Our Big Road Trip!

In March, we went on a road trip down to Florida.  We visited my brother Karol and his family for a few days.

Getting reacquainted with cousin Andrew. 

Andrew loves his cousin!

Playing hide and seek.

Trying out her new hammock, which she got from Tia Lupe.

Hard at work figuring out how one remote control can make two different cars move at the same time!

Waiting for dinner.  L-R: Erin, Natalia, Andrew, Rachel.

Auntie Stephanie reading the kids a bedtime story.

Saying goodnight/goodbye the night before we left.

Quick stop at Uncle Karol's workplace on base.

Quick drive to say hello to some of Oscar's family as well.

Tia Lupe, who gifted Natalia her very first hammock!

Meeting her great-grandfather, Abuelo Yeyo.

What kind of Florida trip would this be without some time spent at the beach!?

Nothing like a little nap on the beach!

Here are some cute photo ops as well.

Natalka in charge of bringing her potty into the hotel.

So excited there was a playground at one of the hotels.

Helping Jibber Jabber and Bambo go to sleepy town.

Showing her new Jasmine doll the fountain at a rest stop.

She got a good chuckle out of this dressed up frog on two legs.

Brroom Brroom!

Zamyslona.

Finally, our trip also included a bittersweet visit to a park in Ft. Lauderdale, where Oscar and his siblings used to hang out as kids with their dad.  Per Henry's request, his kids gathered to spread his ashes and let him rest in peace in this beautiful place, with many happy memories surrounding him.
  

Abuelo Henry's final resting place.
 

The atmosphere was bittersweet.  The kids certainly were here to celebrate Henry's life, grateful for the time they did have with him.  I'm sure it was just what Henry had wanted.

Preparing to spread their dad's ashes.

 

Bringing up the rear of the procession.

Tio Elliott spreading the last of Henry's ashes into the water.

Elliott, Yoli, & Oscar, having fulfilled their dad's final request.

All the girls. L-R: Tia Yoli, Tia Mari, Kari & Natalka.

Abuelo Henry's view is amazing.

Winter 2016

Natalia was very excited about all the snow we got!

                                                

Daddy's little helper!

"So beautiful, where is it coming from?"

We did some fun activities as well.

Adding food coloring to snow!

Making paper cows

A mini sensory tub with random kitchen stuff.

Helping us pack for the big move.

"Pajak!  Yoga! Just plain fun!"

Old school bath!

Here's my happy girl doing a wiggle dance.

Taking a bow!

Point of Heritage Language Transmission

I've never considered not speaking my first language, Polish, to my daughter.  It's the most natural thing in the world for me.  All my early childhood memories are in Polish, and I get to relive many of them with my daughter now, in large part because we are using the same vocabulary.

But I know there are families for whom passing down a heritage language is more of an effort.  I also know there are adults whose parents didn't pass down their native language, and are now adult heritage language learners.  In other words, they are studying a technically foreign language, but their motivation in choosing said language is because it is the language of their ancestors.  Maybe they want to feel better connected to their ancestors, and being able to communicate in the common language, or even just read the thoughts of others who share with them a common history, without dependence on translations, does that.

So I got to thinking; what would be my motivation for teaching Natalia Polish?  Is it just so I can feel more like her mother by parenting her in the language of my own childhood?  Or does it go beyond that?  Does my motivation have anything to do with the future?  Or just our current family life?

Let's look at the facts.  We do not live in Poland, nor do we intend to move back.  Only one of Natalia's parents is Polish, and Polish is not the language in which Oscar and I communicate, so it's not our family language - English is.  Yes, Natalia has a more natural connection to her grandmother (my mom) through their common knowledge of Polish.  But does knowing Polish benefit Natalia in any way outside of the family?

Many years ago, my father was involved in a tragic and very serious vehicular accident.  My mom was left to care for him and figure out a new normal without the support of family (no relatives live in the US other than us three kids), and the people we all considered friends of the family all turned their backs on us.  My parents were involved with the Polish church when we first arrived in the States.  No support came when we really needed it.  Americans speak of meal trains, visitors, donations.  My family got none of that.  The Polish community failed us.

And when we return to Poland for visits?  We are looked at as strange Americans, no longer "purely Polish" because of our strange ways.  This applies to relatives and strangers alike.  Again, the Polish community wants nothing to do with us.

