Children Who Dream in the Other Tongue
Updated: Sep 2
“And he took a child and put him in the midst of them… and said to them, ‘Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.’”Mark 9:36–37
You hear the children speaking. The words that come from them belong to the language of this place, not the one that shaped your own childhood.
Their jokes, their stories, the small phrases they use without thinking already move in a different rhythm.
You notice the difference quietly. Something has shifted. The line from your early years to theirs is no longer straight.
Jesus once placed a child among the disciples and said that the kingdom belongs to such as these. He did not ask the child to speak like the adults. He asked the adults to change direction. The child was not a lesson on the board. The child was already at the centre.
These children grow up between languages with an ease that adults often lose. They cross from one to the other without the same weight of divided loyalty. What feels like a split to us can feel like ordinary life to them.
You cannot hand them your first language as if it were the only one that matters. You cannot follow them all the way into the dreams they will have.
What you can do is remain nearby. Speak the older tongue without pressure. Keep a space open where both languages can still meet inside the same family. Tell the old stories when they want them. Let the new words come without treating them as a loss of love.
The Church is meant to be that kind of family. At Mass a child may pray in a language the grandparents did not first learn. The Lord still receives the child. Faith is handed on, but not as a locked box of sounds. It is handed on as a person: Christ, who can be loved in more than one tongue.
Their world is already wider than the one you began with. That brings a certain distance.
It also brings a larger belonging.