Last year we welcomed a girl from Russia in our home for spring semester. This year we made space for a girl from Japan for the entire school year. As with most endeavors, this has been hard and good for our family. I think both girls would say the same thing. Having anyone live with you can be difficult. Everyone has their own way of doing life. But add on top of that culture and language and family size barriers and this gets downright tricky.
I think we anticipated the language issues. It took a bit more to consider the culture issues. We learned a lot about them and they have learned a lot about us. But what surprised us the most was the family size issue. Both of our students are single children. We are a family of 4. When you grow up with brothers and sisters, life is a very different experience.
Let me be more specific. How do you know how big a piece of pie to take if you are an only child? Well you can take up to a 1/3 if you really want to I suppose. But honestly, you probably just take as much as you want. But in a family of 4 kids 2 adults and 1 foreign exchange student, the math is different. It seems like a bit trivial example, but we have noticed these to be the biggest stumbling points for us as a family. As a family, we have all learned how to accommodate and make room for each other. A child growing up alone, does not learn that skill. To a big family, the child seems very selfish and in fact they kind of are selfish because they have not learned how to live with other people. This manifests in bigger areas as well such as knowing how to manage time in the bathroom, needing rides, asking for help, and assuming the world revolves around you. :) All teenagers go through that phase. But in a family of 4 you simply can't accommodate everyone. There just isn't enough time. However, with one child, you can. So perhaps the speech does not really connect with a child who is told they are not the center, but gets treated like they are the center. Food for thought.
Language barriers come down overtime and culture barriers are somewhat interesting to discover and discuss. But family size seems much more personal and harder to explain to a child who does not know any different. It has been the most surprising and difficult part of our journey in welcoming these young girls into our home. Now the truth is that we love them and I am pretty sure they love us. America is certainly a more "huggy" culture than Russia and Japan but we pushed through that and those girls got lots of hugs. We also told them about how much Jesus loves them and hopefully they will grow in that understanding as they go through life.
As for now, we have taken the genius step of having our Japanese student make a cake for the family every week. She enjoys all the fun of learning to bake and frost cakes and our family has 24/7 access to cake. It's a win/win and clearly Another Homeschool Success Story!
