The First Year and Playdates

It had been six months since Emma started school. She was gradually finding her feet, getting used to the daily routine and beginning to grasp the gist of her teacher’s instructions. Still, she was far from enjoying it. Every night, she would tell me she didn’t want to go, and after any long break, she would cling to me at drop-off, crying and begging to stay home.

I was aware that when children first move to a foreign country, they go through a period of pure linguistic input. I’d read somewhere that they soak up knowledge for months until, one day, they suddenly start speaking fluently. I assumed Emma was no different — that she was just in the “input phase” and would find her voice in due time.

It was during this period that I had a meeting with her homeroom teacher. She suggested that I should arrange more playdates. That suggestion became a kind of “curse” or a permanent fixture in my mind; in a good way, it spurred me on, but in a bad way, it made me feel backed into a corner.

Back then, the only playdates we had ever done were with a Japanese child in a different grade. While I had naturally formed a few “mom-friend” connections with non-Japanese parents for greetings and small talk, I hadn’t felt the need to socialize with them more deeply. I wasn’t particularly anxious about that status quo. I’ve always been a passive person when it comes to relationships, and in Japan, that never really caused me any trouble. But I knew I couldn’t afford to be passive when my child was the one struggling. From that point on, I began to summon my courage to overcome my own weakness. Since my English wasn’t exactly fluent, reaching out was far more daunting than it would have been with other Japanese parents.

Ultimately, I managed to organize playdates about once or twice a month with friends from Korea, China, and the U.S. We also had a South African classmate living in our apartment building at the time, so we’d occasionally hang out for a bit at the communal pool on weekends. In hindsight, if I had been able to push for even more frequent social interactions, things might have shifted more significantly. As it was, however, the “playdate effect” wasn’t immediately visible. Even with me or Anna there, Emma remained silent around her peers, wouldn’t play actively, and didn’t seem to be having much fun. Whenever I asked her afterward if she wanted to play again, she’d simply say, “I’m good.”

That said, there were silver lining. Her classmates started acting more friendly toward her at school, and I grew closer to the other mothers. While these didn’t seem like direct wins for Emma, the change in her environment likely helped her feel a bit more settled than before. Still, she remained stubbornly silent whenever she was in front of her teacher or her friends.