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?

  • primroseandlace@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’m American, my husband is German and we live in Germany. Our kids are 7 and 4.

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    • We have tremendous support from my husband’s family. My family is not generally super helpful anyway, so even if they lived near us I doubt they would help in any significant manner.
    • Our kids are technically bilingual, but their German is much stronger than their English. I speak English to them at home, but that’s basically the extent of their English exposure. They understand English perfectly, but strongly prefer to speak German.
    • Our kids are dual citizens, but they don’t identify with America and that’s honestly fine with me. My oldest has visited the US twice and my youngest only once. I’ve been gone so long that America doesn’t even really feel like home to me, so I’m ok with them feeling German rather than American. They see America as a far away place where their grandparents live, which is honestly pretty accurate. It will be interesting to see how they identify as they get older.