So why would I care if my daughter learned Polish or not?  It's not a global language, like English or Spanish, both of which she also knows.  It's not a language that will give her a particular leg up in a future career, like Arabic, Mandarin, even Russian.  It's not a language that will help her study medicine or law, like Latin.  Polish is spoken by Poles in Poland, and a few heavily Polonia-populated areas elsewhere, like Chicago.  There's not really a pressing socio-economically political reason to know Polish, though I know some non-Poles do study Polish, which must be based mostly on some personal interest in the culture.

While my siblings both know Polish, they do not use it on a regular basis outside of the nuclear family, much like me. And we speak English with each other. My brother has a son in Kindergarten who is not being spoken to in Polish. Let's be honest: If I don't pass down Polish to Natalia, it will die with me, as far as our branch of the family is concerned.  This may bother some people, but it doesn't really bother me.  Polish isn't an endangered language.  There are plenty of other families, families with a truly vested interest in the language (like living in Poland!) who are keeping the language strong.  I'm not worried about hurting Poland.

And really, I don't think I'm worried about hurting my family either.  My parents have one grandchild who speaks English to them, and they love him to pieces just the same.  And no other relatives have any meaningful contact with us.

So is Polish a mere novelty?  A reason for bragging rights among monolinguals?  That's not how we operate.  We speak our languages to her because they're our native languages, and that's what naturally comes out of our mouths.  We don't care if monolinguals are threatened by that.  It would be more of a burden to avoid our languages than to engage in them as the situation dictates.

Instilling in Natalia early childhood memories IN POLISH is how I hope to help her feel more "like" me, her mom.  She is mixed race, and American society will treat her accordingly.  If it has been an effort for ME to maintain my Polish identity among white Americans who would happily have me assimilate completely into the mainstream and be one of them, with no hint of the traditions, worldviews, or preferences of my original culture, then how much more impossible it would be for Natalia to be accepted as having a birthright to her mom's Polish heritage?!

And it's not just Americans who present an obstacle to maintaining a Polish identity.  Us Polish-born Poles, we don't tend to sympathize with second/third/fourth/fifth generation ethnic Poles who do not speak Polish.  Especially if they are ethnically mixed, as undoubtedly most Polish-Americans past the first one or two generations are.  It's not enough to have Polish DNA.  It's not enough to look Polish.  It's not enough to claim a Polish identity.  Fellow Poles will judge you based first and foremost on your Polish language abilities.  For Natalia to have any chance at all of being accepted as part Polish, she must know the language.

Why would I want that for her, you might ask?  If Poles are so judgmental, why do I care if Natalia can possibly be accepted by people who are that closed-minded?  Ah yes, that is the question, isn't it? But it goes back to what I said earlier - regardless of our faults, I'm still one of them.  I'm still Polish. And I want to be able to share that with my daughter.  I don't know if we'll end up having similar interests.  Hopefully we'll have similar values.  But here's a way I can guarantee that we have something in common that bonds us together as mother and daughter, something ongoing, something meaningful, in that language is the song of the heart.  I want to be able to literally listen to the lyrics of a Polish song with her and have us both be able to reflect on its beauty and/or meaning.

That's really it.  That's my whole motivation for teaching her Polish.  I don't think being Polish is any better than being any other nationality or ethnicity.  I consider myself a citizen of the world, and I hope that she will likewise consider herself a citizen of the world, not limited by the circumstances of her birth, ancestry, or upbringing in how she identifies herself.  I want to give her a sense of Polishness as an additional layer, an option.  It doesn't take anything away from the myriad other identities she can claim for herself.

But having been born to me, a Polish mother, she has a birthright to a Polish identity.  If I give her nothing else Polish, I will have given her the key to unlock any and all other Polish resources, should she ever want to explore them.

Transracial Parenting: Finding Racial Mirrors

So I have been learning a lot from a facebook group I belong to.  I am embarrassed to admit that I did not consider the practical aspects of what it would take to successfully parent a non-white child. Since getting together with my Latino hubby, I knew any children we'd have would not be white. This was true when we tried to adopt, as well.  It just wouldn't have felt genuine for us, a mixed couple, to be raising a white child, especially a non-Polish white child.  We are both immigrants, outsiders to a degree, and I take great pride in that.  I can't imagine raising a child that wouldn't have a claim to that unique aspect of our background.

