Comments on: Strangers among us: the expat parent experience

By: rebecca

rebecca — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:42:00 +0000

@Kerstin…Hi! I just saw your kind comment now, please excuse the delay in responding! Yes, I notice many expat parents really identifying with this experience. Thanks for linking from your blog, that was very kind!

By: Kerstin Mierke

Kerstin Mierke — Sat, 29 May 2010 08:56:34 +0000

Hi!
I found your site through Michelle (just above this comment!) and really enjoyed that post. My parents had this experience with me, and now I’m having it with my son … it was lovely to read your post and have all of those feelings and thoughts put into words so concisely!

(I also linked to your blog from mine, but I’m not sure anyone really reads mine!)

Kerstin

By: rebecca

rebecca — Mon, 10 May 2010 20:53:08 +0000

Thanks, Michelle!
I just read your last few posts, and cracked up. Yup, the importance of the holiday breakfast involving baked goods is lost on my men as well.
I also did some reflecting about posting pictures of my sons when I began my blog, but came to the conclusion that as long as they aren’t doing anything inappropriate like bathing or picking their noses, the black-out faces just was too off-putting. Plus, frankly, we live on our agriturismo so our private family life is pretty much out there anyway. So, they’re all over the place. Just one more thing they can bring up to their therapist 20 years down the line.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:13:30 +0000

I love this post, and I fear my son will never like peanut butter either. He is only two now, and I’ve been waiting to give it to him because he suffers from bad eczema. Peanut butter is somewhat of an acquired taste, and by the time he eats it, he may not like it. Oh well. Pazienza! Anyway, I linked to your post from my blog today. Just FYI!

By: rebecca

rebecca — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:24:19 +0000

Valerie…I think I have a long time to wait before my kids will turn to me for wisdom! As Mark Twain put it “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” :)

By: Valerie

Valerie — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:53:54 +0000

Confession: I never liked peanut butter either and have always preferred ironed T-shirts, though I didn’t understand why until I moved to Italy! (My mom didn’t iron them, I had to do it myself. Mean American mom.) Just wait…as they get older they’ll want to bank on that cool factor and ‘become’ more American to impress their friends. Then they’ll come barking up the mom tree for cultural wisdom!

By: rebecca

rebecca — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:57:04 +0000

Yes, Melissa, my kids are bilingual…I speak English to them at home, and they tend to answer back in English.
I think the expat parenting experience is harder for families in the US because the American culture and English language are so dominant there is little space left for the parent’s language and culture. I have the tiny advantage of the “cool” factor…speaking English is cool, the US is cool, having family members who are American is something to brag about.
Yes, I certainly agree that seeing your children grow up differently from you is something pretty much universal to all modern parents. It’s just easier to put your finger on the differences when you are a “stranger in a strange land”!

By: rebecca

rebecca — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 09:51:01 +0000

Thanks, George…I think even non parents out there marvel at how the childhood experience has changed. For better or worse? Hard to say….

By: Melissa Muldoon

Melissa Muldoon — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 04:58:56 +0000

Ciao Rebecca, so your kids are bilingual? What do you speak the most of when you are at home? Is it hard to get them to speak English? I ask because I have Italian friends from Milan, raising three children and they speak Italian at home, but the kids tend to answer back in English. My friend Roberta often speaks about how hard it is to be raising “American” kids so different from her Italian childhood. But, she also says every time she returns to Italy, it seems a little bit different and less like the Italy she left.

We all feel tugs at the heart strings no matter what…we are parents after all! I often think that my three boys are all so completely different from each other and so completely different from my husband and me and they are having a completely different childhood that I experienced. There is continuity with language and traditions…but times they are changin’ and nothing can really be repeated! I thought I would have little clones of myself but how wrong I was! Turns out they are completely their own people. Also learning to let go and enjoy the people they are turning out to be.

By: George

George — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 23:10:54 +0000

Beautifully written and oh, so true! I do not have children of my own to pass my childhood on to, but I often see the childhood of my nieces and nephews (I’m excepting the godchildren you know, who are, essentially, living your children’s life) and wonder at how different it is to mine.