I was wondering what are people’s experiences of having and raising children in a different country from your own, specially if your partner is a local. Did you find it challenging not having your family to support you? Did you manage to have them be bilingual? Do you find it’s hard for them to identify with your country, and if so, what are good ways to help with this?
We are binational family living in CH as well and, besides the fact that identifying with a country is ultimately up to the child, I absolutely think it is emotionally and socially beneficial for immigrant children to identify with the parent’s home countries.
I guess it depends on what we mean by “identify”. I meant like “strongly associate with” in the sense that the grow up in CH but ultimately feel that they are Japanese or American or that they are not Swiss. This reminds me of all the posts about TCKs (third culture kids) in r/TCK for example; I don’t think this is terribly healthy, it’s rather a feeling of not really belonging anywhere. I want him to feel fully integrated into the place he was born and raised.
On the other hand I totally agree with the idea of ensuring that he has access to our countries and speaks our languages. Like I said we spend 4-5 weeks every year in Japan and California so he knows those places and has relationships with his family there. We’ve made sure he can speak read and write English and Japanese natively in addition to German / Swiss German. We’ve made sure he has passports for all three places too so he can choose to go wherever he wants when he grows up.
Of course by doing this I think we maybe also leave him with a bunch more to cogitate on as he grows up, but I hope he sees it as a net positive as an adult.
I’ve seen some posts here from both kids and parents about: a) the child being born and raised in country X but never learning the local language due to parental choices, and b) parents choosing to not teach their kids their own mother tongue or deliberately not pass on citizenship - those are the kinds of things I find really disappointing and shocking.
I think this is an amazing way to raise a child.
FYI- people that grow up here in CH rarely leave. I’m also an expat raising my kid in ch.
I mean the same is true of the US and Japan! I don’t know what he’ll do or what he’ll want to do - we just believe that the best thing we can do is give him these skills and options.
Even if he never leaves being fluent in a couple extra languages and having some familiarity with their cultures wont hurt.
You’re right. But there’s something about Switzerland that creates particularly … close-minded people, dare I say it? Alas, they will probably be multilingual and relatively well off and well educated so that’s good.
As someone with an American mother and Japanese father who never learned Japanese, good on you. I’ve learned French but learning Japanese sounds like the biggest pain in the ass. I wish I had learned the language young. Granted, I’ve got three siblings and my parents are divorced.
I agree with your final paragraph, of course, and after hearing about how you’re raising them (linguistically capable in both languages and visiting both countries every year), I think we actually have a lot in common. I was just saying it is a shame when children lose their roots because of assimilation.