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Although children are, indeed, adaptable and resilient, many get comfortable with routine and when facing drastic change, like returning home after living in a foreign land, can experience some unsettling times. There are a number of considerations that parents need to address when preparing to return home. One important factor may just be that your child is more like children where you now live than those in your native land. This is especially true for children who spent their formative years exposed to the culture in the land where the family was posted to live and work. Unless you have kept your children isolated in this foreign land, they will have naturally embraced the culture, the customs, the food and music they experience while growing up.
The move may very well be back to your native land and not theirs.Although communication with people who have experienced this same situation can well benefit adults, children tend to internalize experiences and have not developed a great deal of productive communication skills that will help, for example, one six-year-old instruct another about the coping mechanisms to use when coming home to mom and dad’s native land. Many younger children have a tendency to feel like a “foreigner” when returning home to a land they really do not know. Their daily routines are smashed to pieces unless special care is used toward extending as much of a continuance as possible during the adjustment period. Obviously, by maintaining play, snack, meal and sleep times will help during a readjustment period in your new home.Older children face a different set of circumstances when returning home. Especially grammar school aged children who face the strangeness of a new school environment. Even if you had children enrolled in an “American” school while living overseas, their “re-entry” to a new school returning home may necessitate some special attention provided by not only parents, but school officials, teachers and others associated with their daily school life. Change can be an exciting aspect in the life of any growing child. It also can be a frightening force faced with anxiety that can cause a great deal of pain and frustration in a youngster’s life. This difficulty accepting change may exhibit itself in behavioral changes and physical manifestations like withdrawal, bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, tantrum throwing and other “acting out” behaviors that were not part of your child’s personality traits before. With a little patience, guidance and awareness on the part of all the adults in their lives, any strange behaviors should disappear quickly.
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