If you have children, you already know and maybe a slight laugh has already started to be formed in your face, having understood my point...
Depending on their age, starting from the age of 3-4 years old, every parent knows very well that they have a strong and exhausting negotiator in front of them !
Consider this when parents have to explain about changing home-school-friends-country-habits... !
Ok, you will tell me that we are the adults and the kids will follow. Of course... BUT, you also know that there is no chance not to tell and suddenly pack their things and "oh ! surprise ! we are leaving the country !".
We have two small "barristers" in our house, 10 years old and 6 and a half. Questions started in the very early stages of the phase of just thinking about this step. They heard parts of the discussions we had with my husband, watched in my computer a page with expat information and forum, real estate agencies sites, flight itineraries... You'll think "I didn't protect the situation". Actually, in the beginning, I wasn't thinking about it, since nothing was definite and as I told you before, it was in the early stages of just a thought.
However, the questions started and I grasped the opportunity to see their point of view -just in case-. I started the story very very slowly... "How would you feel IF, hypothetically speaking, we moved to another place, far away from here..?"
They popped the first question : "Why?"
I explained them the reasons that we have made some thoughts with their father.
The first reaction was very sharp : "No, we don't want to go anywhere. We don't want to change anything in our lives. This is our home-country-friends (all together) and we are fine !".
Things were not as I expected... I had to marshal more diplomatic arguments.
So, I started talking about the "amazing museum with dinosaurs", "the incredible candies' giant store", "the schools with physics labs" reinforcing my statement with the respective informative sites in the internet. The "enemy" started to back out...
For a few seconds, they suspiciously looked at me and then they started firing me with myriads of quickfire questions :
"Where are we going to go ?"
"When" ?
"Are we going to change school?"
"Can we still see our friends?"
"Can we take our dog, cat, tortoise, with us ?"
"Can we take our dog, cat, tortoise, with us ?"
"Will we take ALL our toys, books, plants, pebbles... etc. etc., with us ?"
In this case, I "sold" it taking into consideration all the things they love and there are plenty or better or different in the new country. You know better what would better work with your children.
However, I understood that I have made a mistake. I talked very early. Ideally, parents should discuss this issue with their children when situations are final. In any case, except of specific occasions, no one lives within a week. So, there is time to explain everything to the children and be prepared to face all their arguments, objections or worries they may have.
We have to be very clear and honest (not of course in a way to terrify them) with them. It is better to explain that you don't have answers for all their questions and that together you will discover everything. It's fine to make them understand that it's very normal to feel weird because, the truth is that, we feel the same way. What we will say and how, it depends of course on the age and the personality of each child. No matter the age, it is crucial to make our children feel safe. If the case is that all family has to move, NO MATTER WHERE the family goes/stays, the important thing is to be TOGETHER.
