Remember the vacation we imagined a few weeks ago, when we fictionally travelled to our home country with our partner or with a friend? It was the first scenario for a series meant to give us a few ideas for ensuring that the days spent in our country of origin will not suddenly get too “hot” due linguistic or cultural reasons.
Whom are we travelling with this time?
For the second article of this series I suggest we draw another picture, namely one where we live abroad, we raise our children in our adoptive country (let’s say Argentina) and we plan to travel with them for the first time to our home country (let’s imagine it is Poland). I know many people who fit this scenario and in the past years I met some of my friends and their kids during their vacation “back home”. I could notice then how some of the children’s reactions to spontaneous situations triggered a small conflict, which, at least in my view, could have been avoided if a few things had been discussed in advance. For limiting our vacation only to tears of joy, here are a few conclusions I drew from observing other families’ vacation in the parents’ home country.
If you prefer to listen to this article instead of reading it, I recorded it for you at the end of this page.
Before going on vacation: Talk, play, act
Our children must have already heard endless stories about our country of origin, they must have seen many pictures with our family members, with whom they have interacted at least online. Nonetheless, our offspring need to be prepared for their first visit to our home country. Cultural and linguistic differences that we may think of when comparing our adoptive country with our country of origin may be introduced to our little ones via short discussions, games, role-plays suitable to their age.
For example, we may impersonate our uncle who speaks loudly, a cousin who talks in the local dialect or an aunt who uses specific gestures to the region we will travel to (e.g. touching a child’s cheek or hair as salutation). Using our children’s toys we can playfully exemplify how people in the area we come from greet each other (e.g. kissing a woman’s hand, shaking hands etc.). When going shopping, we could buy fruit and vegetables that grow also in our home country. Or involve our kids in preparing traditional dishes for the area where we were born. We could also take them shopping for clothes suitable to the climate we expect at the destination and thus use this chance to tell them about what temperature or humidity to expect there. Talking about expectations, let’s not forget to inform our little ones about what our family members and friends might expect from them during our vacation there – for example to kiss each other on both cheeks or hug each other as a greeting. And what pronoun is suitable when addressing unknown people or elderly persons.
Drawing a picture of how travelling to our home country will look like is also important. We might use transportation means that our children are not familiar with and it might be helpful to them to know a few details about them in advance. For example, we could inform our little ones about their speed or about the sounds they make. We can easily do that by comparing them with our kids’ bike, with our car or with the tram. I remember to this day the headache I got a few years ago after my first flight with a propeller aircraft – it would have been nice to have been given a heads-up about the background noise inside. And don’t even mention the claustrophobic feeling! So let’s try to prevent the situation when our kids are negatively surprised by their travel experience and instead give them a few hints in advance about what sensations to expect when we would be on board. We can read them relevant stories or watch together some videos and play imaginative games where we sit together on a deck of a ship and we tell each other what sounds we hear, how we feel, what we may and may not do while we are onboard. At the same time we should be careful not to scare or demotivate our children. Let’s keep in mind that the main purpose of these activities is to familiarise them in advance with new transportation means. If these carry a regional name, now it would be a good time to introduce it to the children (for example šalina is used instead of tramvaj in Brno/Czechia).
During the visit: rest, mix, support
Once we arrive in our home country, let’s plan at least a day for our kids to get accustomed to the novelties around them. Not only could they be tired from travelling, maybe even jet-lagged, but chances are high that they need some time to get accustomed to being in a new environment. This means that we could initially do everything slower, talk slower to them, especially if the language now spoken around them is not one that they are fluent in. We should also make sure our children have time to rest, that they take breaks between activities, they meet a limited number of people and they also get a chance to spend a few minutes alone, if they are old enough to be left unsupervised. For younger kids we can create the alternative where they spend some time in a similar environment to the one they have in our adoptive country. This one is quite easy: We may create a corner with the toys they usually play with or lay their favourite blanket and pillow on the bed where they sleep or listen to their favourite story. The bottom line is to mix familiar aspects with new ones in order to avoid that our children feel suddenly separated from a well-known environment and brought into a new one with a different language, different people to get used to, a different rhythm to keep up with.
