Whether because of work or your choice of lifestyle, you may well be raising a family in different countries throughout a number of years. Thousands of families live in this manner, upping sticks to move from place to place every couple of years or so. While this has the potential to be disruptive to your children’s early development, it’s also a wonderful opportunity for them to grow into well-rounded and cosmopolitan people. Here are three tips for raising children as an international family.
If you’re the sort of family that cannot provide or guarantee consistency to your children in terms of where you live, it’s important that you can provide them with alternative forms of consistency that they’re always able to feel they can rely on. For instance, if you can instate some family rituals that you perform together no matter what – wherever you are – that will give young people a sense of continuity when you move somewhere new.
You won’t have to do much in this sense. Perhaps you’ll cook some of the same meals, making an effort to have specific ingredients shipped to you, no matter where you live. Or you’ll spend Sunday as a family, going out to explore your surroundings. Just make sure your children feel that there are some constants they can rely on for stability.
Getting to grips with more than one language is a prerequisite for many international families. This is especially the case seeing as you’ll likely be sending your children to an international school, where English may be spoken by French, Spanish, German, and other languages will also be prevalent. So naturally, your kids will want to learn these languages: they’ll be the languages of their friends.
There are two ways to make sure you’re getting languages under your children’s belts. The first is to make sure they’re going to a good international school, like the Rugby School Thailand, which is based on the British school system but will help perfect new languages in students. The second is to hire a private tutor for home classes – especially if the language of the country you’re living in isn’t taught at an international school.
Children love to meet other kids and make friends. This is the case across the board, and even if your children are naturally shy and reserved, they’ll still benefit hugely from being exposed to others, making friends, and developing close bonds with those around them. But if you’re moving every year, it can be difficult for your children to spend enough time with friends to really form a bond.
You’ll want to be cognizant of this as you raise your kids. You don’t want them to end up without any lasting friendships for their early lives. Instead, you’ll want them to be able to speak with old friends on social media or to write letters to their oldest friends in different countries. Encourage them to do this to foster their life-long friendships.
There you have it: three key tips for raising children in different cultures across their young lives.
Whether because of work or your choice of lifestyle, you may well be raising a family in different countries throughout a number of years. Thousands of families live in this manner, upping sticks to move from place to place every couple of years or so. While this has the potential to be disruptive to your children’s early development, it’s also a wonderful opportunity for them to grow into well-rounded and cosmopolitan people. Here are three tips for raising children as an international family.
If you’re the sort of family that cannot provide or guarantee consistency to your children in terms of where you live, it’s important that you can provide them with alternative forms of consistency that they’re always able to feel they can rely on. For instance, if you can instate some family rituals that you perform together no matter what – wherever you are – that will give young people a sense of continuity when you move somewhere new.
You won’t have to do much in this sense. Perhaps you’ll cook some of the same meals, making an effort to have specific ingredients shipped to you, no matter where you live. Or you’ll spend Sunday as a family, going out to explore your surroundings. Just make sure your children feel that there are some constants they can rely on for stability.
Getting to grips with more than one language is a prerequisite for many international families. This is especially the case seeing as you’ll likely be sending your children to an international school, where English may be spoken by French, Spanish, German, and other languages will also be prevalent. So naturally, your kids will want to learn these languages: they’ll be the languages of their friends.
There are two ways to make sure you’re getting languages under your children’s belts. The first is to make sure they’re going to a good international school, like the Rugby School Thailand, which is based on the British school system but will help perfect new languages in students. The second is to hire a private tutor for home classes – especially if the language of the country you’re living in isn’t taught at an international school. ???????
Children love to meet other kids and make friends. This is the case across the board, and even if your children are naturally shy and reserved, they’ll still benefit hugely from being exposed to others, making friends, and developing close bonds with those around them. But if you’re moving every year, it can be difficult for your children to spend enough time with friends to really form a bond.
You’ll want to be cognizant of this as you raise your kids. You don’t want them to end up without any lasting friendships for their early lives. Instead, you’ll want them to be able to speak with old friends on social media or to write letters to their oldest friends in different countries. Encourage them to do this to foster their life-long friendships.
There you have it: three key tips for raising children in different cultures across their young lives. ???????
