I Thought Moving My Kids To Germany Would Be Good For Us. I Just Didn’t Expect It To Feel Like This.

Thankfully, all three of my children became quite at home here. They’ve had active social lives (juggling their playdates and birthday party invitations could feel like a full-time job), but I routinely wrestled with the fear that I would misunderstand an important milestone for my kids. My stomach ached thinking about the time I brought a hanging lamp to a lantern festival. “Is this OK?” I’d asked another parent, one who had been in Berlin a year longer than me. She smiled warmly, then said, “They’re supposed to be on sticks. For the walk.” Another fail.

Six years living in Germany, and that feeling hasn’t gone away. My three children — now 4, 6 and 9 — have become tiny cultural ambassadors, correcting my German pronunciation and schooling me on how things really work here. “Well, Mom, in Germany…” is a phrase I hear often, like the time my oldest came home one afternoon and said his friends had already gotten their Seahorse badges and that he felt left behind. “What’s a Seahorse badge?” I asked. He took a deep breath, looked me straight in the eyes, and kindly explained that, “in Germany, getting your Seahorse badge means you can swim the length of a pool. It’s a big deal, Mom.”

My children’s confidence — their ease in a place that still feels foreign to me — is both beautiful and jarring. I want to be able to guide them through life’s ups and downs, at least while they are little, not google German customs when they ask me a question or forget that on December 5th, I’m supposed to fill their shoes up with candy from St. Nicholas so they won’t be the only ones who show up to day care empty handed (something I’ve put in my calendar to remember for this year). But more and more, I find myself trailing behind them, playing a weird game of catch-up.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to integrate. I’ve taken language classes and a government-sponsored course for immigrants called “Life in Germany,” where I learned about the country’s political, economic and cultural systems. I watch German TV and listen to German podcasts to absorb the small cultural things that aren’t taught in textbooks. But no flashcards or language apps can replace the deep knowing that comes from growing up in a culture, from sitting in morning circle at day care and repeating the same rhymes, the same stories, day after day.

Those articles I read about European parenting — they don’t mention how hard it is to be an outsider, for parent or child. The one who doesn’t instinctively understand how things work. The one whose kids have to wait for her to catch up to all the other parents.

While I know I sometimes embarrass my children with my broken German or cultural gaffes, I also see the pride they take in knowing more than I do and being able to help me. “It’s fier, not vier” my middle son says, when I’ve mispronounced the word for four, again. “When you see a German V, you pronounce it like an English F,” my oldest says, like a miniature, benevolent private tutor. When I open my Duolingo app, my kids gather round me, eager to translate. And out in public, my 6-year-old loves telling new people that he speaks German better than his parents. The smile on his face says it all — he is so proud of accomplishing something that he realizes is hard for us.

My kids see me struggle almost every day. But they also see how hard I work. They watch me do my German homework, listen to me repeat words I’ve mispronounced, and see as I successfully communicate with strangers, even if it’s with bad grammar.

I won’t ever catch up with my kids’ cultural knowledge of Germany, and I still worry that my kids will pay a price for the things I don’t know. But I’ve come to believe that I’ve given them something else. By letting them see me struggle with a new language, ask for help and try again, what they’re really learning from me is how to be brave in unfamiliar places. How to keep trying. And how to be kind when someone else is finding their way.