What children need when language, culture, identity and belonging are changing around them.
By Maggie Pouplis
There is something rather fascinating about the way adults talk about raising children between cultures. We tend to focus on the advantages. The languages they will speak, the places they will discover, the perspectives they will acquire and, of course, the rather impressive CV they are apparently building before they have even learned to tie their shoelaces.
And yes, growing up between cultures can offer extraordinary opportunities. But somewhere between celebrating bilingualism and telling everyone how adaptable children are, we sometimes forget to ask a much simpler question: where does the child actually feel they belong?
For an internationally mobile family, belonging is not always as straightforward as having an address, attending a school or speaking the local language. A child can be born in one country, have parents from two others, attend an international school in Greece and still find themselves wondering which part of that story makes them who they are.
Adults may experience this as an exciting international identity. Children may experience it as something much more complicated. Both experiences are valid, and neither needs to be universal.
Belonging Is Not A Postcode
Consider a child who speaks English at home and Greek at school. At home, their family has its own expressions, celebrations, humour and expectations. At school, there are different social rules, different jokes and perhaps a very different idea of what it means to fit in. The child learns to move between those environments, sometimes with remarkable ease and sometimes with considerable effort.
We often interpret that flexibility as evidence that everything is fine.
But being able to adapt to different environments and feeling equally comfortable in them are not necessarily the same thing.
Research on school belonging reminds us that feeling connected is a meaningful part of children's educational experience. The OECD's PISA 2022 findings, for example, examine students' sense of belonging alongside experiences of loneliness and social connection. Although these findings concern mainly 15-year-olds, rather than all children growing up internationally, they underline why belonging deserves attention beyond academic achievement.
For families, that means looking beyond whether a child is doing well at school and asking whether they feel known, included and comfortable being themselves.
Maggie Pouplis is an author, certified Parent Coach and nervous system educator, and the founder of Bonding Nest. Her work focuses on communication, emotional development, boundaries and the relationship between children and the adults raising them.
Explore Maggie's parenting programmes HERE!
When Language Becomes More Than Communication
Language is not simply the ability to order something at a café or complete a school assignment. It is also how we tell stories, express affection, understand humour and participate in relationships.
A child learning Greek may become quite competent in everyday conversations while still struggling to follow a fast-moving playground disagreement. They may understand every word a teacher says but miss an unspoken social expectation. Or they may begin to prefer one language, leaving a parent wondering whether part of the family identity is slipping away.
Not every language preference is an identity crisis. Sometimes a child simply finds one language easier in a particular setting. However, the connection between language, participation and inclusion is important. UNICEF's work on language development and school integration highlights how access to the language of instruction affects children's opportunities to participate in school and social life. The report focuses on refugee children, whose circumstances can be substantially different from those of internationally mobile professional families, but it offers a useful reminder: language support is also participation support.
There is no need to turn the family dinner table into an additional language examination centre. Children generally have enough assessments in their lives already.
What helps is creating opportunities for language to remain connected with actual relationships: stories with grandparents, conversations with friends, familiar books, cultural celebrations and shared experiences that have meaning beyond vocabulary.
Children Should Not Have To Choose Which Parts Of Themselves Belong
One of the quieter challenges of growing up between cultures is the pressure to explain yourself.
Where are you really from?
Which country do you like better?
Do you feel Greek or something else?
Adults may ask these questions with genuine curiosity, but children do not always have an answer. And they should not be required to produce one that makes everyone else comfortable.
Identity is not a multiple-choice questionnaire. Children can feel attached to several places, feel differently about those attachments over time, or identify more strongly with a community of people than with a particular country. Some will embrace their international background. Others will occasionally wish their lives looked a little more like those of their classmates.
Neither response automatically means something has gone wrong.
Parents can help by allowing these feelings to coexist. A child can enjoy living in Greece and miss another country. They can love the language spoken at home and prefer using Greek with friends. They can be grateful for their experiences and still complain bitterly about having to start again somewhere new.
Gratitude is not a prerequisite for being allowed to struggle.
What Can Parents Do?
Start with curiosity rather than reassurance. Instead of immediately explaining why living abroad is such a wonderful opportunity, ask what feels familiar to your child and what still feels uncomfortable. Ask who they feel most themselves around. Listen to the answer without rushing to correct it.
Keep meaningful connections alive. That might involve regular contact with friends or relatives abroad, family traditions, familiar stories or simply the freedom to speak the language that feels most natural in a particular relationship.
Help build belonging in the present, too. Encourage friendships and repeated opportunities for social participation, rather than assuming that attending school will automatically produce a sense of community. When language or cultural differences create difficulties, work with teachers to understand what support would be useful.
And allow children to develop their own relationship with the place they now call home. It does not have to look exactly like yours.
The OECD's findings on family support and school belonging show an association between supportive home environments and stronger feelings of belonging at school. This is not a magic formula, but it is a useful reason to take everyday connection seriously.
Growing Roots Without Drawing Borders
Perhaps the most useful shift is to stop thinking of belonging as something a child must achieve by choosing one place over another.
For some children, belonging grows through familiar relationships, predictable routines and the freedom to bring different parts of their lives into the same conversation. It is less about producing a neat answer to where they are from and more about knowing they do not have to hide parts of themselves to be accepted.
Children growing up between worlds do not necessarily need us to tell them how fortunate they are.
Sometimes they simply need us to ask what their world feels like from where they are standing.
And then, rather importantly, wait for the answer.
Maggie Pouplis is an author, certified Parent Coach and nervous system educator, and the founder of Bonding Nest. Her work focuses on communication, emotional development, boundaries and the relationship between children and the adults raising them.
Explore Maggie's parenting programmes HERE!