Expatriate couples who move their children to a new culture face yet another parental responsibility heightened by relocation: How does a parent teach values to a child who is being exposed to so many different ones?

Some parents find this challenge exceedingly more difficult than packing up and moving bedroom furniture or books and toys.

“The values of the new culture can be very different from those we, as parents, learned growing up,” an American expat mother living in a European country said, requesting to remain anonymous. She has made six international moves over more than 15 years. Although an elder child is now back in the US in college, she is still raising a teenager on a posting abroad.

“The culture of the host country has a direct impact on the expatriate family,” she believes.

“It forces us to re-think our own values and traditions and certainly makes it more difficult to show our children the importance of our own values when everyone around them believes something different.”

Of course every parent, mobile or not, struggles to instill their children with the basic human values such as honesty, integrity, kindness, hard work, charity and love. And there are always going to be outside influences on children which parents can’t prevent. But teaching values may be a greater challenge for mobile parents.

“When you are stable in a community, the community reinforces itself,” believes the American mum living in Europe.

“There may be a few people moving in and out, but the community is usually fairly settled and built around church, school, and clubs. It’s easier to find where your values can be reinforced and your circle becomes your strength.

“But when you move frequently, it is much harder to find that circle and re-establishing yourself gets very tiresome,” she continues.

“Children growing up abroad will be influenced by their environment, but this includes other culture friends, schools, communities, countries,” writes Ngaire Jehle-Caitcheon in her excellent book Parenting Abroad.

According to the expatriate author and cross-cultural trainer, adults go abroad with cultural systems that are well developed to include values learned from a variety of sources such as family, friends, community and country.

“While we consider new ideas in the light of an already established belief system, children have fewer of their beliefs through which to filter new impressions. As a result, they absorb different ways of thinking and behaving, and because they are still developing, these become part of their belief system and perspective on the world,” writes Jehle-Caitcheon.

International school cultures also impact on the values of an expatriate child, confirms Mary Langford, Admissions and Communications Director at Southbank International School in London.

“The strongest influence [of the international school culture] probably comes between the ages of 6-15 – when a child is really forming their own individual identity and personality,” Langford believes.

“Many international schools – particularly those where there is international diversity and the majority nationality is less than 50 per cent of the total school population-really are ‘third culture’ places,” says Langford.

“This therefore becomes the culture of the children and dictates the intrinsic values in which the children learn, work, and develop and sustain friendships.”

Langford believes parents need to recognize that when they make a decision to live overseas and educate their children in either a foreign national or international school, their children will be changed, possibly forever, by the experience.

So what can parents do?

“Parents can do their utmost to reinforce the family’s cultural (national or religious or other) values within the home in the hope that some of these will become part of the value system and culture of their children,” advises Langford, who has published research on TCK (third culture kid) culture.

But she adds that parents must recognize that their children are also likely to be influenced by the cultures and values of their friends and the school community in general.

“It’s virtually impossible to ‘shelter’ children from the strong influences of that international school community and culture and it’s unreasonable if parents expect their children to remain unchanged by their experience,” says Langford, who stresses that “there are many positive advantages to be gained from the experience of international living and these should be recognized and honoured.”

More practically, she suggests parents establish and maintain links with other parents of children in the school as they may be experiencing the same anxieties and questions. Langford believes most international schools recognize certain pastoral duties and responsibilities they can oversee.

“The school, in conjunction with a critical mass of parents, may be willing to provide education or support on subjects that may be seen as social or values-driven. These are often addressed through Personal and Social Education (PSE) programmes.”

Author Jehle-Caitcheon offers additional tips for parents to help their expat children develop their own values, including open discussions about a family system of beliefs; displaying patience with experiments and mistakes; and, exposing children to the ideas of philosophers, poets or leaders who provided inspiration to the parents.

Most importantly, she advises parents to live up to their own beliefs and values. “Abroad, we may be the only models of important values. The more we live up to them, the more our children will take them seriously.”

When we were living in Seoul on a diplomatic assignment, I clearly remember the day that my husband asked me why I was changing the sheets on our bed when we were lucky enough to have live-in domestic help.

“I’m doing it so the kids will see me,” I told him, explaining that they were now (at the time anyway) seven and 11. Making their beds in the morning was now their responsibility. Added to that list of chores I put setting and clearing the dinner table. It all seemed reasonable enough, but he shook his head in wonder at me.

Now he thanks me for doing that.

“It is more and more difficult to have kids do chores because nobody else has to,” that expat mum in Europe told me. “A lot of parents just open their wallets without hesitation.”

It’s true that on some overseas postings it can be hard for young adults to find part time work, so indeed, be totally financial dependent. Some find it hard to accept that laundry doesn’t magically transfer from the floor and reappear the next day folded and cleaned in the cupboard as it does on postings where help is inexpensive.

But I believe the small things parents can easily teach their children anywhere in the world will make their adult lives, with its bigger challengers, a lot easier after the day they leave the expat nest and begin to fend for themselves.

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

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