The mix between old and new may be kept during the whole visit, so that our offspring can feel free to turn to the habits they are used to whenever they find it necessary. I witnessed situations where children were forced to hug or kiss total strangers to them just because these persons were the parent’s relative or friend. It helps to try to see the situation also from the child’s point of view. Also to remind ourselves, just like when travelling with our partner or with a friend, that our dear persons are close to us. Therefore our kids and our partner do not have to align their behaviour towards these persons in order to express our positive feelings towards them. So let’s allow our children to use gestures that they find suitable when interacting with people, especially with persons they haven’t met before. Introducing unknown family members or friends to our kids via a short description can be of great help. Here is an example: “This is my friend, Emma. I shared a desk with her when I was in school and she would always let me have a piece of her sandwich during the break. I talk to her sometimes on the phone and you saw her once during a video call, remember? She congratulated you then on your first day in kindergarten. I’m very happy to see her again today!”
Introducing the people we meet during our visit may also contain a hint on the language(s) our children share with these persons and which they can use when communicating to them. Let me illustrate this with an example: “Emma speaks both Polish and Spanish, you may tell her about the board game we played this morning using any of these languages.” We may be surprised that our kids will speak to our family and friends using the local language even when they may choose another shared language. Letting our little ones know about their linguistic options creates room for switching to another available language when they get stuck or tired of speaking in a language they might not be fluent in. At the same time, this strategy allows them to mix old habits with new ones and to feel more at home in a country they discover now for the first time.
A helpful routine might be taking the time for a discussion with the kids in the evening, before going to sleep, about what happened during the day. We can leave it up to them to choose the language they feel the most comfortable in, as the purpose here is to find out what they enjoyed the most and the least, what they think about today’s events and about their interactions with our friends and family. This is a good chance to allow them to reflect upon what aspects they miss from our adoptive country and what they would like to keep doing after our vacation is over.
Encouraging our children to switch to the language they feel the most comfortable with when communicating to us could be a constant practice during our holiday. We may remind them about this option when we notice them getting tired from speaking in the local language or getting stuck on an unknown word. “Tell me in Spanish what you want to say and I will help you formulate it in Polish” might be such a helpful reminder. What I find important here is not to give our children or the people they are interacting with the impression that we are apologetic or embarrassed by the fact that our little ones need our help from time to time. Being bilingual does not automatically mean being proficient in both these languages or speaking both of them fluently. No matter what the people around us think about raising children multilingually, we should regard our offspring’s abilities to juggle with two or more languages with admiration and respect. Attitudes such as shame, embarrassment or regret for lack of fluency in one language support neither our children in learning languages better nor critical persons in understanding how difficult it is to switch from one language to another. Therefore, our response to a child’s difficulty to formulating an idea in a certain language should be a supportive one. And this is an aspect that trespasses the duration of our holiday.
Once the vacation is over: relive, analyse, understand
A vacation comes to an end at a certain point in time, but its memories may last for a lifetime. Therefore, especially if we visited our home country with our children for the first time, we shouldn’t put it behind us once we get back to our adoptive country.
Instead, it might be useful to keep the ritual of evening talks about the visit and help our children understand some situations better by elaborating on the context in which they happened. Here’s an example for such an explanation: “Remember when grandpa raised his hat when meeting his former doctor on the street? He did that to show respect to the doctor, who is older than him and has helped him stay healthy during the years.” Or we may help our kids memorise some words for a longer time by asking them if they can remember a word we helped them with: “Do you still know how Harry Potter’s cape was called in Polish? You were telling grandma and me about it when we were reading the bedtime story during our visit in Poland. How did we call it then?”
We could also try to incorporate the elements that our kids liked during our vacation in the daily routine. For example, they might want to hear stories in Polish or continue using this language with the people who can speak it. Let’s ask our children what they consider valuable “habitual souvenirs” from our vacation and make room for them once we’re back in our adoptive country. If these rituals tend to fade out as time goes by, we may remind our children why they initially chose to keep them alive and let them decide if they would like to reinforce them or not.
I hope you enjoyed this fictional vacation with our kids. Even if only because it was less tiresome and more quiet than such holidays usually are. What is your experience with this type of visit? What tips and tricks do you have for families who plan to embark on this journey? I am surely glad to hear about your adventures!
Yours confidently,
Corina