So when Natalia was born, it took me by surprise that there are things she will experience as a non-white person that I do not have first hand experiences with, and that as a good mother, I have to learn to anticipate what her struggles may be and try to prepare as best as I can to help her navigate through them.  I cannot just assume that I will fall back on my own experience.  And to be honest, this is a dose of reality that actually applies to ALL parents to some degree, but most don't give it a second thought.  Of course our children's experiences will be different from our own!  Not only are they living in a different generation, but they are unique individuals with their own personalities and experiences that are bound to shape how they see the world.  They have different likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, from those of their parents, even if their parents share genetics and race with their children.

But for those of us who are of a different race or ethnicity from our children, it becomes even more necessary to make up for the ways in which we're not just a senior version of our kids.

Take racial mirrors for example.  I had never heard of this concept, but now that I have, it makes total sense and I actually would say that it extends to ethnic mirrors and is something I grew up without and hence it affected my identity struggle. If I struggled for decades to figure out where I fit in (still haven't found the answer, by the way), and I grew up surrounded by "fellow white people" who "just" weren't Polish, I can only imagine how much more difficult it would be if my heritage were of a visible minority.  I am generally assumed to be a member of mainstream white America.  My struggle is mostly internal, in that I see how differently I grew up.  But if I were also a visible minority rather than just a white ethnic, I would also have those differences constantly pointed out to me, both explicitly and implicitly, by people in real life and messages in the media and the school system.  Not only that, but those differences would also be treated as making me less-than.  It wouldn't be, for example, that I have a different beauty from what's expected.  It'd be that I have different looks and they do not equal beauty, period.  Or it wouldn't be merely pointing out that I do something "differently" than the mainstream; it'd automatically be treated as me doing it "worse" than the mainstream.

It is very easy to take for granted the need for racial/ethnic mirrors for those of us who grew up surrounded by them.  We've never known a life where we didn't have people of our own race in day to day life to look up to.  For me in particular, my only daily female Polish mentor was my mother.  I only had long-distance contact with other female Polish relatives.  I grew up with no Polish peers.  I was expected to just automatically grow from a Polish girl into a Polish woman, because it seemed to happen naturally to Poles living in Poland.  No one could have anticipated that this is not how identity works.  I couldn't have become a strong Polish woman based on a single role model.  As great as my mom is, she is one person, plus we actually differ in a lot of our preferences and strengths.  It would be ridiculous to think that I would just grow up to be another version of my mom.

I only keep bringing myself up because it helps me to appreciate better the situation that my daughter is in. Luckily, her dad and his family are non-white, so she does have that built in.  But she is female, and even if she were a boy, just like with me, one person, even a parent, is insufficient to expose a child to the myriad ways of being a Person of Color.  My in-laws almost all live in another state, so we don't see them on a regular (say, weekly) basis.

And so enter the first part of intentional transracial parenting: finding sufficient and regular racial mirrors for our daughter.

In Praise of Mixing Languages

We are raising our daughter to be multilingual.  We are not following any strict approach to that end. We are doing what comes naturally to us.  Luckily, my husband and I have always agreed on passing down our native languages to our children.  I am impressed with families who take on multilingual parenting as a challenge, as a goal that they have to work hard to reach.  Maybe only one parent is motivated to encourage bilingualism.  Maybe the language at hand is not native to the parent(s).  So I guess in those situations it makes sense to have a strategy in place, such as one-parent-one-language (OPOL) or minority-language-at-home or some other system that keeps the "second" language at the forefront of parent-child interaction.

But in our case, we just speak to our daughter the way it comes naturally.  And this means that we mix languages.  I speak Polish to Natalia.  But I also speak Spanish, so when my daughter is interacting with my husband (who speaks Spanish to her), I often chime in when invited (by her) in Spanish, and generally repeat myself in Polish.  And my husband has been picking up more and more Polish since hearing me speak it with our daughter, and wanting to know what we're saying.  (Especially when she addresses him directly in Polish!)  We speak English to each other, and there are times when we address our daughter in English as well, either as a repetition of something we said in our native language, or when we're around English-only speakers.

Natalia has already shown that she understands there is more than one way to say the same thing.  She will pause and think for a moment and then repeat the same thing in another language, often accompanied by the ASL sign as well.  This generally happens when we are having a hard time understanding what she's saying, either because she is a relatively new speaker and her language is still being finessed, or because we are thinking in one language and not expecting to hear what she's saying in a different language.

