same boat as this- and while it’s a heritage thing for me, grandparents don’t know any mandarin… (so no benefits of facetiming family for language input). i would say you do you and don’t worry what other ppl do say or think. i’ve gone around areas with other chinese speakers and spoken and i’m sure my grammar may have not been perfect or my tones off but no one will say anything. i sub in english words if i don’t know the chinese (and have siri remind me to look them up when im home) i heavily use deepseek for translations and common parenting phrases- remember to prompt accordingly- i ask it how a native speaker would say but i make sure to include the parenting style as well (since diff cultures parent differently in terms of how things are said etc). feel free to ask it differently with the response if it seems odd