Когда родители прощаются утром, дочка обнимает куклу и говорит им «Пока».

In this sentence, Когда родители прощаются утром... means whenever / when the parents say goodbye in the morning as a repeated, habitual situation.

Russian often uses the present tense for:

• habitual actions
• general truths
• repeated events

So this sentence is not about one specific future moment. It describes what usually happens.

If it were about one future event, Russian would usually show that in other ways, for example with future-tense verbs:

• Когда родители будут прощаться утром... = When the parents are saying goodbye tomorrow / at some future time...
• Когда родители попрощаются... = When the parents have said goodbye...

Here, the present tense gives a general, regular meaning.

Прощаются comes from прощаться, which means to say goodbye.

The -ся ending is important. Without it, прощать usually means to forgive.

So:

• прощать = to forgive
• прощаться = to say goodbye

In this sentence:

• родители прощаются = the parents say goodbye

This is a very common Russian pair, where the version with -ся has a different meaning from the version without it.

Because the subject is родители = parents, which is plural.

So the verb must also be plural:

• родитель прощается = the parent says goodbye
• родители прощаются = the parents say goodbye

Even though English sometimes treats parents almost like one family unit, Russian grammar still uses normal plural agreement here.

Утром is the instrumental case of утро.

Russian often uses the instrumental case to express times of day in an adverb-like way:

• утром = in the morning
• днём = in the daytime / during the day
• вечером = in the evening
• ночью = at night

So утром is the standard way to say in the morning.

Both mean daughter, but they have different tones.

• дочь = daughter, neutral and more formal/basic
• дочка = daughter, more affectionate, warm, everyday

In a sentence about a little girl hugging a doll and saying bye, дочка sounds natural and gentle.

Russian uses diminutive forms very often, especially for children and family members.

Because куклу is the accusative case, used for the direct object of the verb.

The girl is doing the action to the doll:

• обнимает кого? что? = whom? what?
• куклу

For feminine nouns ending in -а, the accusative singular usually changes -а to -у:

• кукла → куклу
• мама → маму
• книга → книгу

So:

• дочка обнимает куклу = the daughter hugs the doll

Им is the dative plural form of они and means to them.

With говорить, the person you speak to is usually in the dative:

• говорить кому? = to say / speak to whom?

So:

• говорит им = she says to them

Forms:

• они = they
• их = them (accusative/genitive)
• им = to them (dative)

Here the parents are the people receiving the words, so Russian uses the dative:

• говорит им Пока = she says Bye to them

You could sometimes omit им if the context is obvious, but including it makes the sentence clearer.

Here Пока is being used as a standalone farewell: Bye or See you.

It is capitalized because it is treated like the quoted word the girl says:

• она говорит им Пока

As a farewell, пока is informal and very common.

Important: пока can also mean other things in different contexts, such as:

• while
• for the time being
• until

But in this sentence, because it comes after говорит им, it clearly means Bye.

Because Когда родители прощаются утром is a subordinate clause, and Russian normally separates subordinate clauses from the main clause with a comma.

Structure:

• Когда родители прощаются утром, = subordinate clause
• дочка обнимает куклу и говорит им Пока. = main clause

This is very standard in Russian punctuation.

Not completely. Russian word order is more flexible than English because the cases show the grammatical roles.

The neutral order here is very natural:

• Когда родители прощаются утром, дочка обнимает куклу и говорит им Пока.

But other orders are possible for emphasis, for example:

• Когда родители прощаются утром, куклу обнимает дочка...
• Дочка, когда родители прощаются утром, обнимает куклу...

These alternatives may sound more marked or emphasize different parts.

So the given word order is not the only possible one, but it is a normal, smooth way to say it.

Russian has no words equivalent to English a and the, so you understand that from context.

Here, the context strongly suggests the daughter or their daughter, because:

• родители have just been mentioned
• дочка is a specific child in the scene

So English naturally translates it as the daughter or sometimes their daughter, even though Russian does not explicitly mark that with an article.

This is very normal in Russian: context does the job that articles do in English.