Navigating Parenting as an Immigrant Parent

Last summer, I had the privilege of having a month off traveling overseas with my two young children and husband. My children were very expressive everywhere we went: 

 “It’s SO hot!” 

“It smells here!” 

“Ew, I don’t want to eat this… it looks gross.” 

“WOW! This is so cool!” 

“That was so fun!” 

“I hate this place!” 

As you can tell, they shared everything they were feeling and thinking without filter, whether it was positive or negative. I remember the looks I got when my son threw a huge tantrum at an amusement park we were visiting with friends. I felt so ashamed throughout that trip because, let’s face it, as mothers we’re judged for our children’s behaviors, especially in cultures that view children’s negative behaviors as an outcome of “bad parenting”.  When I returned home and shared my experiences with friends and colleagues, I was validated. That simple act of being validated made me feel less like a horrible Asian mom and more like a Western mom who has created safety for my children to share their thoughts and emotions, for better or for worse. 

As immigrants, we may have moved to our current homeland as young children, attending and moving through the Western educational system at a young age. This can impact and influence our beliefs and values as parents, which will then be different from our peers who immigrated as adults to attend post-secondary or moved for a new job. Regardless of whatever your experience has been, being an immigrant parent to multilingual and multicultural children is not just hard; it’s often confusing for parents and children alike. Therefore, as immigrant parents, it’s important for us to consider the following: 

1. Eastern and Western values and beliefs
2. Early Childhood Experiences 
3. Research around childhood development 

Values and Beliefs 

Our values and beliefs are deeply rooted in who we are as individuals and are often seeded in our early days.  When we speak about Eastern beliefs and values, we often think of duty to family, discipline and a strong work ethic, or respect for elders and parents.  Although these values and beliefs are not necessarily negative, the difficulty resides in what I call “black and white” or “all or none”.  We’re either living for our family or we are selfish.  We are either disciplined and hard-working, or we are lazy.  On the other hand, when we speak about Western beliefs and values, we often think about self-determination, individuality, and autonomy.  Similarly, these values and beliefs are not inherently negative; however, what is apparent is that these contrasting and conflicting values and beliefs further identify how, as parents, we interact and rear our children. 

As immigrant parents currently living in Western countries, we tend to struggle with knowing what to do, as we often get confused about what is “right” or “wrong” when it comes to raising our children.  As parents, we and our children will observe others’ behaviors within our community, which can shape what parents and children view as parent-child relationships. These observations can further reflect culturally shaped patterns of behavior within our relationships.  For example, if children see how their Western peers are being greeted at pick up by their parents and caregivers (loving embrace, curiosity about how the day went), children will recognize the difference in communication and attachment with their own parents.  Likewise, as parents, if we see our Western peers being more patient when communicating with their children who engage in negative behavior in public, this too can signal a difference in our approach with our children. Often, these observations are culturally shaped, and when we are navigating in a bicultural (or sometimes tricultural) environment, this becomes very difficult for parents to know how to further support themselves and their children. What’s the answer then?

Bridging and Balancing

As immigrant parents, we are blessed to have the best of both worlds - East meets West.  We can remember what we may have hated as children, such as often being pushed in academics and activities that we didn’t enjoy or have any passion for; being criticized and compared; not being validated or having our emotions or thoughts dismissed.  We can also remember what we may now appreciate having learned as children, such as the importance of a strong work ethic, understanding the importance of family, and identifying with our culture through being in community with others.  These values and beliefs can bridge what we have come to learn now living and working in Westernized communities, and furthermore, what our own children are learning and observing in their own relationships in school and in their communities. 

Through bridging these values and beliefs, we can find balance in how we want to parent our own children. Some questions to ponder: 

What type of attachment do we want for our children? Do we want our children to have a secure relationship where they feel safe enough to come to you when they make a mistake, or do we want our children to be anxious or avoidant, worried that when they make a mistake, there will be harsh consequences? 

What is the goal for our children? Do we want our children to be adaptive in their environments with the ability to solve problems through critical thinking and resilience, or do we want our children to become successful “on paper” through academics and work accomplishments?

For us to balance these views on how we want to parent, we need to ensure emotional, mental, and physical safety. Without safety, we can’t balance our needs or our children's needs.  If we can bend and be flexible, we can offer our children something that we may not have had ourselves as children to immigrant parents: parenting from a place of safety rather than survival.

Early Childhood Experiences

Our early childhood experiences shape us as individuals in the present. What we experience as young children impacts our identity, values, beliefs, relationships, and mental health as adults. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are negative experiences that some of us may have experienced as immigrants.  For example, if your family fled violence, genocide, and war, your migration experience is vastly different from those who may have immigrated with parents who had resources and a job waiting for them.  Although ACEs are beyond what this blog is addressing, it’s important for us to focus on how our past childhood experiences mould us as parents and caregivers today. 

Some of us, as adult children of immigrant parents, were parented from a place of survival and not safety.  For some, our parents had their own unresolved traumas. Furthermore, some of our parents weren’t able to create any safety in our childhoods due to several factors such as war, famine, displacement, genocide, poverty, or resettlement in a new foreign land.  Therefore, now as parents to our own children, we need to reflect on the importance of ACEs (as well as working through our traumas) and learn how our own children’s brains develop to help us parent from a place of safety.

Research on Childhood Development

As parents, we forget that children’s brains are not fully developed (until age 25!) and sometimes what we see is not exactly what is actually happening.  Our brains have left and right sides that help us direct our everyday functioning.  The left side, the logical side, helps us decipher information and making good, informed choices. Our right side, the emotional side, helps us process through emotions to help us experience the world around us and our relationships.  The higher part of our brain, or the upstairs brain, is the part of the brain that engages in executive functioning (a set of mental skills that engages in working memory, flexibility in thinking, and self-control). This part of the brain is still developing in children and adolescents and is often “hijacked” by the lower part of the brain, the downstairs brain, which is a more primitive part of the brain that helps control breathing, regulating our heart rate, as well as emotions. In children, these two parts of the brain often struggle to work together. 

Daniel Siegel, an American psychiatrist, has done countless studies on children’s brains and how, as parents, we need to understand the brain to help our children thrive through discipline, guidance, and increasing positive and affirming child/parent relationships. His work, in essence, is how, as immigrant parents, we can balance our two values through the importance of discipline (through teaching, not punishing) and work ethic, as well as validation of emotions and thoughts (even though we may not agree with our children), using the science around brain development as our road map.  Being able to help our children learn to move between their left and right, upstairs and downstairs brain, can help us in having something to refer to when making the decision to either repeat generational traumas or experience generational healing by balancing Eastern values with Western practices.  We don’t need to be our children’s best friends. We need to be there to teach and guide them, hold firm expectations that are realistic, and most importantly, ensure emotional safety through validation and patience with their emotions.  Because when they whine, yell, scream, or become oppositional, they are trying to speak to us. We just need to listen.

 *Note: I have to admit, writing this blog was difficult. As a first-generation Asian living in Canada, as well as being a therapist that was educated and trained in Western, colonial ways, I often find the balancing act difficult. I share this because even as a therapist, I still struggle with parenting my highly emotional and sensitive biracial children.  When reading this blog, my goal is to have you, the reader, feel validated and seen in your journey of parenting. Perhaps the goal is to bridge and balance for your younger self so you may be able to start the healing process. Our children will thrive when we thrive.

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