The school bag is back out. The new lunch box is ready. And somewhere between the airport and the front door, your child tried to say something in Dutch — and it didn't come as easily as it did before you left. Does that mean something has gone wrong? Did six weeks speaking your home language undo years of work?

In this episode of Dam Parenting, Eva sits down with multilingualism specialist Mimi - from Growing Up Multilingual— back for another episode of their ongoing multilingualism series — to talk through one of the most common end-of-summer anxieties in international families: the moment the school language feels rusty.

They cover:

— What is actually happening in your child's brain after weeks in a different linguistic environment

— Why reduced activation is completely different from language loss

— What parents do that makes the transition harder (and what actually helps)

— How to talk to your child about the shift so they understand it

— and stop interpreting it as failure

— When to genuinely worry, and when to simply stay steady

Mimi also addresses younger children, preschoolers, and families whose children are starting school in Dutch for the first time this September — and what they need to know before day one.

This episode is for every multilingual family in the Netherlands returning from the homeland, heading into a new school year, and quietly wondering: are we okay? Yes. You are. And here's why. Dam Parenting is the weekly English-language podcast for international families navigating life in the Netherlands. New episodes every Wednesday.

This episode is brought to you by MamaSocial , because navigating motherhood far from home is so much better with the right women around you. Events and spaces for mothers of all backgrounds, right here in the Netherlands.

You moved here. You built a life. And somewhere along the way, you started carrying something you couldn't quite name.

In this episode, clinical psychologist and trauma therapist Adina Petre joins us to break down 7 types of trauma that show up specifically in expat and international family life — the ones that don't look like trauma from the outside, but quietly shape everything.

We cover: relocation grief, cultural identity loss, generational trauma, birth trauma in a foreign healthcare system, parenting without your support network, the psychological cost of living in a second language, and vicarious trauma in a world that won't stop delivering bad news.

This episode won't overwhelm you. It will give you words. And sometimes — that's exactly what's needed.

Share it with someone who needs the language.

Adina Petre: adinapetre.com
Follow us: @damparentingpodcast

After Wednesdays school lunch episodes, i have recieved several DM's asking for hints and tips about schools - and without asking everyone to go back listeniing to the numerous episodes we already have in our archive - I decided to magpie this episode, and grab a selection of learnings from previous episodes and also add in a few of my own.

In the Netherlands children start basisschool the day after their fourth birthday, so your child may walk into a class that's already formed. This episode covers what to expect in groep 1 and 2, what to send them in, and what to do in those first overwhelming weeks — for parents new to the Dutch system and for anyone heading back after the six-week summer holiday.

WHAT'S IN THIS EPISODE

- The Dutch school words nobody translates: groep 1, 2 and 3, kleuters, juf and meester, wennen, BSO, TSO, luizenzak, het tien-uurtje, gymles

- Why gym day means your kleuter may be asked to strip to their underwear

- Clothes, shoes, rain gear and mittens — Isabel Cruz's four practical rules

- Leerplicht: your four-year-old is not legally required to be at school until they turn five, and what that means for half days and BSO

- The summer slide, and why groep 1 and 2 have nothing to catch up on

- What to say at pickup instead of "how was your day"

- What to do when your child says someone was mean to them

QUICK ANSWERS

What is groep 1? The first year of Dutch primary school, for four-year-olds. Groep 1 and 2 run almost entirely on play; formal reading and writing start in groep 3.

What is wennen? Settling-in practice mornings before your child officially starts. Ask your school how many they offer.

What is BSO? Buitenschoolse opvang — after-school care, booked and waitlisted separately from school.

When does school become compulsory? Leerplicht starts at five, from the first school day of the month after your child's fifth birthday.

When do Dutch schools go back? Summer holidays are staggered across three regions, so return dates differ by where you live.

