Teaching Your Child Mandarin Is an Act of Courage.

"You live in America. You should speak English."

I've heard this from someone in my own family.

Maybe you've heard it from a stranger. Maybe from a neighbor.

This one is for you.

Yes, my child will learn English. They will dream in English, joke in English, think in English. The world will make sure of that. Nobody needs to fight for English.

But my mother tongue? It needs me to choose it, deliberately, every single day — against the current, against the convenience, against the exhaustion of a long week when it's just easier to default to English.

Teaching my child Mandarin is not about the past. It is not clinging to where I came from. It is a declaration: We were here. We are here. And we are not disappearing.

Think about what it took to get here. The oceans crossed, the lives built from scratch, the language that survived dynasties and diaspora and displacement.

That language lives in my child's mouth now. I won’t let it go quiet.

There is a version of assimilation that asks me to shrink. To be palatable. To take up less space. To let the edges of myself soften until you blend in.

Speaking my language, passing it to my child, is an act of courage. It is resistance. It is pride made audible.

My child doesn't have to choose between being American and being Singapoream. They get to be both. Fully. Loudly. Without apology. And the Mandarin they speak? That's not a limitation. That's a superpower they'll spend a lifetime unwrapping.

To every parent in the diaspora holding onto their language with tired hands —you are keeping something alive that the world tried to make you let go of.

That is extraordinary.

This is part of an ongoing series on bilingual parenting. Read more on Instagram: @xiaonaodaipodcast.