This article examines the everyday encounters between preschool teachers and parents with a foreign background in Swedish preschools, focusing on how resistance, adaptation and newness are expressed in the in-between-space where they meet. Drawing on Bhabha’s theory of the “third space” and linguistic ethnography, the study builds on semi-structured interviews with eight teachers and eight parents at three preschools in multicultural areas in Sweden. The analysis shows that teachers often expect parents to adapt to Swedish cultural norms and to already Swedish preschool routines and implicit rules. When this does not occur, parents are easily positioned as “the Other” and viewed through a deficit lens. Parents, for their part, both resist and adapt: they may question practices such as outdoor play in bad weather or the use of written information and interpreters, while simultaneously emphasising the importance of learning Swedish and “how to live in Sweden.”. Newness emerges when teachers adopt a welcoming, flexible approach, invest in relationships, and when multilingual staff act as linguistic and cultural bridges. The findings illustrate how everyday encounters can either reproduce or challenge othering, and point to the need for reflexive, intercultural practices in preschool and in preschool teacher education, practice and policy.