u/Dongxue326

I realized I missed a word in the title " keep your native language"

I’m a Chinese parent raising kids in the US, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about heritage language and whether all the effort is truly worth it in the long run.

At home, we speak Chinese with our children, and we spend a lot of time and energy helping them maintain the language. But honestly, it takes a huge amount of effort from parents.

It’s not just speaking. Teaching kids to actually read Chinese, enjoy books, and stay connected to the culture is very difficult when they are surrounded by English all day.

Sometimes I wonder:

• How much does keeping the parents’ language really matter long term?
• For immigrant families from different backgrounds, what role did your native language play in your life?
• If you grew up in an immigrant family, do you feel grateful your parents pushed it?
• Or do you wish they had relaxed more and let you fully assimilate?

I’d especially love to hear from adults who grew up in immigrant families:
How do you feel about your heritage language now as an adult?

Did it help with:

• family relationships?
• identity?
• career?
• connecting with grandparents and relatives?
• passing culture to your own children?

Or did it end up not mattering as much as your parents hoped?

I’m genuinely curious because sometimes this journey feels meaningful, and other times it feels exhausting.

I’m a mom raising two children in the US, and like many immigrant parents, I’ve been trying hard to help my kids maintain their heritage language.

Lately I’ve been wondering:

What do you think is the biggest challenge for children learning their heritage language while growing up in America?

And for families raising Chinese-speaking children specifically — does Chinese feel especially difficult compared to some other languages?

I’ve noticed that many kids can still:

• understand conversations
• speak with family members
• follow everyday Chinese

But once reading and writing become important, things suddenly get much harder.

Some children slowly stop reading Chinese altogether even if they can still understand spoken language pretty well.

And once reading becomes difficult, it feels like their access to the culture also becomes much more limited.

Books become inaccessible.
Independent exploration becomes harder.
A lot of cultural understanding starts depending entirely on parents translating or explaining things for them.

I keep wondering whether Chinese literacy is uniquely difficult for heritage learners because:

• character recognition requires so much long-term memory
• there’s less environmental reinforcement in the US
• reading development works differently from phonics-based languages
• or maybe heritage learners abroad are simply learning under very different conditions from children in China

Curious whether families with other heritage languages (Spanish, Korean, Arabic, Russian, etc.) experience similar challenges — or if Chinese really does feel different.