Children adapt quickly. It is what adults say to each other and to the children, as a comfort and as a way to stop worrying. And it is true, in a way that does the children no favours, because it makes their hardest work invisible. A child who moves does not get to pause. They go straight into a new school, a new language, a new set of rules for being liked, with no time to grieve the old one.
It takes a while to see what they are actually doing. At the kitchen table at night they are going through spelling lists and decoding homework they did not understand in class. At school they are smiling and nodding in a language their parents cannot always check. They learn the unspoken curriculum — which seats are safe, which jokes to laugh at, how to say a word so the other kids repeat it back right — and they learn it fast because there is no slow lane.
There is a cost, and it is hard to point to because it leaves no bruise. It shows up as a kid who is a bit tired, or who stopped correcting their parents' English out of some unnameable loyalty, or who translates for everyone at every counter and has to be the grown-up at eight. The child becomes the bridge between two countries, and bridges take a lot of weight before anyone notices.
I am not writing this to be sad about it. I moved young too, and I made it, and so will they. I am writing to say: when someone tells you the kids adapted quickly, know that it is not a small thing and it is not free. It is a quiet, enormous piece of work, and the best thing you can do is see it, and make them feel that you do.