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I think people should just get used to being in situations where they don't understand every word that's being said. Maybe if you grow up speaking English in a predominantly English-speaking community, you're just used to everything being in the language you know, but the rest of the world isn't like that. People speak different languages. And even if you spend a lot of time studying, it's damn near impossible to reach the sort of native-like fluency where you understand literally everything that's being said in a big chaotic group setting, including the little jokes and obscure cultural references.
But that's OK. You don't have to understand. Most of that stuff just isn't very important. Hell, I met a guy from Glasgow once with a very thick accent, and even though we were both native English speakers I could only understand about half of what he was saying. But we still communicated just fine. People are just spoiled by media these days putting up a perfect translation of everything.
For individual advice, I think it's nice when kids make some effort to still learn and use their family's native language. If nothing else, it'll make their grandparents happy, and make family reunions less awkward. But realistically they'll never be perfectly fluent in it, and it's a lot more important for them to boost their English skills. Just don't push them so hard to practice it that they start to resent it.
The belief that you shouldn't expect to understand conversations between your wife and children is certainly A Take. I don't think you can get away with making this out to be a ridiculous American desire. In most times and places people married people of the same sociocultural background and there was no familial language barrier to speak of. In fact, in most times and places everyone in your community spoke the same language. Mixed multilingual environments were always limited to areas with a lot of people coming and going, it's just that now there's a lot more people living in areas like that.
I didn't say you shouldn't understand them. I said that if you marry into a multilingual, cross-cultural family then there will always be some things you don't understand. What do you do, forbid the wife and kids from speaking their native language in your presence? "I swear to god, if I hear one word of Russian in my presence, you won't like the consequences...?"
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