While I’m trying to sort out my impressions from my unplanned trip to Serbia, I remembered that a thematically related, and very important, post about last year’s trip back home has been sitting unpublished for quite a while. It was obviously waiting for the right moment, and the right moment is now: to serve as an introduction to the posts that follow.
Yes, I know it’s been far too long since I wrote the first post about our journey to Serbia after 5 years. But so much happened in the meantime that writing about it felt not only like a chore, but also beside the point.
As I mentioned before, Sofia, at not quite three years old, traveled for the first time to the country where not only her parents come from, but her close and extended family too. Many people were seeing her for the first time, and even more importantly, she was meeting many people for the very first time.
For her, the whole experience was an adventure: her first flight, a different country, a different culture, people unlike anything she’d been used to so far.
Cautious as she is, there were moments when we were afraid it would all be too much for her, that she’d simply be overwhelmed by everything. And she was, and she wasn’t.
The best part of all was getting to know and spending time with her many cousins, because that was really the whole point of our trip: for the kids to spend time together and grow closer (as much as that’s possible in such a short time).
Kids, honest and uncomplicated as they are, didn’t cause any trouble or ask any silly questions.
But the grown-ups… That’s a whole other story.
There are those who know Sofia and generally know what three-year-olds are like, so they don’t expect her to jump into their arms at first sight and tell them everything she knows. She’s still a child, and a child for whom everything happening around her right now is completely new. Imagine that, she won’t start talking right off the bat, or go off with a person she doesn’t know even to the next room, let alone any further. We understood that, we know our child, and we didn’t force her into anything.
But many people didn’t, and so the question we heard most often was “so does she even know Serbian?!”
You won’t believe how many times we heard that question in just two weeks of being “back home”. Yes, I was stunned too!
At first we’d explain that of course she does, but she’s shy and needs time to get to know someone and start trusting them (which is perfectly normal, isn’t it?).
And then I started getting cheeky myself, because I began to see the question as a provocation.
Cold German?!
What does that even mean? Why do people feel the need to mock in such a bizarre way?
The moment you live not in Serbia but, say, in Germany, you’re instantly a “cold German”, your child doesn’t know “the language of her ancestors”, and you owe everyone a mountain of presents or even financial help, because you’re over there, so you automatically have it all and you owe it just for that. Seriously?! I’ve had enough of this!
My child knows both Serbian and German, and God willing, she’ll learn at least one more foreign language, because language is the greatest treasure, one that no one can ever take away from you.
Language Is the Greatest Treasure
Second, snide remarks have always been rude and distasteful, and never funny, whatever they’re about.
And third, don’t expect me to stay smiling and nice after other people’s rudeness. I won’t insult anyone, I won’t argue, but I won’t put up with verbal abuse either, especially when it comes to my child.
In the end, I started answering with no, she doesn’t, you’ll have to speak to her exclusively in Latin, she is the child of academically educated parents, after all. And it worked. The rude person would suddenly back off, and even look a little ashamed.
It’s completely fine with me if people no longer have anything in common with us to talk about, or if they don’t know how to behave around a small child, but it’s not fine for you to be rude because of it.
If You Can’t Say Something Nice, Don’t Say Anything!
No matter what the topic is, a lot of people simply have no sense of decency. And when it comes to kids, it all takes on a whole other dimension.
So if you have nothing nice and decent to say to a child or their parents, don’t ask the child “who do you love more, mommy or daddy”, and don’t ask the parents “why is she so spoiled”, “when’s the second one coming” or “does she even know Serbian”.
Easier for you, and easier for us.
Leave A Comment