I related to this article, because I grew up in several different countries: first Poland, the country of my parents. When I was three, my family moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I lived for five years before finally moving to the States. The last move was tough. Oddly enough, my brother and I found we both knew English well enough to do fine in class; I had to take only one year of English as a Second Language (ESL), and he skipped that entirely. What was the reason? My brother and I watched a lot of cartoons: Pokemon, Cartoon Network, Fox. They were in English, but were subbed in Dutch.
Reading the first part of this article was hard. The author's kids were struggling, and it was clearly hard on them. At least one of them wanted out of school, because they could not comprehend the stimuli in their environments. Yet, the parents used gentle persuasion; the teachers helped out as much as they could, even teaching the Russian class in English for a day to illustrate what life is like for the American foreigners. Eventually, over several months and slow progress that grew exponentially, the kids adapted, as children are wont to do.