When we first started to think about becoming expats with kids, that is, moving abroad for an extended period of time instead of visiting for a couple of months (like we have previously done with Australia and Spain), our major concern was definitely how it would affect the kids. What would be the best way to go about it? When would be the right time to go? How and when should we talk about the move? Or, indeed: were there too many negatives to drop the plan altogether?
As a researcher, my go-to strategy was, of course, to understand what research says about expats with kids. I wanted to understand what is known about the impact of expatriation on the family. Not surprisingly, negative effects are studied more thoroughly; homesickness, loneliness, loss of identity, and cultural stress are all well-known effects of expatriation, making you feel that you’re going to screw up your kids for sure. Interestingly, the positive effects seemed to centre around better education (through high-quality international schools) and learning another language.
But it was when I stumbled upon a phenomenon called third culture kids (TCK) that I took pause. Third culture kids are kids who are raised, or who spend at least a part of their development years, in a culture that is not the culture of their parents’. So, in our case, our kids will spend time in Portugal and Spain, and neither hubby nor I are Portuguese or Spanish. What that will mean, most likely, is that the kids will not feel like they belong when we’re abroad, but they’ll also not feel like they belong when we return to Finland. Their classmates will have 1.5 years of living and bonding in between, and our kids will not be a part of that. They will miss out on inside jokes; they will not know which artists are in; they will probably speak a bit differently to everyone else.
The freaking out part
This really freaked me out for a while. It felt as if we’d do something irreversible to our kids; cause a drift that, while it will heal, it’s only with some time. When I moved back to Finland after 10 years of expatriation, I often felt sadness, loneliness, and frustration; and I was an adult. Now, I’d ask my kids to go through something similar because hubby and I wanted to try out a different lifestyle. How selfish is that?
These are the thoughts and questions that probably plague every parent who has been offered an opportunity to go abroad or who has this crazy inner urge to pluck the family from their comfortable environment and drop it somewhere else. In fairness, I think they need to be considered carefully, and it’s probably a good thing if you are a bit freaked out. It’s a big thing, after all, and there are consequences regardless of whether you decide to go ahead with the move or not.
In search of Mrs Funnypants
After some deep breathing into a paper bag, I was able to take a more balanced view. First, just because the literature was focused on the negative effects didn’t mean only bad things would happen to us. Second, besides our more selfish reasons to move abroad, we had many kids-focused reasons. N(8) was struggling with his first school year at the time we were contemplating this decision, and we wanted to take him out of school for a bit to take a break from the rules of the school and to be able to learn at his own pace. We wanted to have more time together as a family. And we wanted to do that in a relaxed, slower-paced environment that would help hubby and me be more Mr and Mrs Funnypants instead of the Grumpys.
And so we told the kids that we’re packing up and moving to Portugal for six months. They replied, “cool. Can we watch some TV?” And that was that with the communication part.
