I kinda just realized I never really talked much to parents besides the occasional mentions about school or news…
Which is likely why my first language kinda never developed beyond like 1st grade lexicon, since I use English outside of home, and also its the most common language on the internet most websites and media is English, its the lingua franca of the world…, so I never really got to use my first language much, not much conversations. Or perhaps its the other way around? Maybe the language barrier that caused me to not really able to have a conversation with my parents in the first place. Idk.
So… yea… relationship-wise nowadays… not that close… the reason is kinda self-evident lol
I quickly learned to limit conversations with my parents to neutral and objective topics because opinions on personal ones and directions in life clashed. Our relationship improved enormously once I moved out. It’s good now, we are there for each other when it’s needed, but the distance is necessary to keep it that way.
Parents are the often the people who will have the most contact with a child in formative years of their life, which is why building healthy communication early on is critical in the development of the social skills they’ll use for the rest of their lives.
Insecurity about my language skills prevented me from talking to family members who lived abroad as much as I would have liked to when I was younger. Now I realize that some of them would have been happy that I was simply making the effort to communicate. So my advice is not to let that hold you back from reaching out to someone you want to talk to.
By the way, your comments about culture, mentality, and language in China and how they compare to the US are insightful and I enjoy reading them.