February 12, 2004
A good childhood abroad?
The recent thread on Crooked Timber about what constitutes a good childhood got me thinking about whether or not my children will retain a nice memory of their kid years, and whether or not Doug and I are raising two future Republicans (our lingo for "totally screwed up" -- no offense intended to our Republican readers, of course).
Raising kids is always a challenge. I believe it becomes even more of a challenge when you're living abroad. One major problem is that you loose what child psychologists always praise as important for children: continuity and stability.
Moving every two or three years and traveling a lot is disruptive to their little souls, no doubt about it. We moved from Serbia to Romania when Alan just started to talk -- and he stopped cold. He lingered on the stage he’d reached for almost half a year, and only recently continued to make considerable verbal progress. It took me a while to figure out why he suddenly refused to learn talking. A new baby brother around the same time probably didn’t help, either.
We try to minimize the damage by keeping the kids’ surroundings relatively stable. That means we try to find nice living quarters, keep the various insides of the houses familiar (i.e. we move with our furniture and don’t live in furnished apartments as so many expats do), we have lots of rituals which don’t get changed, ever. We like to think this strategy has some success.
I can see that living an expat life makes parents much more worried about their children’s well-being. I have a huge network of expat mommies here in Bucharest and they are fussing about the same issues I fuss about – healthy food, good education, good doctors. Basically the same things parents all over the world fuss about but brought to a new level of intensity. I have a friend who shifted her son from a German-speaking kindergarten to an English-speaking one because she couldn’t deal with the Romanian style of discipline. I wouldn’t have tolerated my child having to kneel in the corner as punishment either. In his current kindergarten, he has to eat standing when he’s been “bad”. Granted, his mother suffers more than he, but Alan will start kindergarten later this year and I ruled out those two kindergartens already…
Our kids are definitely less sheltered than, say, my American nephew and nieces. My children see beggars, street kids, and gypsies every day. They see poverty and obscene richness. They see people of all shades and colors. They encounter a multitude of religious beliefs and how people incorporate them into their daily lives. They see horrible sickness (mostly in the beggars) and bombed out houses (back in Belgrade).
I’m not saying that this is necessarily a bad thing – on the contrary, I mostly think it’s going to be an advantage for my kids to have such a wide range of influences. But it most definitely doesn’t make for a sheltered life. They will learn early that life isn’t fair and that many people on this planet have a life that sucks. That’s not a nice knowledge for a kid to grow up with.
Then there is the whole problem of raising a child with two cultures inside the family and another out on the street. Doug is a wonderful father but he’s working hard and often late and doesn’t get to spend nearly as much time with the kids as he wishes. This also means that they loose out on American nursery rhymes, American baby games and generally lack exposure to American culture. We do read Dr. Seuss to Alan and Doug sings to him but on the whole, the kids learn much more about Romanian and German culture. Since I’m the major domo, most of the seasonal traditions we have are German, too – the only exception being Thanksgiving. I try compensating with English speaking playgroups but that’s more for verbal development than for learning nursery rhymes.
Should I buy a DVD player and make him watch “Veggie Tales”? (No, not Veggie Tales. I’m somewhat allergic to Veggie Tales but you get my gist.) Sesame Street? Die Sendung mit der Maus?
Coming back to the discussion on Crooked Timber - is the fact that I let Alan watch TV sometimes -- Animal Planet and “Scrapheap Challenge” -- already an indication that I’m a bad mother? Will the fact that I’m not working turn them into machos later in life? Will Alan have a mother-complex because he spends all day outside in the park with his nanny instead of with me?
I don’t get the impression my children are having a bad childhood – they seem to be happy enough. But it’s the nature of education that one only finds out about mistakes made much, much later. If worst come to worst, we’ll have a lot of shrink bills to pay…
Posted by claudia at February 12, 2004 09:23 AMHi Claudia,
I can very much relate to what you're talking about. Being from Belgrade myself, married to a North American "nomad" and having 2 boys roughly the age of your kids, I've often asked myself the same questions. Our kids have lived in the Middle East, North America and are now about to embark on a new adventure, moving to the Caribbean (I know, I know, I'm NOT complaining), and all their lives they've been surrounded by a multitude of languages (Serbo-Croatian through me, French through their father, Arabic, English and soon we'll add Spanish to the list!). Like you, I believe the expat life has many advantages, but am not sure how the new move will affect them, as they're only now old enough to understand that they'll have to leave their friends behind.