Recently I read that some children develop a language-person association which can prove to be problematic when they refuse to allow that person to communicate with them in a language other than the one they came to expect.  As I read this, I realized two things.  1) I didn't think our mixing languages was a bad thing, but until I read this research, I didn't think it was a good thing either.  Now I do see it in a positive light.  And the reason is related to 2).  I have a mild case of language-person association when it comes to my mother.  I grew up hearing her speak to me in Polish, and I always replied likewise.  As I became an adult, the topics of conversation became too complex for me to know the advanced or specialized vocabulary in Polish, so we started to code-switch between Polish and English.  But when I hear my mom speak all English (to others), I feel funny about it.  It doesn't sound like her.  It's like I don't know the woman I'm hearing, because the woman I know to be mother, well, she speaks Polish!

Likewise, I've found it is problematic in mixed-language gatherings such as holiday dinners when I try to include everyone at the table in our conversation by saying what I have to say to my mom in English.  These prove to be very short exchanges.  My mom responds to me in Polish, while I keep trying for a few more turns in English.  Then I just sort of hope the English-only guests strike up a conversation among themselves so that we can continue in Polish without anyone feeling left out.  So there is definitely something to be said for how limiting it can be to be so used to a certain language with a particular person that hearing that person speak a different language actually presents a communication blockade.

Since reading about language-person association among bilinguals, I've been consciously aware of mixing languages with my daughter, and it doesn't give me pause anymore.  I didn't lose any sleep over it before, but I did always think about how I am "not supposed to" mix languages.  I no longer think that.  Instead, I think about how in the future, my daughter will be able to have a smooth conversation among my in-laws with me there, all in Spanish, with no problem.  And how we will be able to do likewise with her dad and whatever Polish he will have picked up by then, and she won't be distracted by the words coming out of his mouth.

I suppose this was never going to be a problem in our family because we speak English to each other, so our daughter has always heard each of us speak both our native language and English.  But now even more so, I'm happy to chime in with Spanish, or read her a book in Spanish instead of insisting that her dad does it.

At two years old, she communicates best with me because I speak all the languages that she does.  But even so, there are words she learns in Spanish and ASL from her dad that I am not familiar with and have to rely on his translation.  In close second is her dad, who certainly knows what she is trying to say more so than any other person outside our immediate family.  I do worry a little when she isn't being understood by her peers or other adults, but I try to remember that there are monolingual kids her age who still use such a strong "baby accent" that they have a hard time being understood.  I think with time, these things will straighten themselves out, and in the meantime, we will have established a strong bond in multiple languages.

When I think back to my childhood, part of what makes me fond of those memories is that it involves my "mother tongue".  It's like balm to my soul to hear Polish spoken on familiar subjects.  It's that same sense of reminiscing that I hope Natalia will have about all the languages we are using with her in these her youngest years.

Toddler in December

December had both cold and warmer days...

Getting our little live Christmas tree.

At a live nativity!

Meeting Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer

This year we participated in our first Simban Gabi!  A Filipino tradition consisting of a novena of masses leading up to Christmas!  Every mass was followed by lots of great Filipino food and fellowship!

Father handing out dollar bills to all the kids!

Meeting Santa.  His elf's sign says "Elf ton John" lol

Stars of Bethlehem at every church we went to!

With her dollar from the priest and her Santa sign :)

Grumpy in front of Babcia's nativity

Holding the Birthday Boy, Baby Jesus.

Sharing the Oplatek with Daddy during Wigilia at Babcia's.

Opening presents... looks like we'll need to follow a strict policy from now on.  Only open one present from each person, save the rest to open during the 12 days of Christmas leading to the Epiphany!

Art and science in one fun December activity :) Salt on ice, food coloring, and a paintbrush!

Multilingual Parenting and Homeschooling

I've noticed that whenever the subject of our raising our daughter multilingual comes up, I tend to try to say as little as possible about it.  I should note that usually this subject either comes up with monolingual families, or families where one (or both!) parents are bilingual but for whatever reason are not passing that skill to their child.  The comments we get are usually expressions of being impressed, acknowledging what a good idea it is, and then dismissing it as something too difficult for them to manage or consider (yes, even the bilingual parents say this!).

