As a parent, and as a professional involved in preparing employees and their families for life and work in different cultures, I could not imagine a more horrific scenario than the following:
Parents "A" & "B" ("A" is the employee, and "B" is their partner) have been selected by Aís company for a three-year assignment abroad. They will be expected to move their lives halfway around the world in thirty days. The employee has accepted the position with misgivings, the partner is giving up their own job in order to make the move, and they are about to inform their three children, ages 7, 11 and 16, at the family dinner table, about the upcoming move.
I, for one, would rather have a luncheon date with Hannibal Lecter than face this scenario, yet every year, thousands of internationally relocating families deal, more or less effectively, with this situation. Some succeed, many fail, and most bumble through, painfully and with difficulty. The price paid by all concerned, parents, children and companies alike, is often high. Saddest of all, it doesn't have to be this way.
Professional cultural orientation and assignment assistance programs have, over the last decade or so, come to be valued by corporations as important contributors to the success of the international assignment. Historically, this valuing has occurred in waves: the first wave was a recognition on the part of companies that the employee, in order to succeed at their job, needed to understand how to work more effectively in their new culture. Consequently, cultural orientation programs focused on helping the employee understand the new "cultural rules" at work. The second wave came as research showed that the adaptation of the family's non-working partner was a critical determinant to whether or not the family -- hence, the employee -- stayed on the assignment. Gross measures of failure, such as early returns, were suddenly recognized as massive liabilities (in both human and financial terms) which could, in most cases, be avoided with appropriate partner cultural training and support. If the first wave helped the employee understand the alien work culture better, and the second wave helped the partners to adjust their lives better, the third wave builds on these successes by addressing the needs of the least powerful participants to this process: the kids.Least powerful, of course, does not mean most silent. In fact, I would guess that at the above dinner table scenario, a volcanic eruption was in the making. The most vocal, of course, was the teenager, who, threatened with being wrenched from their peers in High School, and insulted at not having been made a part of this decision earlier, probably stormed dramatically out of the room. The eight-year old might unleash a barrage of questions and opinions about their new host country, while, ironically, the littlest one, not understanding the full impact of the move, would have the least emotional reaction - at first. But corporations do not like to make decisions based on noise level; historically, companies have ranked the needs of the kids last (although parents, no surprise here, rank "helping my kids to adjust" as a very high need). Overlooking the needs of the kids is professionally irresponsible on a number of levels: studies show that when there are children in the family, their inability to adjust to the assignment is as significant a contributor to early returns as a maladjusting partner. More importantly, in the big picture, international organizations play a major role in determining the worldís global future, the world our children will live in, and hence have an opportunity and a responsibility to foster and develop in the children of its international family, global understanding and respect.
As we saw above, for starters, childrenís needs vary with age much more dramatically than the needs of adults. We know that young single adults, for example, in their twenties, have needs when relocating abroad that are very different from married older adults: the same is true with children, only more so. For children, not only do the needs vary greatly with age, but become significantly more challenging as they get older.Generally, children up to the age of 6 take their lead powerfully from the parents, and if the parents, particularly the mother, adjust well and continue to provide these children with their basic needs, they will do fine. Children between the ages of 6 to 10 usually do not comprehend the impact of the move, tend to overlook the event itself, but do have questions about their new home and new country. They are somewhat concerned about making friends, and leaving old ones behind, but with parental reassurance, usually are comfortable about it. They tend not to identify language and cultural differences as an issue. As children get older and become more independent from their parents, parental influence diminishes, so parental adjustment, while important for all ages, plays less of a direct role on the childís adjustment. Children 11-13 are most concerned about leaving old friends behind and making new friends, and less interested in the new country and culture itself, with the exception of what school is like. They are aware of the challenges of speaking new languages and are very concerned about it.
Teenagers have the most difficult adjustment: not only are they going through the sturm und drang of adolescence, but are having to do so with their moorings unhitched. Parental stability is critical at this time, and if the parents are having a hard time with their own adjustment, the steady hand that is essential for the adolescent, may not be there. Adolescents 13-17 are most concerned about fitting in with adolescents for whom they may be strange and different. They are highly opinionated about the move, with strong feelings about all aspects, although often incorrect. Fear of language and cultural differences can be profound, and remorse about leaving boyfriends, girlfriends, close friends, school teams, etc., can be extreme. Their greatest need is an objective and empathic ear, and a source of accurate information about teenage life in their new country.
Of course, these needs are generalizations, and individual children's needs will vary within this framework. Many factors influence these variations, which include the following:
- family roles (i.e., are there other siblings with whom to share the experience?, what is the family dynamic vis a vis the parents and children?)
- gender (i.e., girls and boys perceive the international relocation experience differently at different ages, often mirroring typical gender differences and needs)
- rate of emotional, physical and intellectual maturity (i.e., the child's personal individual development as it affects their ability to comprehend and adjust to the varying aspects of the move)
- reference cultural differences (i.e., the needs of relocating children from Japan are different from the needs of relocating children from the US)
- special needs (i.e., unique medical, emotional, dietary, or religious requirements)
- relocation - especially international relocation - experience (i.e., is this a first-time relocation, or has the child been abroad before?).