I recently read a book by Robin Pascoe, "Culture Shock: A Parent's Guide" that addresses some of the issues you raised. Although much of what she writes about is pure common sense, it may make an interesting read.
Hi Dragana,
Nice to "meet" you! I'm in a hurry (bedtime, and I have my girls' night out, yay!) but yes, I've read "Culture Shock" as well. I must say I wasn't so impressed. As you said, many things are common sense and probably helpful when you're embarking on an expat life. But when you've done it once or twice, you've got the moving and transition thing down pat.
Maybe we should get together and write a book about how to raise expat children, eh? It's also a challenge to upkeep family ties, I've noticed. Why is it always us who are calling? But that's for another time, I suppose.
Let's keep in touch, I'd love to hear about your Carribean adventure! Where are you going to? Sounds lovely, especially from snow-covered Bucharest!
Best,
Claudia
Posted by: claudia at February 12, 2004 06:45 PMHi again,
Yes, by all means, feel free to e-mail me if you wish. I'd love to share and compare survival tips. I must say, though, that reading your blog is like reading my own diary ... or close enough.
(btw, going to the land of sugar and rhum, guayaberas and cigars!)
Best to you, too,
Dragana
Even if I lived in the same city, I can't say I had lots of continuity and stability in my first 10-18 years.
My friends were mostly my colleagues in school or from my fencing team.
But every year I met MANY people and most of them I met for a very short time.
We've moved several times.
I think that being a child from an expats family has many advantages and some disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that you can’t see your friends when you move again (but this also happened to me, when I moved just in another neighborhood).
I was never an expat, but we moved every couple years until I was 10, and it never bothered me much. I suspect having a twin may have made things easier though, since I always had someone around to play with.
W/ Patrick, there's been all the divorce related instability- a different thing, but it has definitely affected him from time to time- most badly when he got stuck dealing w/ his Dad getting remarried, consequently moving and putting him in a new school, and then starting a custody battle w/ me, all in about a 9 month window. He ereacted by being so recalcitrant at school that they actually kicked him out of the last 6 weeks of kindergarten and he had to be homeschooled for that period so he could start first grade.
We did move a lot when he was littler than that, though, both due to divorce and just to finishing grad school and stuff, and I really don't think any of it bothered him until he about 4 or 5. I think he was just so used to people coming and going (the ex was on 100% travel from the time Patrick was 6 months), and to getting carted along on trips and from place to place that he just sort of figured it was normal. Or maybe he just takes after me and is better at being oblivious to his surroundings than most people.
Posted by: ellen at February 14, 2004 11:16 PMHi guys --
Anca and Ellen (hi Ellen!) suggest that moving lots occurs in non-expat families too, without too much disruption.
This is true.
However, when moving from country to country instead of from city to city or sector to sector, the kids have to deal not only with loosing their friends and trusted ones (like, the nanny) but also with being confronted with a new language, new cultural concepts, etc.
As an example: "Good night, Moon" is know to pretty much all Americans, no matter where in the States they live. It's completely unknown here in Romania and I'd wager it's the same in Serbia, Croatia, Indonesia, Central America or Egypt (hm, can you guess some upcoming choices here?).
Or action figures. Or TV programs. Or -- you know. Religion. Seasonal traditions. Malls. Things like that.
As I said, the kids seem to be dealing just fine and they are very little, so it's probably not much of a problem yet.
However, we have decided to purchase a DVD player (code-free, so expensive!) and play German and US American kid shows for Alan so he won't miss out on cultural references in the future. I mean, as an American, he probably ought to know who Big Bird is, eh? (I'm sure I didn't until I was way into my thirties... but I did grow up abroad [Turkey], q.e.d.)
Claudia