Emigration – what does it offer to your kids and what does it take away from them?

 

Some time ago I wrote a reflection on why it is worth moving countries. Moving countries with kids takes the experience to a different level, as there will be many psychological and practical challenges you would need to face as a parent. And yes, we would still recommend it 😊.

Based on five years spent abroad, here is what I think our daughter gained, that she wouldn’t have gained if we had always lived in our home country:

Expanded horizons
Your home country is not the centre of the world, and so is not your host country, although probably in both of them people feel that ‘here’ and ‘how we do things here’ is the most important.  Things are done differently in different parts of the world, you will like some and dislike some other, but accept the fact.
Kids seem to notice this in small things that matter to them, but I’m convinced it translates to their general understanding of the world. In England you received dozens of birthday cards from all your friends and neighbours, in Poland this is not a tradition. In Poland you get presents both on the 6^th and on the 24^th of December. In England you wear a uniform to school, in Poland you don’t. Etc., etc. Those differences didn’t seem to surprise my daughter and she fully accepted them. Things are different and different is good.

Tolerance and diversity
It’s much easier to teach your child tolerance and love for diversity if instead of just talking about it, they experience it naturally in their everyday life. I covered our daughter’s experience with diversity in this post about her primaryschool. Lenka’s best friends from school had parents from Turkey, Middle East, South Korea and Jamaica. Some friends ate halal food, some mums covered their hair. None of the kids (or parents) took the skin colour or faith into account when making friends. People are different and different is good.

TIP: One aspect to look for when you decide to move countries, is how diverse the society is in your receiving country/city. In the end it’s not only you who should be open and tolerant to have a good emigration experience. What we had in Liverpool was a truly multicultural and open-minded environment, so being from somewhere else didn’t matter so much. However, if you decide to move to a homogenic society where only you and your kids will look and speak differently, I’m not sure how good this experience would be for them (or for you for that matter).

Bilingualism
It can’t be overrated! Being fluent in two languages at the age of five, amongst them one of the most popular languages in the world, will possibly open so many doors in the future. I wish I was bilingual as a child instead of spending years learning languages 😊. One aspect of bilingualism is the language skills, the other is being exposed to two different cultures through the language, which surely also enriches the way we see the world.

 

Even if you’re so positive about your emigration experience as we are, you would also see the things and experiences that your kids would lack because of emigration. Here are the ones I’ve noticed most:

Presence of grandparents and extended family in their lives
When we were leaving Poland, I never realized how important this would be for my child and how she would miss them. Clearly, it depends how close you are with your family, sometimes you can live in the same country and still not see each other at all. We have close relationships with the grandparents and other members of the family, so the lack of their presence did affect my daughter significantly (speaking of the older one, as the little one was a baby when we left the UK, so she doesn’t know how it is to not have family around).

Clear identity
While there are many positive and enriching aspects of being exposed to and absorbing from two different cultures, there are also risks related to it, such as confusion, problems with identity and the sense of belonging, which are so important while growing up. I think some kids will cope with it better, some worse. I also think one of the identities will inevitably take the lead, but we didn’t come to this point in our daughter’s life. I’ve learned how big the identity aspect is, when I watched some of my friends’ kids, who were born and raised in the UK, but still didn’t feel entirely ‘at home’. Third culture kids – that’s probably a topic for a separate post.