Life, Decisions And Parenting

Dear all,

I am here with yet another thread, requesting your wisdom to make an important decision in my life.

After 3 good years, my contract with UN ends in the country where I work right now. It is a first world country, which offers a great lifestyle and my family has greatly adapted to this life in the past 3 years.

We landed here amidst the peak of covid times in 2021, kids started home school due to health concerns that time. In 2022 we admitted them to a local school, but it took my children a while to mingle and enjoy school life due to language, cultural and other issues.

It was a UN based School, so I was able to switch my kids to home school whenever my work demanded me to travel. In the past year, I was assigned to oversee MENA (middle east and North Africa) region; hence long travel and relocation to Egypt and Jordan became part and parcel of our journey.

I had the choice of keeping my family in the country for kids' education and wellbeing. But given the history of conflicts within the family (my mom and H do not gel well and there is a history of unwanted conflicts between the two whenever I am away), I prefer to drag them along. Moreover, my H's freelancing type of work, and the option of homeschooling the kids helped.

Moreso, the family's priority at that time was to settle in my career to earn, invest and have a cushion to protect the family's future as and when it is possible. Most of you know the unique dynamics of my family, where I can't take chances or trust anyone (including my husband) to run the show.

Nevertheless, now we are at a stage where I could call myself well settled. Be it financial or at professional level. However, this has come with a price.

My children, especially the first born (13 yrs old) shows symptoms of OCD, shyness, and lack of social skills. I believe these are the side effects of not enjoying regular schooling at this age.
The kids are so unfortunate that they had to study on-line for a while when they were in Sri Lanka during early covid times, and then this continued on and off even after Covid due to my career and family situations.

Now that, they don't have any friends. No physical interaction with their peers. Even if they go to School on and off, they just be themselves, and not mingle. They are shy, and this is coupled with their puberty time where most children will go through this change.

I tried to send them for extra curricular classes such as music, swimming etc.. But they still require dad to come along, and they don't mingle much with other kids who are already a part of a group, and not ready to mingle voluntarily. I mean, mingling with new children takes an effort. My kids do not see any reason for this, and do not feel comfortable doing it either.

Their lack of social skills at this growing age is really bothering me. To add fuel to the fire, there are at least 3 children in my extended family that lack social skills (regardless of their situation) and suffer greatly in their early adulthood settling in their lives. I have seen their parents' suffering first hand and this is what comes to my mind whenever I see my kids slipping towards the same issue.

Having said that, my times in this country ends now. I will be either moving to a country in the MENA region (i) Egypt/Jordan or (ii) Syria/Lebanon or taking a sabbatical for 1 year.
If I move to Egypt or Jordan, I can take my family along. But starting their schools all over again in a new soil, and mitigating racism (there are significant issues in schools as per the reports) and other problems is not easy. Secondly, I am not sure how long my contract in these places. So, decisions related to kids' school is hard to make at this point.

If I move to Syria or Lebanon, there is no point in taking my family along given the security and economic situations there. However, I will have the luxury of taking breaks after every 4 weeks for 2-3 weeks; hence I can go to SL compensate the missed family time.
This way, my kids can return to their favorite School in SL, be comfortable with their peers and friends, and start regular school and from there they can build on their personality.

Regardless of the decision, I feel like i should take a sabbatical for a while to be with them and help them build their personality at this crucial stage. But this can be viewed insane, given the salary, opportunity that this job can give me. Taking a sabbatical can of course delay my career progress, but as a mother I feel I should weight both personal and professional life at this stage.

I can also leave the kids in the country where I am now, and enroll them to a regular school. This can help them greatly in the future.
But it depends on the visa (still checking) and how best my H and mom can gel in my absence. Especially mom at this age (750 won't be comfortable without my presence.
There is absolutely no support system for them.

But, things are different in SL. Though the country suffers from political and economical crisis, we still have a great support system, and income from abroad (from my career) that can support the family's wellbeing.

I would greatly appreciate your comments and suggestions here. Tagging @Rihana @Laks09 @Viswamitra @DDream for your views here

 

Dears,

Many thanks for your wonderful suggestions. I was thinking about this for a while, and your response make me feel comfortable now.

There are two major concerns here:
1) To move my family back to their comfort zone, so that my growing kids and elderly mom can benefit from the solid support system we have there. Also, it can boost the children's self confidence at this much needed time.

2) To take a sabbatical from my very busy work life. But sabbatical also means loosing several opportunities down the line.

As for the first concern;

Thanks for validating my concern. This is exactly my mind is saying.

Very true. I had to be in a very similar situation (but within the country) due to my dad's transfer in my childhood. It hasn't affected my life as a whole, but it has certainly affected my tender years. I did not have any friends from Grade 7 to Grade 10; and lost almost all my childhood friends in the process of changing schools.
My life became stable only after Grade 12, where I found some good friends and started living a normal life like any other peer.
Our life back in the 90s and 2000s were very different from what it is today. We struggled a lot to come here, and the experiences made us who we are today. However, our kids live in a well protected life, that doesn't give them any experience to navigate life in the future. On top of it, my two children's life in this country is very unique and that is affecting their future.

Exactly. I have a very strong feeling that this is high time I should focus on this now.
I had an uncle who was also very busy with his life, career etc while his children missed "normal" life during most part of their childhood. Everyone was concerned about that, but the uncle was concerned about the income and how that is important to settle his children than giving them real life experiences.
Now that he has enough money to settle his children, but both of his sons in their late 20s did not learn to life 'normally". They are still dependent on their dad.
This is something I am very concerned about.

Totally agree. I did the same. I moved to a foreign country for my masters and that helped.

Of course yes. I have been discussing with them. But to be honest, my kids, mom and even to some extend my H are totally dependent on me when it comes to decisions. They look up to me, and that makes me very much conscious about everything. For now, they are 75% on the side of moving back to SL. Although kids started to enjoy the luxuries and frequent travelling. They are concerned about missing me down the line if I chose to resume my career after settling them down. But these are still under discussion.

He will be joining Grade 9 next year. I think the next few years will be crucial in his school life, as well as shaping up his personality.
He used to be a very lively, and talkative kid who did not have any stage fear and used to perform so well on stage in the past. He had lot of friends, who used to visit our home and play together. Since he was the first born in the family, he received everyone's attention and liked it.
Now at the age of 12+, he became very silent, shy and doesn't like to mingle. He has anxiety issues and OCD too. I think this is because he has been totally cut off from his peers, and the ones here are not really his friends.
He has ample time in hand (as he is home schooled these days) and lacks self discipline. This also made him a very lazy person.
laziness, shyness, lack of self discipline and being introvert changing him to a negative person in life. This is not what I wanted out of him, and I feel this is the time I can correct him to be his real self. May be this is his hormones as he attained puberty. In any case, being with stable group of people is important to identify self and build character.