Great Sadie that FB works for your situation.

For those involved in counselling for bilingual, multilingual families....some family members can't even read the language of mother tongue or 2nd adopted language. Guess audio clip should work if they can work the technology.

Verbal works..even if horribly imperfect..I can't even understand my mother 40% of the time. I've lost alot of my Chinese speaking fluency. Can't read Chinese. Translation software for certain languages is time-consuming since words are used creatively by human beings.

With an immigrant population increasing in North America...phone is still the best method in some families.

A note for all future counsellors. When you do cross-cultural family counselling. Technology will not solve linguistic gaps. We still have the world insisting on English fluency, despite translation software.

We're just grateful father can speak English over phone...but he won't be around forever.