Biggest Challenges for Malayali Parents Raising Young Kids Abroad (And What Helps)
Last month I stood in a shaded playground in South London, wiping fairy bread crumbs off my sleeve at my friend Deepa’s son Aryan’s fifth birthday party. Aryan ripped open a present of glow-in-the-dark dinosaur figures and whooped so loud the toddlers on the slide turned to stare. When the chaos died down, Deepa leaned into me, sipping lukewarm instant chai from a paper cup, and said he’d refused his usual weekend puttu that morning, calling it “yucky brown mush” and insisting all his friends eat sugary cereal for breakfast. It was a tiny fight, the kind no one else would notice, but I saw the tiredness in her shoulders. Deepa and her husband Rohit moved to London from Kochi eight years ago, and they’re just two of the hundreds of Malayali expat parents I’ve gotten to know through my local parent group, all navigating the same unspoken small and big struggles most of us who grew up here never think about.
A couple weeks after the birthday, I went to their house for Vishu. Their three-year-old Mia stood in front of the traditional kani setup on the counter, tilted her head and asked why they couldn’t put chocolate eggs in it instead, like her best friend Lila did for Easter. Later that night, after Deepa’s mom, who’d come over for the holiday from Thrissur, fell asleep in the guest room, Deepa sat on their living room couch picking at a banana fritter and told me Mia won’t speak Malayalam to her grandma. She understands most of it, but only answers in English, and gets shy if anyone pushes her. Deepa said her mom tries so hard, brings all her favorite snacks, makes the pidi she loved as a kid, but there’s still this quiet wall between them.
It’s not just culture and language, either. Rohit told me after his last parent-teacher conference for Aryan, he went home and sat in the driveway for 20 minutes stressed out. The teacher told him Aryan was curious, kind, great at sharing, and hitting all his developmental milestones perfectly. But she never once mentioned reading or math. Rohit grew up doing extra homework every night after school, his parents pushed hard for strong academic progress from the time he was 4, and he can’t shake the worry that the laid-back play-based early years system here is leaving Aryan behind. He said he sees other Malayali kids at the local community weekend school already reading Malayalam and doing basic addition at 5, and he feels like he’s failing if he doesn’t sign Aryan up for extra tutoring.
I’ve seen this same guilt come up again and again with the Malayali parents I know. You’re stuck between two worlds: if you push your kids to speak your language, eat your food, follow your traditions, you worry you’re making them feel different from their friends, like they don’t belong. If you let everything go to fit in, you feel like you’re cutting your kids off from half their identity, and letting down the family back home. What I’ve observed is that small, low-pressure changes work way better than big rigid rules, and Deepa and Rohit have figured out a few things that actually stick.
For the food fight, Deepa stopped forcing Aryan to eat a full plate of puttu for breakfast every weekend. Instead, she started rolling small puttu balls around a jaggery core, calling them puttu pops, and sends a couple in his snack bag when he has playdates. When the other kids ask what they are, Aryan gets to be the expert, explaining what coconut and jaggery are, and he’s started asking for them himself now. He still calls it yucky mush some days, but those days are getting fewer.
For language, they gave up the strict “no English at home” rule a lot of expat parents try. Instead, they do a 15-minute word game every night after dinner. One person picks an object in the living room, the other person has to name it in both English and Malayalam. Aryan loves being the teacher, correcting Deepa and Rohit when they mix up words, and it’s turned language from a chore into a game. They also do a 5-minute video call with Deepa’s mom every three days, instead of one long call once a week, where Aryan and Mia just show grandma what toy they’re playing with, name it in Malayalam, and get clapped for it. It’s built enough familiarity that on this last visit, Mia held grandma’s hand to go to the park, and even said a couple Malayalam words without being pushed.
For the academic pressure, Rohit didn’t sign Aryan up for after-school tutoring. Instead, he started counting coconut shells (they keep a bag for craft) when they walk to the bus stop every morning, and asks Aryan to read the street signs out loud in both English and Malayalam. It’s 10 minutes a day, no homework, no stress, and Rohit said it’s enough for now. He still gets the wobbly feeling sometimes, when he sees other parents posting about their kids’ achievements on the expat parent group, but he’s learning to let that go a little.
Last week I ran into Deepa and the kids at the supermarket. Aryan was standing by the baked goods aisle, telling a little English boy who’d dropped his cookie all about puttu pops, and how his amma makes them way better than cookies. Deepa leaned against the cart, wiped a smudge of mango off Mia’s cheek, and smiled at me. When we walked out together, she said some days are still hard. Some days Mia refuses to come to the local Malayali Saturday school, some days Rohit stays up late worrying they’re doing it all wrong. But most days, the small things add up. It’s not the perfect upbringing either of them imagined back when they moved here, but it’s theirs. I nodded, and we waved goodbye, and she herded the kids toward the bus stop, a bag of coconut and jaggery poking out of the top of her shopping bag.
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