DH and I were just talking about the merits and challenges of raising mixed race DC yesterday (during RATW which I love). My mum and dad came to UK in 1967 with the view that they were living in UK, therefore they would bring their kids up to be fully British, rare amongst their community to not herd more. When my dad died in 1973 my mum unfortunately took that to the extreme, only talking to us in english. I regretted this when I was older, and whilst being only aged 1 when coming here, can just about pigeon speak bengali, understand more. I can empathise with how the lady on last night's programme with chinese heritage but zero language felt being in China.
DD asked me a lot about this last weekend, I summarised by how, in my experience at least, you become more engaged as you get older, like she is beginning to. She doesn't remember my mum trying to teach her how to cook, roll roti, etc, and my mum didn't do this with me either so I self taught She does remember that you never said no to food when being paraded around the aunties on visits to the midlands. Same with her dad, why he never went back to Ireland for holidays when younger, nor had a desire to visit his parental regions. DH was diplomatic in his response, basically that his dad (also deceased when he was young) was a stereotypical Irish man who moaned incessantly about the english, but then moved here at first opportunity. And always dragged them around France, not Ireland.
So it's a tricky one, but at least it's in their blood @Cantonet and can be picked up later if motivation is there, if not taken up now.