old, but they already understand that Mika’s mom…doesn’t always understand.

And, when I do speak Spanish, they don’t always understand my accent or what I am trying to say.

They look at Mika and I with giggles when we speak to each other in English.

(Maybe, one day she will be embarrassed about this.)

And, even though Max was there to help communicate with the kids (or, with the school, or any other aspect of life here in Colombia), the reality is: he’s not a mom. (He is a very involved dad — a “trophy dad” according to the moms here — but he’s a dad.)

There’s something about being the mom.

The one who knows what’s going on.

The one who is on top of all aspects of their kids’ lives.

The one other kids eventually confide in when they can’t talk to their own parents about something.

I want to be that mom.

Of course, I can still ask her little friends:

“¿Necesitas algo, mi amor?”

“¿Estás bien?”

“¿Qué tienes?”

“¿Cuál Pokémon es tu favorito?”

(And honestly, my Spanish is a lot better than this).

But one day, the questions will be bigger. The conversations deeper. The silences heavier.

And I won’t be able to keep up with every word.

Maybe they’ll even laugh at me, and I’ll have to hold strong.

Parenting in another language isn’t just about paperwork or playground arguments.

It’s about wondering whether one day — or in our case, in one place — there will be a situation that you can’t advocate for them.

That you won’t be able to connect with them in all the nuances of their language.

And, even when you’re visiting somewhere new and no one in your family speaks the local language, you’ll still need to be the parents.

The two adults in that environment that they can rely on for their safety and security to navigate this new, strange — yet, wonderful — place.

At the end of the day, choosing where to live abroad or travel as a family isn’t just about cost of living or weather or visas.

While navigating new languages felt adventurous when it was just the two of us (like when we lived in South Korea), with kids, it’s totally different.

Doctor’s appointments. Schools. Safety. Friendships.

Now, language is a huge part of the decision on where to go and when.

And, if you’re brave and go somewhere where you can’t fully communicate, you’re accepting that quiet fear of slowly becoming peripheral in your own child’s world.

Even if other people speak English — even if one parent can fully communicate — it’s just not the same.

Without sounding too cliche, exposing your child to another language is obviously a gift.

But sometimes it also humbles you.

Sometimes it means standing slightly on the sidelines — close enough to hear the laughter, hoping you’re still fluent in what matters most.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the Roammies Babysitter Network, read more here.

We also started our Facebook community last week, which will be where a lot of the conversations, babysitter recommendations, place recommendations, and other questions will take place.

And, as always, we’ll update the Roammies Directory once a month. If you have a place you’d like to contribute, fill out the form here.