Expat Schooling and The Cultural Divide

I guess that as parents, when we first send our kids off to school, pre-school, kinder or day-care, we have to accept that we are losing a little bit of control over our kids lives. It’s not an easy thing to deal with, for me at least, but I realise that from the moment they are born, we are slowly letting go of our kids. Every day they learn new independent skills, whether its rolling over at 4 months, or climbing the stairs at 1 year, or putting their own school uniform on at 5. Each of the things they learn is something we don’t have to do for them anymore, and that we can’t control to the same extent.

Some of these new independencies are welcome. I am quite happy not to have to wipe Guerita’s bottom anymore and that she can pour her own glass of water, or clear her own plates from the table, but there’s still a bit of sadness that in little ways she doesn’t need me as much anymore.

Guerita has always been independent and self-confident. On the day she started day-care (at 22 months) she ran into the centre, sat at the nearest activity table and looked back at me, waving and saying “You can go now, Mum”. But going to school everyday is still a big step for her, and for me, in letting go of that much of her day. Ever since that first day of day-care, I’ve struggled with the fact that we don’t make all the decisions about what she eats, what she watches, how she spends her time, but that’s part of being a parent, I suppose.

I imagine I would be dealing with similar issues if we were living in Australia when Guerita went off to pre-school and school. Each school would have its systems and beliefs that would hopefully gel with ours and with any luck we’d be happy with the decisions they make on her behalf.

One of the challenges of living in a foreign country, and sending your kids to school there, is that you are dealing with schooling and lifestyle decisions that come from a completely different cultural background. This is part of the expat experience and for the most part it’s not a problem at all. In fact it’s one aspect of the appeal of living in another country. I love Guerita’s school and I think the teachers are fantastic. She’s learnt so much in her nearly 2 years there, not the least of which is fluency in Spanish and a real understanding of a different culture. But sometimes those cultural differences are difficult (for me at least) to reconcile with my own parenting practices.

An example from the other day at school:

• She came home with a birthday party invitation that was a music CD with a custom sticker with the party details (don’t get me started on over-the-top birthday parties). I didn’t recognise the picture on the sticker, so I put the CD on. Guerita straight away said “I know that. That’s High Sky Music“. (She meant High School Musical). It turns out that one of the kids had brought the movie in to school and they all watched it. I went off and watched the movie myself and apart from it being the usual Disney tripe (that’s 90 minutes I’ll never get back), it was pretty tame, but still, it’s not a movie that I would choose for my 4 year old to watch. It might not have any sex, drugs or violence in it, but it has teenage themes, which she really doesn’t need to know about just yet. (Funny aside, though. I was quizzing her about how she knew High School Musical and said “What’s it about, Guerita?” “Oh, you know, singing.” “What do they sing about?” “Just teenage stuff, Mum”) I told the teacher I didn’t want her watching it at school again, which she was fine about, but a bit surprised, I think.

This week she has a sleep-over camp at school.

She’s 4.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this. She could have gone last year (when she was 3!) but we happened to be back in Perth at the time. I was quite relieved to have missed it actually. But this year we are here, so a decision had to be made about whether she would go. I knew she would be devastated if we said no, although if we had been really worried, we wouldn’t have hesitated. I wanted to find out a bit more about it before consenting, though, so I went to talk to the teacher. Guerita’s teacher really is lovely and I think she’s used to all my questions by now, so she wasn’t surprised by my paranoia inquisitive nature.

We were given a note about the schedule for the night - what they would do and eat and what to bring, but I wanted to know the times. Mexicans tend to eat later and go to bed later so I was worried she’d be starving by the time they had dinner.

The teacher told me “They’ll probably eat around 9pm”.

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh! Guerita normally has dinner at 6.30pm.”

“When will they go to bed?”

“Well, some of the kids go to bed at 11pm”

…!!!!…

“And some of them stay up till 1 or 2am.”

“Really??!! Guerita usually goes to bed at 7.30pm.”

I’m sure she’ll be fine. They take great care of the kids, so I’m not worried about that aspect of it, and she’ll have a great time. She’s SO excited.

But I think I’ll feed her before she goes.

And she’s going to be COMPLETELY SHATTERED the next day.