Spouse
Career and School
Assistance Center
Easing Teenage Angst over Education
When informed by parents of a pending move— one involving a new
school—the first words out of a teenager’s mouth invariably are:
“You’re ruining my life!” As Robin Pascoe explains, they are not just
trying to be contrary.
A change in school during a teenager’s life, more so than for an
elementary school aged child, truly does mean a profound upheaval in
his or her life if not managed properly. That’s because for teenagers,
school is much more than a place to sit and study math or geography.
It’s the centerpiece of their social world.
“Teenagers typically form close relationships and bonds during and
after the school day,” says Saskia Meckman of the Interchange Institute
in Boston. “Friends and social activities become crucial components in
their lives. Fitting in is a vital part of their existence. This helps
explain why teenagers often have a more intense reaction to an
international relocation.”
Exacerbating the situation, according to Meckman, is that
developmentally, teenagers are undergoing significant physical and
emotional changes in their lives as well as learning to form
self-chosen values and make independent choices.
The choice to move is most definitely out of their children’s hands as
any expat parent knows well. In many instances, even the employee and
his or her spouse have no control over the relocation. The result is
that too often a teenager’s needs—and education challenges have wide
ramifications—get short shrift. Parents may be overwhelmed with the
logistics of a move; companies or organizations may offer little if any
pre-departure preparation for teens; and many international schools are
only just learning about the importance of ‘transition’ programming for
third culture kids (TCKs).
So where’s a
parent to begin?
Elizabeth Perelstein, President of School Choice International,
recommends parents look first to the source: their own child. Parents
need to know their own child as best they can. And, they need to
consider those factors which can help them evaluate how easily their
child will adapt to a school in a new country, particularly one getting
close to, or already in, the teen years.
For instance, Perlestein recommends asking these questions: what kind
of student has a child been academically and in what educational
circumstances has he or she thrived or conversely struggled? What kind
of person is the child socially? That is, does a child make friends
easily? Does the child have any interests that will transfer easily and
facilitate new friendships? The answers to those questions will help
understand a teenager’s transition challenges to a new school
environment.
Academic considerations must also be factored in, reports Perelstein. A
British child, for example, who has completed reception class is not at
an ideal stage to embark upon an American curriculum. Likewise, she
notes, a British child educated in the US who returns at the age of 14
or older, during study for the GCSE (General Certificates of Secondary
Education) will be behind his or her peers in test preparation.
At any age, but particularly for a teenager, it’s also essential for
parents to consider the curriculum that the child is leaving and try to
coordinate it with the curriculum he/she is moving to, unless a
decision has to be taken to have their child experience the local
education.
Parents currently struggling with raising teenagers abroad and fretting
about their education shouldn’t feel that they are the only ones lying
awake at night worrying.
In her coaching practice with expat clients, Dallas-based Margie
Warrell, an Australian expat spouse herself with four children,
confirms that one of the biggest choices parents face when deciding to
go international or even to remain abroad is where to educate their
children: in local or international schools? in the host country or in
a boarding school in the home country?
“I hear so many
educational concerns from parents,” reports Warrell. “Parents want to
know where their children will best fit in socially and culturally but
also, which schools will provide them with the broadest educational and
social experience. They also wonder if those schools will reflect their
own social and educational values.”
“And naturally they wonder how their child’s educational
experience will place them if they are moved again in another two years
to a new country,” she adds.
Despite a growing awareness of the unique needs of mobile children and
teenagers in particular, there’s still a long way to go in assisting
parents who in turn, must help their children through difficult
transitions. Even choices made with the best of intentions—usually to
expose a child to a global experience—can turn sour.
An expat family living in Mexico, for instance, accepted a posting
precisely for the cultural experience they felt it would give their
teenage children. However, they ended up sending both a
seventeen-year-old daughter and twelve-year-old son back to the US for
their schooling. This one family’s experience is useful as it
highlights challenges facing other children of the same age.
The daughter, for instance, was moved to Mexico before her final year
of high school. When it didn’t turn out, she returned home mid-year.
“I’d love to say that
things were perfect when she arrived back to the US,” her mother told
me, “but she had missed the first half of her senior year and missed
out on many of the cherished senior moments. She wasn’t in the high
school year book, wasn’t in the senior play nor at the senior Christmas
dance.”
“She went home changed, but there was hardly one change
that was positive,” said this normally very upbeat mother who couldn’t
resist adding: “The positive news is that she is loving college and is
her old self once again. Her transition to college was painless: she’s
extremely independent, assertive and compassionate.”
As for her son, this mother eventually pulled him out of a local
Mexican school but not before first trying the home schooling
option—which didn’t suit her very sociable son. They finally opted for
a boarding school back in the US.
And what advice does she offer others? “I can say today, now that
everyone is settled and genuinely happy, that despite some lowest of
the low emotional moments, our children are wiser for having been
exposed to another culture and having lived through the emotional mess.”
“But,” she adds, “given
the chance to relive our experience, I would not consider bringing out
teenagers. Despite a happy ending, the emotional trauma and drama
wasn’t worth the experience. I really don’t believe it’s a good idea to
move teens.”
“There is no right time to move a child,” believes School
Choice International’s Elizabeth Perelstein, “nor a specific time at
which a child becomes too old to relocate. Each age presents
trade-offs. Sometimes the secondary years are the threshold that
employees, who are parents, are unwilling to cross.”
But remember, she adds, that when they do move into international
settings, teenagers will regularly find peers who are accustomed to
moving regularly and faculty trained to understand and accommodate
varied curricular backgrounds.When Moving Your Teen is Not an Option
“It’s important that
parents get very clear on the pros and cons of the different options
they face in educating their teenage children,” advises expat coach
Warrell, “and this includes their choice to be an expat in the first
place.”
Warrell believes many parents haven’t given all the issues as much
thought as they could and then find themselves feeling overwhelmed by
circumstances for which they weren’t prepared.
“I ask parents a lot of
questions to really hone in what it is they value for themselves, their
children and their family unit.” And, once a choice is made—whether it
be to go local or off to a boarding school—she tries to guide parents
to a state of reconciliation with their decision.
“In the end, they have to make a choice and live with the
consequences,” she believes.
School Choice International’s Perelstein offers some excellent ideas
for what to ask your company or sponsoring organizations by way of
support for making those decisions including:
• See if there is a list of other parents posted by the company who
have had positive experiences with schools and then contact
them for information and reassurance;
• Ask to meet international school personnel on any look-see visit to a
potential posting;
• Request funding for an educational counselor to walk you through this
particularly stressful process.
Ultimately, parents may need to redefine ‘education’ itself, says
Perelstein.
“If education means more
than classroom time and is broadened to include the cultural enrichment
offered by an overseas assignment, then relocating a teenager will be
well worth it in the end.”
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