Making friends with immigrant families

[Anonymous]

I live in an area where the vast majority of families are immigrants, which is one of the reasons I love my neighborhood. However, I’m having really hard time making friends with the families. My kids are very friendly with their kids at school but whenever I try to set up play dates, they don’t respond to me, and I understand many are not fluent in English, but they have ignored birthday party invitations too. I’m at a loss on how to get the kids together. My elementary age DD is sad that she can’t talk to some of her friends. It’s a little easier with my 10 yo because he can set up his own virtual playdates in the form of gaming without parent involvement, but I have yet to hear from his best friends parents from over two years. It feels like they want to stick to their “own kind” which defeats the whole purpose of living in a diverse area. Of course not all are like this but it seems like the vast majority of my children’s friends are like this. Any ideas on how to encourage them to be friendlier? With quarantining, I don’t even see them anymore at school events so I really don’t know how to get the parents to respond.

[Anonymous]

Immigrant families from where? Impossible to help you without this information.

-Foreigner

[Anonymous]

All over, lots of East African, Thai, Central American. I left it vague because there is no one type of immigrant, it just seems to center on non English speaking families.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps you can try learning the language of one of the language groups?
Have you invited any families over to dinner? These 2 things helped me when growing relationships with families in my area from other countries of origin.

[Anonymous]

How are you communicating/ reaching out? You might want to send home a hand-written note asking them to call you.

My parents are immigrants and I wasn’t allowed to go to peoples houses where my parents didn’t know the other kids parents. I don’t know if anyone ever reached out to my parents or not, but I never played with friends from school outside of school in early elementary, only neighborhood kids (probably for that reason). My parents just didn’t fee comfortable dropping me at someone’s house who they didn’t know.

[Anonymous]

I’m confused as to why you preface your post by claiming how you love living in a mostly immigrant neighborhood when it’s clear that the end result is that you and your children feel isolated and are struggling to make connections. It seems like you like the idea in theory/being able to claim your “woke” creds but not so much in practice.

[Anonymous]

When my kids were 10 and under, and i lived in a diverse townhouse community, immigrant families did not want to drop their kids off. They were more into having the parents chat at the same time. So try inviting the parent and kids over for an outdoor get together in yard or local park.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused as to why you preface your post by claiming how you love living in a mostly immigrant neighborhood when it’s clear that the end result is that you and your children feel isolated and are struggling to make connections. It seems like you like the idea in theory/being able to claim your “woke” creds but not so much in practice.

You suck.

[Anonymous]

Maybe when the weather is warmer you will see them out and about.

[Anonymous]

We are immigrants too, but came to the US for grad school and stayed for work so we speak English, came here young and feel in some ways more American than anything else. Our fiends are international like us or Americans and we have hosted play dates and went to several families’ places in the past. Our nanny is from the Philippines and has young kids. I noticed that she mostly only has Philippine friends. She is super social and her English decent. The only non Philippine friend she has is the American husband of a Philippine woman. I don’t know why that is, but it’s true. Her older kids have American friends, but they are older. I think that because we went to school here we feel more in touch with the American culture and are more used to it...

I am not sure there is anything you can do about it

[Anonymous]

you need to invite the whole family over or to an outing like meeting at a park due to covid. Many immigrant families do things as a family and as a pp said, would not trust just having their kid go to someone's house they don't know. Wouldn't do drop off birthdays either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are you communicating/ reaching out? You might want to send home a hand-written note asking them to call you.

My parents are immigrants and I wasn’t allowed to go to peoples houses where my parents didn’t know the other kids parents. I don’t know if anyone ever reached out to my parents or not, but I never played with friends from school outside of school in early elementary, only neighborhood kids (probably for that reason). My parents just didn’t fee comfortable dropping me at someone’s house who they didn’t know.

Surprisingly I actually did this with a friend of my daughter's when we wanted to invite her to a birthday party because the family didn't have any info listed in the school directory. The mother responded the next day with her email address and she and her daughter attended the party. We didn't become friends or anything, but she was very sweet and nervous, I think. I understand this - I grew up the child of immigrants and my mom was very nervous around my friends' parents when I was young because she felt her English wasn't good enough, she didn't think she was smart enough, etc. -- none of those things are true and she did gain confidence as I got older to the point of tutoring math at my elementary when my youngest sibling was in school. Be patient and be kind. Personal touches like a note or inviting the family instead of just the child would help a lot (like PP I wasn't allowed to go over to someone's house that my parents didn't know until I was a little older - this was just a trust and comfort-level thing).

[Anonymous]

Right now, in the pandemic, no one is doing drop off playdates unless they know the family well and trust them. Asian families, especially, are worried about racism and backlash. They are not sure they can trust you.

As PPs have suggested, you need to invite the whole family - a park playdate now that it is getting warmer is a good idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you need to invite the whole family over or to an outing like meeting at a park due to covid. Many immigrant families do things as a family and as a pp said, would not trust just having their kid go to someone's house they don't know. Wouldn't do drop off birthdays either.

Yeah - there’s a really cute book called The Red Lollipop that talks about this concept.

[Anonymous]

I think it's going to be particularly hard during the pandemic, OP.

After that, yes, I think you need to personally connect with the parents.

As an aside, I'm a foreigner living in Bethesda, where there are quite a lot of international families, yet I've had no difficulties inviting kids for parties, for the past 10 years. Are you perhaps living where these immigrant families have their own very bonded community, and don't feel the need to go outside of it?