Parenting is a great task while living abroad is no child’s play. Think about the reality of raising kids abroad and you have a jet load of concerns on how to remain on the positive parenting lane. However, on this course called parenting, we’re all learners and must be open to learning. These tips may come handy if you’re already raising kids abroad or planning to join the league of abroad parents.
1. Imbibe a Positive Parenting Approach
Although no one has a degree in parenting, but we’re all liable to doing it well. A positive parenting approach would afford the parents the aim, goal and direction to work towards. As a result, other distractions arising from societal influence would not meddle in the child upbringing.
Another beautiful result of adopting a positive approach is that it would most certainly be in tandem with most international provisions and rights for children. In this case, the incidence of child abuse, infringement of rights and its attendant legal consequences can be averted.
2. Connect with other parents and their culture
As a parent raising kids abroad, it is probable that you live or work with parents who are also foreign nationals. Connecting with them means sharing your struggles, ideas and developments together. You may learn an effective parenting tip from them, get updated on trends and developments which may be crucial to your parenting decisions or the other way round.
Children may also benefit from the relationship as they may find friends and playmates in their children. Fortunately, knowing their parents gives you the opportunity to know who your kids are making friends with.
3. Let intact be the homeland culture
The opposite of this tip is the grave mistakes many parents commit when raising kids abroad. Many are so caught up in between the busy and advanced life of foreign living that they fail to continue practicing what works for them and shaped them into well adjusted adults.
Good values and morals like respect, understanding, tolerance, perseverance are as important as the food and shelter you provide your children. Those which are practiced in your homelands albeit lacking in your country of residence should not be lacking in your children’s upbringing.
4. Get related: with the environment, religion, anything that gets you feeling part and not apart.
To make parenting easier, life has to be made worthier. Living abroad has many of its challenges; racial discrimination, financial difficulties, problems of adjustment and a host of others. To get going and going well, you must make life worthier by relating with the system and finding a point of connection in the system, else, when you combine those challenges with the demands of parenting, it becomes too stressful.
Get related with the weather, the law codes, with fellow countrymen and women, co workers, co parents, fellows in faith, neighbors and just anybody you share a point of connection with. Really, if we look more in depth, we would find the connecting point with everybody and everything and life would be more homely.
5. Honor for the land laws
In reality, this is the nucleus of the whole living abroad thing. Without respect and regard for the law codes, a settler is as good as persona non grata.
As regards parenting in a foreign country, it is important to know certain rights and privileges which the law system permits among which is the legal age of adulthood, limits to child discipline, fundamental rights of children and others.
