Why You & Your Immigrant Parents Are NOT Close

This might just be the reason why you and your immigrant parent are not very close. Let's talk about it. Recently, I've been having this conversation with a couple of friends of mine, and I thought it was a helpful combo for them. So, hopefully it's a helpful combo for you. Let me know in the comments down below if you relate to this. But I think one of the most overlooked reasons why or not talked about or not delved into enough reasons why you and your immigrant parent are not close is honestly and I know this is not necessarily rocket science but I'm going to dive into it. It's the language barrier. And I think it's really unfortunate what happens with a lot of immigrant kids because basically their language that the kid is great at is not the same language that their parents are great at. And therefore you cannot just communicate certain ideas. two friends I've been having this conversation with. One is my friend who is Cantonese and then I have a gal friend who is Taiwanese and they both are having similar dynamics with their parents where they feel like they're not very close with them even though they know their parents love them. And by the way, just because you don't feel close to your parent doesn't mean that your parent doesn't love you and it doesn't mean that they aren't trying to provide for you and trying their best. But due to a number of reasons and the language barrier being a large one, you're not really connecting with your parents. I mean, what's the Cantonese word for emotion or stress or trauma or even feelings? Like, I know my Cantonese is not that good, so I definitely don't know these things. Quick little interruption. My friend, who's actually from Thailand, but lived in New York and works in fashion, is uh hosting some stuff at Flying Solo, this store over on Broom Street in Soho. So, shout out to this store. I'm going to just give him a little plug. And the other layer to this is that my friend is actually really in to mental health, wellness, um meditation, uh you know, solving his trauma, all these things that take a lot of communication, you know, and it really helps if you speak the same language obviously as your therapist. It's like, you know, you can't really have therapy with someone who really can't communicate ideas to them even though they have good intentions. So, I think it's interesting that he's at this point where he wants to have these conversations with his parents, but he literally cannot. For friend number one, he's telling me that he grew up speaking Cantonese to his parents, right? So, he can speak conversational Cantonese to his parents. His parents barely speak English. Like, they are, for lack of a better word, from the boonies or they're from the village or they just never really picked up English because they didn't need to. They could work in Brooklyn. Uh his dad was like a longtime chef. His mom did some other work, but really they never learned English. So they don't speak English together. So he being the youngest brother, he speaks Cantonese to his parents, but his Cantonese is really tops out at pretty much like a second grade level, right? So they can have all the regular conversations you need to live to grow up like, "Hey, do you want to eat? What do you want to eat? Where are you going? What about school? What's your work?" Blah blah blah. kind of like the basic stuff that you learn in like your first like 3, four years of learning a language maybe, but you're not really fluent. Like you can have a conversation, but it's nothing super super deep about like uh you can't really have introspective or you know emotional conversations with your parents at that level, but you can have all the all the conversations that you need to get through the day. I think what is pretty unfortunate and what kind of sucks about this situation is that even if your parents are very wise and have things that they could potentially share with you, the language barrier makes it so much harder. And when there is a language barrier with your parents, right, and you can't connect with them, a couple things can happen. Basically, you kind of lean away from the culture or you don't get to experience the full culture through them. You know, it it doesn't mean you're going to be whitewashed or blackwashed or whatever, but it probably means that you're not as close to your home culture as you could be if you do not speak the language as your parents at a similar level. It doesn't have to be just as good, but if the levels are so different and they do not speak, you guys basically don't have a common language. There just there's just a bunch of stuff that goes on set, you know, and especially for my friend who's really into health and wellness and meditation and mental health. It's like he wants to have those conversations, but he literally cannot with his parents. And also, I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of other reasons why, right? Like, you know, the parents don't want to have those conversations. They the parents themselves did not grow up having those conversations. You know, you might you might want to say that having those kind of uh mental health conversations with your parents is more of a western thing, but I mean, I would say it's definitely a good thing if you can have it. I don't know if it's necessary, but sometimes it's necessary. My second friend is a Taiwanese girl whose father is educated in America, so he can kind of speak English, but her mom really never picked up English because they kind of grew up in an Asian zone where her mom wasn't forced to speak English. And she didn't know, but when she was 21, she realized that her mom could never speak English because she always spoke to her mom in Mandarin. and her Mandarin is maybe at like a third or fourth grade level where they can pretty much have again all the conversations that you need to live and get through the day, but not really super advanced conversations with her mom. And then her dad uh could speak English, but I think he only used English for work and came home and just kind of wanted to turn back into Taiwanese Chinese mode, you know, instead of using English to connect with his family. I mean, listen, a lot of immigrant Asian dads, especially at that time, you know, they're not fully emotionally available for their kids. And, you know, obviously you're talking about the youngest daughter here who probably essentially feels like she comes from a different culture than you. And so, you just kind of don't try to connect with them on a deep level. Um, which is uh understandable, but also unfortunate. So, with modern technology, what can you do? What can you do to maybe feel closer to your parents? One thing I recommend to my friends to start a conversation is sometimes share a meme. There's a lot of memes out there in language. Like for example, there are like funny Cantonese memes at least about food even, you know, just like memes are just a really soft way of like sharing something that can uh kind of like a like a joke, like something that can make them laugh or open up a conversation. And here's another idea that I recently had that I'm not sure if it's going to work, but it probably would. You know, there's so many translation devices now. Even AirPods are going to start doing live translations. There's Google uh like I don't know if it's the Metaglasses or whatever, but basically you can do semilive translations in a lot of languages right now. And that in theory is going to break down the language barrier for a lot of people. You know, I mean, I've used Google Translate when I was traveling in China recently when, you know, I just couldn't say certain things. And it was a little bit cumbersome, a little bit awkward at first, but I was like, I I used it. Now, would people use Google Translate with their parents? Is that going to feel weird? It might, but also it could help. So, I'm just saying I guess like there are ways to communicate these types of things um nowadays with modern technology. So, I guess in a way, what I'm trying to say is that I know it seems like an unorthodox solution for your parents because you feel like, oh, those are my parents. I don't want to bust out the translator. That's what I use for strangers. I'm just saying if you can break through that frame of mind and just admit, hey, there is a language barrier between me and my parents and I want to be able to communicate things to them that I cannot or I'm having trouble right now and I'm just going to use technology to do it. And yeah, this is not an advertisement for any sort of translation app obviously, but I'm just saying I guess it's possible now. So, I think that I'm not saying this solves the issue cuz I'm not saying parents want to use it. I'm not saying that you want to use it, but I'm just saying I guess there is there are tools out there nowadays that can help in having these conversations and I think that's very interesting. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Listen guys, we're at this point in time where a lot of the immigrant kids, second generation kids, we're more Americanized. We're more in tune with our feelings, more in tune with psychology, and you want to be able to help your parents. Maybe you have the knowledge, the knowhow, maybe you've done healing yourself, and you want to be able to have these conversations with your parents, but due to the language levels being completely different, you just can't. And now, I guess what I'm saying is that you're not alone in this. It's not uncommon. It's very common, but as long as you understand the issue, maybe you could think of some ways to get past it if you want. Anyways, let me know if this video was helpful or touched you or related to you. Let me know in the comments down below. Until next time. There's this big truck, bro. See, those are the type of trucks that could run you over without even blinking. It's like if a Camry if a Toyota Camry wants to hit me, they're going to know they hit me. But that truck, they're going to flatten me out. Not even think twice. They're not even going to see me. The driver's not even going to feel it. Got to be careful out here. All right, everybody. Till next time. I'm out. Peace.