Adjusting to a New Life How to cope with your family’s culture shock by Kyle Mullin
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Arrivals
Cooped Up with Homesickness “It’s the stay-at-home spouses who find it hardest to cope with being in a new culture. They unintentionally isolate themselves,” says Dr. Stephen-Claude Hyatt, a clinical health psychologist and head of mental health and counseling at Beijing International SOS Clinic. “The family breadwinners, the kids at school – they are interacting with peers on a daily basis. That means they have
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support systems in place.” “People who have social supports in place thrive better than those who don’t,” he adds. “Friends recover more together than those who don’t have anyone after moving to a new country. Community is important. It could be church, a volunteer organization, it could be going to your child’s school and asking how you can volunteer.” That network can seem nonexistent for family members who have to stay home and raise infant children, or worse, send their kids off to school every day, only to be completely alone in their own homes. “If your motivation is down, you’re not going to be motivated to go out if you’re already sitting at home all the time,” Dr. Hyatt says. “If that happens you’re not accepting your new reality, the reality of your new home.” But for some families, the more domesticated parent ends up having all the fun.
Six-year-old Alexa Bo Gillon, who hails from the UK, has been living in Beijing for five years and attends The British School of Beijing Home & Relocation Guide 2012-2013
photo: courtesy of fiona mckendry
o expat is immune to culture shock, but you may be surprised by which member of your family actually struggles the most. It’s often not the children, despite the fact that they have to fit in at a new school in a new country. The same goes with working parents struggling to understand the unwritten rules of a Chinese office. Their challenges are by no means easy to overcome, but those tough conditions actually help more than they hurt.