MENTIONED

Isabel Cruz, Kaleidoscope Consulting — school choice and school-readiness workshops in Amsterdam

Faye Poole, child psychologist — the emotional support and "someone was mean" frameworks

Melody, Petit Gourmet Academy — our school lunch box episode, where she went through eleven real listener lunch boxes

Our paediatric dentist episode — why you're still brushing their teeth for them at nine

It's a scramble of an episode at 9pm on a Friday night, but I hope it answers an unasked question for you.

Tell me what I've missed: @damparentingpodcast on Instagram, or [email protected]

What do you actually put in a Dutch school lunch box? Parents at an Amsterdam school sent in 11 photos of their children's real lunch and snack boxes, and children's nutritionist Mélody goes through three of them with us — what's working, what a child's body genuinely needs to get through a school day, and what she'd change.

This one is for you whether your child starts school next week starts next month, or next year. We cover what balance actually means across a week rather than in a single box, why the Dutch fruitpauze does more work than parents realise, why the water-only rule at most Dutch schools is a support rather than a restriction, and whether the classic broodje kaas is nutritionally fine. Spoiler: it is.

We also talk about what happens when your food culture doesn't match the Dutch one — warm lunches versus sandwiches — and what to do when your child comes home asking for the same thing everyone else has. Plus three staples for the morning you have five minutes, why children under five shouldn't have nuts, and Melody's three professional permission slips for parents carrying too much already.

All 11 lunch boxes are on our Instagram, @damparentingpodcast. Part of DAM Parenting's August back-to-school series for international and expat families in the Netherlands.

DAM Parenting says the stuff out loud that you might be thinking — just in your headphones, on your own time, when you're not quite ready to say it to anyone else yet.

In episode 4 of DAM Sex, Eva is back with sex and intimacy counsellor Debby Poort to talk about something that doesn't get said enough — and not in the way it usually gets said. Sex is good for you. Not as a favour to your partner. Not because it's been a while. For you. Your sleep. Your cortisol. Your sense of yourself as a person who exists in a body that belongs to you.

They get into the actual science — cardiovascular benefits, dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, and yes, headaches — and then into the harder question: how do you share that with someone who is depleted, running on empty, and already feeling like everything is a should?

Debby also unpacks responsive desire and the crucial difference between willingness and wanting — including the very real risk of responsive desire being used as pressure, and why that misses the point entirely. They talk about what it takes to reconnect to desire that has genuinely gone quiet — not just low, but offline — and whether it ever really comes back.

Plus: why couples stop touching each other completely, the fear underneath non-sexual touch, the couples who stopped initiating without a single fight about it, and why there is always a reason — even when brain fog means you can't remember what it was.

And Debby shares details of her free welcome course at sexandintimacycounseling.nl — no appointment needed, no commitment, just a place to start.

Find Debby Poort: yellowwood.nl
Got a question for Debby? DM us on Instagram or email [email protected]

What do you do when the school you want for your child simply doesn't exist? If you're Tim and Camilla, co-founders of Seeker — you build it.

Seeker is a brand new private bilingual Dutch-English Montessori primary school opening in Eindhoven this September. And the children starting now? They are the founding class — the ones who will set the tone, the culture, and the standard for every child who comes after them.

In this episode, Eva talks to Tim about what was missing in Eindhoven for international families, what it actually takes to open a private school inside the Dutch education system, why the inspectie only shows up after you open your doors, and what it means to ask families to trust something that has no history yet — because it's about to become history.

A short, feel-good summer episode about the audacity of building something from nothing.

Find Seeker at seeker.education

Eindhoven | Bilingual Dutch-English | Montessori | Ages 4–6 | Opening September 2026

Part of Dam Parenting's ongoing series on schools, systems, and raising children in the Netherlands.

You're away for the six weeks of school holiday in your home country. Maybe you dropped your children off and came back to work. Or you're staring down the new school year starting soon with a child who has barely spoken Dutch all summer — and a quiet worry that something has slipped.This episode is for all of it.

