His kids say "Dad." Not "Papá."
He's not sure when it shifted. He used to be Papá — he still hears it in his head, still thinks of himself that way. But somewhere in the American school system, in the friend groups, in the seamless linguistic assimilation that kids do without asking permission — he became Dad.
He didn't correct it. He's still not sure if he should have.
What Gets Kept
The food gets kept. This is almost universal. The Latino dad who doesn't pass down the food is rare — it's the one cultural transmission that happens without effort. Kids eat what they grow up eating. Tamales at Christmas. Arroz con leche on Sundays. The specific dishes that belonged to his mother's kitchen that he learned to make (badly at first, then better) and now makes for his own kids.
The music. Playing Selena on Saturday morning cleaning. The corridos he learned from his father that he didn't understand as a kid and now understands too well. The reggaeton he pretends to be too old for while knowing every word.
The family structure. The way a Latino household runs — everyone in everyone else's business, boundaries that are more suggestions than rules, the aunt who shows up unannounced and stays for dinner and nobody thinks this is unusual. His American friends' kids knock before entering a room. His kids don't knock. He's fine with this.
What Gets Negotiated
The language. Every bilingual parent knows the specific grief of watching your language slowly lose ground to the dominant one. He speaks Spanish at home. He speaks it with his parents. But his kids respond in English, and he lets it go most of the time because he's tired and the conversation is happening and that's what matters.
He picks his battles. Spanish for food, for terms of endearment, for reprimands. Mijo. Mija. Ven acá. The architecture of affection stays in Spanish even when everything else migrates.
The discipline norms. He grew up in a house where certain things were not negotiable and were not discussed — you did what you were told because that was how it worked. He's raising kids in a culture that wants him to explain his decisions to a seven-year-old, to validate feelings before correcting behavior, to use a specific tone of voice that his own parents would have found baffling.
He's adapted. Partly. He still expects respect and structures it differently than his American friends do. His kids navigate both registers — they know how to be in his house and in their friends' houses. He considers this a skill.
What He's Building
He's building something that doesn't have a name yet. Not fully American, not fully his parents' culture — something that holds both, that code-switches the same way he does, that knows the words to both kinds of songs.
His kids will pass down something to their kids. It'll be a different version of what he got. That's how it works.
He's making peace with that. Mostly.
See also: What It Means to Be a Latino Dad | Spanglish & Language Identity