Teaching Our Kids to Love People Unlike Themselves

Read time: 3 minutes

Welcome to issue #042 of Unicorn Parents. Each week, I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.

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I’ve been studying Biblical Greek for the past two weeks.

Nothing like learning a new language to kick your butt and force you to swallow a generous slice of humble pie.

Here’s something that blew my mind.

In ancient Greek, all of the following mean the exact same thing:

“loves the God the world”
“loves the world the God”
“the world the God loves”
“the God loves the world”

Word order doesn’t matter.

What matters is the ending of the words.

The noun that ends in sigma is the subject. As long as the ending tells you who is doing the action, the words can move freely.

If this weren’t a real language, I’d assume it was an escape-room puzzle.

And that realization landed harder than I expected.

There are over 7,000 languages in the world.
That means 7,000+ different rule systems.
7,000+ internal logics.
7,000+ ways humans organize meaning.

It’s hard to believe that doesn’t shape how people think, reason, and perceive the world around them.

Which brings me to our kids.

My kiddos are learning Korean first as their dominant language. That was intentional.

I speak English with them often.
My wife, who spends more time with them, speaks Korean.

They’ll learn Chinese at some point.
(Learning Chinese reshaped how I think in both English and Korean.)
And because we live in Vietnam, Vietnamese will probably come naturally.

The point isn’t fluency for résumés.

The point is exposure.

Language learning forces patience.
It forces humility.
It forces you to assume you don’t understand yet.

That posture (I might be missing something) is the foundation of empathy.

One of our neighbors here in Vietnam is a German-American man married to a German woman.

Their child is growing up with:

• German as a base language

• English as a second

• French and Vietnamese layered on top

That child isn’t just multilingual.
He’s being trained—daily—to switch mental frames.

That’s not just education. That’s formation.

The Last Practical Path in an Age of Algorithms

I’ve written before about intentionally taking our kids to different neighborhoods just to hear different languages spoken. If you aren’t doing this already, I’d strongly encourage it.

Some folks talk a lot about “celebrating diversity,” but they do very little to train their children to genuinely love people who are different from them.

In the modern world, language learning may be one of the last practical ways to do that.

Especially now.

Our kids are growing up in an environment optimized for inwardness.
Algorithms feed them what they already like.
Games reward solo mastery.
Technology removes the friction of misunderstanding.

I’ve heard scholars argue that digital natives aren’t less social—just social in different ways.

They text.
They comment.
They hang out on Discord and Reddit.

And yes, that is communication.

But communication without embodied consequence isn’t quite the same thing as socialization.

If it can’t lead to embarrassment…
or reconciliation…
or awkward silence…
or conflict…
or even the risk of getting into a fight or falling in love…

…then something essential is missing.

Language learning reintroduces friction.

You can’t speak another language without:

• sounding foolish

• being corrected

• slowing down

• needing help

• learning to listen before you speak

In other words, the very skills required to live well with other humans.

If we want our children to genuinely love people across cultures (not just perform tolerance), then they need regular encounters where they are the outsider.

Where they don’t have the words.
Where the rules are unfamiliar.
Where understanding requires effort.

Empathy isn’t taught through slogans.
It’s formed through struggle.

So if you’re looking for one high-leverage investment—one that builds patience, humility, intercultural competence, and real love for others…

…expose your kids to foreign cultures…
…teach them another language.

Not because it will make them impressive.

But because it will make them fuller humans.

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