With these broad needs in mind, and with the awareness that not having these needs met can critically impact the familyís adjustment and hence the success of the assignment, we must be able to identify and create programs that successfully address these needs. As with programs for their parents (but perhaps even more so, due to the specific and dramatic variations that children present), cultural orientation training for kids must be customized and professionally designed and administered to address their specific issues.Since we identified three basic kids groups, itís important to have three distinctly different categories of basic programs: programs for "CHILDREN" (roughly ages 6-9), "PRE-TEENS" (10-13), and "TEENS" (14-17). The different needs of each group, as outlined above, should determine the basic design, format and content of each program. And because the needs of individual children can be so different, each program needs to be customizable. As we do with adult programs, a pre-program assessment needs to be conducted, appropriate in design and content to the particular group, with each child, and their respective parents, in order to determine the specific individual needs of each child participant. And when we talk about specific designs and content for children, we are also speaking about the need to design and administer these programs by professional cross-culturalists who are familiar and experienced with the pedagogical, emotional and intellectual needs of children.
Children's programs can be an integral part of a larger "Family" Cultural Orientation Program, or they can be administered as separate independent stand-alone pieces. The decision as to whether children's programs are full-fledged programs on their own or smaller components of larger "family" programs is usually based on many factors, including corporate policy, the resources of the organization, the degree to which children of various ages comprise a significant percentage of the international assignee families, and the need for openness and privacy on the part of (usually) older children in order for programs to be effective. Nevertheless, all children's programs, whether independent or integrated, need to have some element of parental involvement. Any good cultural orientation program, for example, involves representative meals of the target culture, and both parents and children should participate together at this event. Emotional, as well as legal requirements also dictate that parents, or other adult guardians if more appropriate (such as when privacy, especially for teenagers, is critical) be present at children's programs. Finally, families with several children of various ages complicate the question of integrated vs. independent programs, with research indicating that designs that involve older siblings in the teaching and learning of younger siblings in the same program usually advances the learning for all.
Blessedly, children don't carry the often stultifying baggage of accumulated years which sometimes makes adjustment for adults more cumbersome: they are typically very flexible to change, since their lives are, for the most part, all about change and growth. It's not surprising that kids can often manipulate new technologies with greater ease and acceptance than their groaning parents, and we have found in our work that applying new training technologies and formats are often highly successful with kids. Children's programs, therefore, should vigorously embrace these new opportunities, examples of which include on-line learning, on-site on-line support, and the re-conceptualization of training from a one-time pre-departure event to a full-cycle process. In fact, children's programs, due to the receptivity of the participants and the flexibility that is inherently required in their formats and design, can be the vanguard for the change that is required in traditional cross-cultural training for the new millennium.At Windham, for example, we are moving away from the traditional one-time pre-departure training event to a full-cycle "Four Point" training process, where the differing needs of all participants at different points within the entire relocation cycle are addressed: in pre-departure, post-arrival, pre-return, and post-return modes. Each family member, including the children, has different needs at each point in the cycle. Children's needs (again with great individual variations) in pre-departure mode usually deal with expectations, while in post-arrival mode, usually focus more on adjusting expectations to reality; in pre-return mode, children's needs once again revolve around expectations of coming home, and in post-return mode, focus on adjusting those expectations to the reality of returning to oneís home country. Technology plays a great role in providing continuous support to the whole family along all "four points" throughout the entire relocation process, and children's programs need to reflect, in content and design, the use of this technology to address their changing needs at each relocation point.
There is a phenomenon among the children of internationally relocating families, wherein they become members of a unique community of "global nomads". These children develop skills, and problems, that are unique to the experience of having been forced to move in and out of cultures, and among peoples, sometimes very different from their own. In some cases, these children have been moved with such frequency, that they have difficulty identifying themselves as being of any one particular culture. An important aspect to this phenomenon is the lack of control that the children had over the events that impacted them so powerfully. Adults can decide to make an international relocation or not. The children just follow along. For adults, their personalities have already been shaped by the time they make these decisions; for children, these decisions powerfully affect the development of their personalities.Global nomads possess unique talents: they are easily accepting of differences, they understand the implicit diversity of the human experience and generally value it, they often have multiple options for behaviors that allow them to succeed with cultural differences. These are important global skills, not only for them as individuals, but for global organizations, and, looking into the future, for the global world. They also have some unique problems: they have difficulty maintaining long-term relationships, they sometimes struggle with long-term planning and commitments. If organizations are going to seek the opportunities that global work provides, they must, as they have learned in so many other areas, also assume the responsibilities of developing the global world in a way which makes it a better place, now and in the future. This includes taking responsibility for the development of the children of international assignees, not only because their adaptation will have an impact on the success of the immediate assignment, but, most powerfully, because their success as "global nomads" who will eventually be in charge of this new global world, will be heavily dependent upon the skills and knowledge we provide them with right now.
© 2000 Dean Foster Associates