Eva sits down with multilingualism specialist Mimi from Growing up Mulltilingual for a wide-ranging conversation about the language anxiety that follows multilingual families through summer — whether that's a child who goes quiet in the home language when they arrive at the grandparents', a child returning to the Netherlands after weeks abroad wondering if their Dutch is still there, or a family heading into September with a child who has barely spoken the school language in months.

They cover what actually happens to language when the environment changes, why reduced activation is completely different from language loss, what the silent period really means, and the BICS versus CALP distinction that reframes what fluency actually looks like in a child.

BICS (Social Language): The conversational language used in casual, face-to-face, or everyday interactions (e.g., chatting on the playground, ordering food). Because it is highly contextualized, learners typically master this within 6 months to 2 years of immersion

CALP (Academic Language): The specialized, context-reduced language required to succeed in classroom subjects and professional settings (e.g., reading textbooks, writing essays, solving math problems). It takes significantly longer to develop—typically 5 to 7 years.

Mimi also has something important to say about the child who compares themselves to monolingual cousins and feels behind — and why that comparison is never a fair one.

For multilingual families in the Netherlands navigating summer, the homeland, and the return to the academic year.

Feeling like an exhausted parent before the summer holidays have even started? You're allowed to be. This short, one-take episode — no editing, no polish, on purpose — is a reality check on parent burnout, the mental load, and why holidays with young kids are not actually holidays (they're taking the show on the road).

Recorded at the start of the Dutch summer break, this episode gives you permission to rest before you crash — because burnout doesn't send a calendar invite, and the signs of parental exhaustion are easy to miss until someone points them out. Consider this that someone.

Inside: a four-question burnout self-check you can do on the bike, why the gap between how you're doing and how you say you're doing is the first warning light, lowering the bar for the school holidays without guilt, and why five minutes a day beats the 5K run you keep not doing. With a little help from Brené Brown's Daring Greatly and Leonard Cohen's beauty of cracks.

Part of DAM Parenting's ongoing conversation about what it actually takes to stay well while raising kids far from home — because parents don't need fixing, they need conditions where they can function.

You catch a smell. A lotion, a tea, something cooking. And in under a second — before you've even thought about it — you're home.

That's not nostalgia. That's not weakness. That is your nervous system doing something remarkable.

This week we're joined by psychologist and cross-cultural specialist Elif Durgel, founder of Roots and Wings Academy in Eindhoven, for a warm, science-light conversation about why smell bypasses the thinking brain entirely and connects directly to memory, identity and emotion — and what that means for international parents living far from where they started.

We talk about:

• Why smell hits faster and deeper than any other sense
• What nervous system regulation actually feels like from the inside
• The invisible extra load of living between cultures — and why July makes it louder
• Why so many of us quietly deny ourselves the things that help
• Why going to the expat shop isn't retail therapy — it's something more real than that

Whether you're heading home this summer, somewhere completely new, or discovering the Netherlands in July for the first time — this one is your permission slip.

20 minutes. No jargon. Just a really good conversation.

Find out more about Elif: rootsandwingsacademy.nl
Come tell us yours on Instagram

Have you ever reacted to something and thought — why did I react like that? Or carried a weight you couldn't quite name?

Today we're breaking down what trauma actually is — plainly, warmly, and without the jargon. Because if you're living in the Netherlands as an expat or immigrant, building a life far from home, navigating a foreign healthcare system, raising children in a second language — this conversation is for you.

We're joined by Adina Petre, clinical psychologist and trauma therapist , who will be joining us monthly to help us understand ourselves a little better, one episode at a time.

In this episode:
— What trauma actually is (and what it isn't)
— The difference between Big T and Little T trauma
— Why the nervous system doesn't grade on a curve
— What happens when we stay in survival mode for too long
— And why your experience is real, because it happened to you — and that is enough

Share this episode with someone who needs the words.