It's in my nature to try to not make other people feel bad.  I see multilingualism as a definite plus, so much so, that it sort of makes me feel bad that another family isn't reaping the benefits of raising their child multi-lingual.

I don't actually say anything to devalue what we're doing.  But I don't linger on the subject either.  I find there are times when our multilingual parenting intersects with another subject that is being discussed, and as I listen to myself venture down that path, I become aware of the fact that the other parent cannot relate.

Take language learning and homeschooling for instance.  There have been times when I was discussing reasons for wanting to homeschool our daughter, and the conversation naturally led to language learning.  One of the many reasons we are (yes, are, not will be!) homeschooling is to allow equal exposure to all of our languages.

One of the first pieces of advice you hear when being encouraged to speak your native language to your child is that once they go to school, they will quickly catch up with their peers and pick up the mainstream language.  This is definitely true.  It's so true, in fact, that unless the parents are careful and have a clear plan in place, the mainstream language will replace the minority language.  If all of the child's friends only speak the majority language, and the child spends all day every day immersed in the language of their friends, and then the child is allowed free access to media in the mainstream language, the mere fact that mom and/or dad address the child in the family language will not be enough to counter all of the exposure and motivation to speak the majority language.

At first, the child may reply in the minority language, but after years of no extra enforcement, the purpose of maintaining the family language will begin to be lost on the child. The child will then start to respond in the mainstream language even when being addressed in the family language.  Best case scenario, the child becomes a passive bilingual, able to understand but not to express herself in the target language.  If the family relations get strained for whatever reason, or if the child moves away for an extended period of time, even the ability to understand the language may be lost on the child.  And then you have a family reunion of the elder relatives being forced to speak in sometimes broken English (for example) because there is no other way to communicate with the child.  Then you have a situation where inside jokes and family anecdotes told in the native language are completely lost on the child, who no longer gets the nuances of the language, even if he still retains some vocabulary.  Then you have an adult who says "I used to know this language, but..."

So with all of this knowledge in place, homeschooling is the way we are choosing to encourage ongoing exposure of our family languages, right along English.  I have yet to meet a homeschooling family who can relate to this reason for homeschooling.  And so I try to curb the extent to which I am enthusiastic about homeschooling for the purpose of raising a multilingual child.

I wonder if this is bad, or just neutral.  Will this somehow negatively affect my daughter if she overhears one of these conversations and wonders why I didn't explain how homeschooling helps us stay a multilingual family?

I once participated in a multilingual parenting webinar where I wrote in a question about best practices on incorporating language learning into the homeschool.  I got a lot of fumbling around with best guesses, because the participants were not homeschoolers and didn't know how homeschooling would affect multilingual parenting - for better or for worse.

My linguistic goals for our daughter are not very steep.  I don't expect her to reach college level literacy in Polish and Spanish.  I do expect her to be prepared for college level work in English, if she chooses to pursue that route.  So the core curriculum and resources we will use will be in English.  But the discussions surrounding the lessons will continue in our native languages, and the supplemental materials we bring in can also be in Polish and Spanish (say, videos or books on the subject we are learning, or - better yet - traveling to a place where our heritage languages are spoken, to explore a lesson on history or geography.)

One aspect of homeschooling that I don't fuss over is foreign language.  On one hand, there is a Polish Saturday school I want to send our daughter to (maybe as early as next year).  We do have access to media and even Rosetta Stone in Polish and Spanish, which we could incorporate into a "language lesson".  But why decontextualize it like that? The truth is, Polish and Spanish will not be our daughter's "foreign languages".  They will be her native languages.  She can utilize them right along English in pursuing history, science, literature, etc.

One method of homeschooling, Classical, stresses the study of Latin for the purpose of easing the future study of other Romance languages.  Honestly, I scoff at this idea.  Unless a person goes into medicine, why take that extra step of Latin?  Why not go directly to the living Romance language that can be used in travel, in business, in culture?  And how about the hundreds of other languages in the world that are not based on Latin?  Are they in any way less important to know? Of course not!

This shouldn't be any surprise to me, but this is truly the story of my life - straddling two camps that are complimentary but simply do not have an established community that overlaps them both.  It's like having to put on my homeschooling hat when in homeschooling circles, and my multilingual parenting hat when in multilingual settings.

It's predicaments like these that feed into the very title of my blog - Hodgepodge Parenting!  :)