Malayali Parents Living Abroad: Biggest Challenges Raising Young Children and What I’ve Learned
Last month, I herded a group of sticky 5-year-olds out of the Chicago indoor playplace bounce house and toward the rainbow unicorn cake for my son’s birthday. When we finished singing, my husband hit record on his phone to send the clip to my parents in Kochi. Before we could send it, my appa called in the middle of the party to wish my son happy birthday. As soon as appa’s face popped up on the screen, my son grinned and waved, then clamped his mouth shut when appa asked, “Entha venam, kuttan?” (What do you want, little one?) He hid behind my leg and whispered, “Mom, tell him I want more ice cream.” I answered appa in Malayalam and passed the phone back, but my son wouldn’t take it. That’s when I realized how sharp this whole parenting abroad thing is, even when we think we’re doing everything right.
My husband and I are both first-generation Malayali expats; we moved here for college and stayed after we got married. We had a whole list of rules when we had our son: only Malayalam at home, he’ll know all the Vishu kani traditions, he’ll visit Kerala every other year to stay with his grandparents. Turns out, none of those rules account for the daily pull of life abroad. The three biggest hurdles we’ve hit don’t get talked about much in expat group chats, and I’ve had to figure them out as I go.
The first, and the one that comes up every single day, is holding onto Malayalam without turning it into a fight. When our son was little, we stuck to our “only Malayalam at home” rule, and it worked great until he started preschool. Within three months, he was defaulting to English for everything, and any time we asked him to reply in Malayalam, he’d just shrug or walk away. Last year, my aunt came to visit from Trivandrum, and she scolded him in front of everyone for not speaking Malayalam, saying he’d forget where he came from. He didn’t say a single word to anyone for the rest of her two-week stay. That’s when I stopped forcing it. Instead of demanding he answer every relative’s question in Malayalam, I switched to small, low-pressure habits. We do 20 minutes of Malayalam story time every night before bed, I read his favorite Ben 10 comics I ordered from an online bookstore in Kerala, and I don’t ask him to repeat anything or speak out loud if he doesn’t want to. Every Sunday, we have “snack time with amma’s stories” where we make ela ada or unni appam, and I just talk about what it was like growing up, climbing coconut trees and chasing fireflies in my grandma’s yard. After six months of this, he pointed to the plate of ada one day and said “Injichu venam” (I want more ginger) on his own, no prompting. Last week, he asked me to teach him how to say “swing” in Malayalam so he could tell his grandpa what he did at the park. It’s slow, but it sticks way better than forcing him to perform for relatives.
The second big challenge is building real cultural connection that doesn’t feel like a once-a-year event. We used to only pull out our Malayali traditions for Onam and Vishu, going to the local community center sadya and getting a new kuthu for Vishu. Then last year, after our Onam celebration, my son came home and asked, “Why do we only do this once a year? My friend Mia does a Christmas activity every day in December.” He also started hiding his ela ada when his friends came over, because he thought it looked weird next to their goldfish crackers. I realized I was treating our culture like a holiday show, not a regular part of his life. So we started adding tiny daily bits instead of big annual events. I play 30 minutes of Malayalam nursery rhymes every morning while I make breakfast, instead of the usual English kids’ playlist. When we buy mangoes at the grocery store, I pull up photos of my dad’s mango tree in Kochi and tell him how we’d climb it to pick mangoes every summer. When his friends come over, I put out unni appam alongside the cookies, and let my son tell them “This is my favorite snack from where my parents grew up.” It’s nothing fancy, but it lets him feel like his culture is a normal part of his life, not something he only pulls out for guests.
The third hardest part is balancing the conflicting expectations from both sides of the world. My mom back in Kerala keeps telling me I need to have my son do 30 minutes of Malayalam reading and writing every day, that all 5-year-olds in Kerala can read simple words already, and I’m spoiling him by letting him just play after school. On the other side, his preschool teacher told me that pushing formal academics at 5 is unnecessary and can make him hate learning. I spent a year caught in the middle, feeling like I was failing no matter what I did. I got into a shouting match with my mom on the phone last spring over it, and cried in the grocery store parking lot afterward because I thought I was messing up my kid’s whole future. Eventually, I just compromised. I picked up a cheap Malayalam alphabet tracing workbook from Amazon, and we do 10 minutes of tracing two days a week, only when he’s in the mood after breakfast, never when he’s tired after preschool. I sent my mom a video of him tracing letters, and she’s happy. It’s not 30 minutes a day, but it’s enough, and it doesn’t conflict with what his teacher wants. I also stopped letting relatives pressure me into making my son perform. If someone says “Why doesn’t he speak Malayalam?” I just say “He’s learning, it took me three years to get comfortable speaking English when I first moved here too” and change the subject. That takes a lot of the pressure off both of us.
Last week, we were walking to the park, and my son spotted a bright red cardinal on an oak tree. He turned to me and said “Amma, that’s a kizhi, right?” That’s the Malayalam word for bird. I said yes, that’s right. He smiled and said “I’m going to tell appa when we call tonight.” It’s a tiny thing. He still speaks mostly English, he still calls sadya “big banana leaf dinner,” and we still have awkward calls with relatives where he hides behind the couch. Some days it feels like we’re one missed video call away from messing everything up. But the small stuff, the 20 minutes of story time, the unni appam for snack time, the 10 minutes of tracing, it adds up. We’re not raising kids exactly like we were, and we’re not raising kids exactly like the other families here. We’re making something new, one small day at a time. That’s enough for now.
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