Costa Rica Living – Family Culture Shock

A child’s culture shock to a new home in a foreign country can often be a complex affair, writes Robin Pascoe.

Parents so often overlook the fact that not only
do children react and need time to adjust to different weather, food, people on the street, classrooms, or playgrounds,
but also to changes in their parents behavior and new family dynamics. Family culture shock is one of the most overlooked forms of culture shock impacting on the children of the international work force.

Caroline Gregory, a family trainer at the Centre for International Briefing at
Farnham Castle in Surrey agrees: “When training departing families, I usually
look at culture shock for the family as a whole,”she says. “The main thing I
concentrate on is how different cycles impinge on each other.”

As I wrote in Culture Shock! A Parent’s Guide, ‘family culture shock’ is a collective experience. It is initially about loss
of control over new surroundings and then later, over each other’s behavior. Each family member struggles in their own way with the shock of regaining equilibrium. And the traveling family’s culture
shock may also include feelings of losing control over the actions and reactions
of the other family members who are rarely at the same point on the culture shock
cycle of honeymoon, crisis, flight, and period of readjustment stages.

Factor in conditions like constant physical and emotional proximity in the early
weeks after arrival, and family culture shock can produce a confusing, unsettling interaction between the parents’ (and especially the mother’s) shock and the effects their
own uncertainties and helplessness may have on the children, regardless of age.
In other words, a child of any age who arrives in a new country might find that
family shock waves set off by a father suddenly away on constant road trips or
a mother frustrated by the loss of her career as disorienting as the foreign culture
outside the door.

“Children experience things in a much more emotional way,”notes Priscila Montana,
a long time trainer who is President of Dallas-based Cultural Awareness International
(CAI). ” I feel there is a greater sense of loss and disorientation for children when they move. Unlike their parents, they are quite unfamiliar with what is happening and
where they are going. The unknown is frightening to them”

“I have often heard younger children ask: ‘How will Santa find me?’ or ‘Will
I ever see Grandma again?'”says Montana.

Many culture shock experts believe that a child’s shock mimics an adult’s but
with one key difference: children lack the verbal skills to express their feelings (or if they are teenagers,
choose not to activate any verbal skills as a way of demonstrating their displeasure
over the move.) So it helps when parents provide the words. Francesca Huemer Kelly,
who recently moved four children from Turkey to Italy, believes her own children
are often relieved when someone supplies the right words for the experience.

“Not only do words capture the meaning of the situation, but they also help a
child accept their feelings as being normal,”believes Kelly. “During this latest
transition, for instance, one of my younger children was starting to worry about
every little thing. So finally, I just said to him: ‘Perhaps you aren’t used to
all this new stuff yet.’ He picked up on that expression right away. It seemed
to be what he was looking for.

Now, as we are still adjusting to new things here every single day, he keeps
saying: “Mom, I’m just not used to this yet!”Behavior is a more common manner
which children will use to express themselves, according to Maria Luisa, an American
cross-cultural and diversity specialist at Brown University who also trains for
the Dallas-based CAI. “Children are acute observers and will pick up cues, attitudes, and behavior from their parents,” she says.

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“If the parents are very stressed and are having a difficult time adjusting,
they may not be as emotionally available to their children as they were before
the move. This may be what impacts on children the most and children may respond
with behavioral issues that mimic the parents.”

So how can a parent help a child? One way is to encourage them to develop strategies to combat culture shock, says
Els de Jong, a family trainer at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam.
“Every child has his/her own strategy to tackle culture shock,”she says.

“There is the intellectual approach where a child tries to do his/her best at
school to feel safe at least academically. Others concentrate on the social side,
making friends as quickly as possible. Some take a physical approach and that
not only means sports, but also in acting more aggressively.”

All experts agree that parents should watch out for signs of both aggression and regression. Toilet-trained toddlers may require diapers again, younger children may become
insecure, clingy, and throw temper tantrums or become more aggressive with siblings
or other children, and older children may have sleeping problems, depression or
mood swings (although it’s often hard to tell if a mood is culture shock-induced
or adolescence.)

Maintaining a schedule or a routine on a daily basis is helpful. Children like to have a clear sense of what to expect, especially when everything
else seems to fall into the unexpected category.

Don’t dismiss or deny their expressions of anger or sadness. Acknowledge their
feelings by listening to them. Certainly asking what they think would help to
make them feel better while they are abroad.

Finally, since parents play such a pivotal role as both role models and de facto
trainers, it helps if the family can come up with its own strategy for getting over the initial hurdles of culture
shock so that everyone can get on with the business of living. That could mean fathers
e-mailing children from the road or a mother settling into some part time work
while the children are at school.

Before our final diplomatic assignment to Seoul, South Korea (at a time when
reunification of the Koreas was the last thing on anyone’s mind) my own family
developed the informal ‘family meeting’ to cope with our very real fears of what might happen during our assignment there. I can report unequivocally
that of all the ideas I have come up with over the years to help us cope with
relocation, the family meeting where each family member gets to express their
concerns and always held at the dinner tableûwas the best and most enduring idea of the lot.

Robin Pascoe is the author of four books on global living and publishes the popular
web site www.expatexpert.com

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Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.