Not to mention that sometimes logging into a platform or accessing the messages, emails etc. wasn’t possible.

Every school has been trying to manage this situation in the best (?) possible way, trying to keep up the pace they had when meeting students in their real classrooms. But that’s not possible.

Everyone who has been working online for some time knows that communication channels need to be clearly defined and accessible to all, at all times, that for live classes we have to give (and receive!) clear instructions, safe links, and enough time to connect. Not everyone has super fast internet connections.

Dear everyone – colleague, teachers, educators, friends…. – please adjust the pace of learning, teaching and working!

We had a break (Easter), but after every kind of break we need time to readjust to this all. What seemed to be a sprint at the beginning, is a marathon: therefore we have to lower the pace and focus more on how we can make sure we all get to the finish line!

Last week I have spent more than 23 hours in online meetings, sessions with clients etc. not counting the time to prepare the meetings and sessions and all the admin that comes with running your own business.

I know it is possible to schedule them in a way that there is no overlapping. For my scheduling I use Acuity (but there are many other tools of course!) where I make sure I have buffer zones of 20 minutes that allow me to stretch, get some fresh air, drink or eat something in between meetings. Some of my colleagues spend 4 hours or more in a row, sitting in front of their screens, up to 16 hours a day. That’s simply not healthy! Although I think that I managed to keep up a good pace and manage to organize it all in the best possible way, I feel like my (brain) muscles are sore from this all. In addition to this all, the “emotional” aspect of this all ask our “emotional” muscles (I can’t find a better way to express that “feeling”; please share a better definition of this in the comments) are constantly stretched, highly alert… exhausted.

After several weeks of online work and learning, we should all assess what works, what doesn’t, and speak up! Let colleagues, organizers, managers, teachers, friends etc. know so that we all can “breathe” and go through this in the healthiest way.

For me it is clear that last week was an exception. This week I have scheduled less meetings, I spend more time outdoors and include workouts in my daily schedule. – And I think that my children need the same kind of time offline too. They won’t be learning less, and, honestly: we can’t compare the end of this year’s school year with any other one before. It is different, schools need to find ways to assess the progress and take the circumstance into consideration. Why are some worrying that “this generation will once be labelled with “those who graduated in the COVID19 year””: that’s our reality, that is how it was in other times too (war times come to mind – there are still people who minimize the effect of this pandemic or avoid thinking of it). – So, let’s adjust the pace!

Everything we’re doing needs to be enough. We are all doing our best giving the circumstances and bars should be lowered or somehow changed.

How are your teenagers doing after all these weeks of remote learning?

How does this all affect them, and you?

Please share in the comments.
And I’m off for a break – but will be back in… 20 mins or 30… hm… not sure …

As my husband and I tend to have meetings during lunch hours, we have either an early or a late lunch these days. This allows our three teenagers to make their own (very inventive!) lunches and spend some time among peers, have a chat (or a fight), share their thoughts etc..

Since we all started learning and working from home a few weeks ago, the conversations during breakfasts and dinners changed.

In the first week it was all about what restrictions we would follow. As we were following very closely the news from Italy, we had long discussions about how the situations differed in China, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Belgium… and the Netherlands. We ended up agreeing to opt for a stricter rule than the one recommended by the Dutch prime minister, and follow a combination of the Italian and Belgium one , with the sole exception of the 200m rule. – It was not a gesture of solidarity, it was rather the result of our family-common sense or gesunder Menschenverstand .

***

Since our children are on a term break right now and school topics are not first priority during our breakfast and dinner conversations, I notice a great range of topics among which we shift back and forth, quite fast (…too fast sometimes!).

So, one morning, after talking about a movie he saw on Netflix that involves some discoveries at CERN (Lausanne), my son decided to explain Quantum entanglement to his sisters. He mentioned the gloves hidden in two boxes, one sent to the north pole, the other to the south pole… – All this was quite clear and made sense, until one of my daughters said that if the gloves were rubber gloves, that you can wear on both hands, this example would not work… They agreed that the situation in which these gloves are put into the boxes and the kind of gloves needed to be specified.

We all went on, imagining possible other scenarios that made the explanation of quantum entanglement surreal.

The general tone of these breakfast conversations is quite light and we all notice how the current situation is transforming our view on the whole “flatten the curve” approach too. What does “average” even mean? If we compare the calculations that are made in the different countries – we follow news from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherland, but also form all other countries… – it changes depending on the numbers collected – the official ones – and parameters, and this all differs from country to country, which makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to compare them at all…

Breakfast is the moment where we talk about the current situation.

The other day, one of my daughters said “what if what we are actually living right now, were a dream… and we would wake up one day, but nobody would believe us?” – The next 20 minutes were filled with colorful images, where the children would meet their friends in capsules, hovering over the town, meeting with their classmates in a virtual – but parallel-virtual –room… I guess this was a fantasy over how the remote learning could have been done more realistically, if we had the technology. Face time and synchronous learning are not what they meant. It was more like learning and meeting in VR…

What I found interesting and important to explore was that this whole surreal situation we are thrown in, feels like living in a parallel world, in another dimension.

I understand that our children need time to process, to define for themselves (!) what is “real” and what could be “normal” in the future, they have to find out what makes sense and what not. It’s not for us parents to tell them, it’s for them to explore.

It is difficult for us adults already, even those who have experienced war or similar situations where they had to adjust to a situation that was out of their personal control in the past. – The fact though, that the whole world is affected, gives it a whole new dimension. I would say it is much more bearable because we know that everyone else in the world is going through the same.

Our dinner conversations tend to be quieter than those in the morning. We talk about what we did during the day, what topics we read about. We cook together, share the meal and let the day “sink in”.
I actively stopped conversations to spin around the current situation during evening hours because I noticed that it affected our mood and my personal sleep. I had days where I could hardly sleep. My thoughts spin around the “why’s” and “if’s” at the end of the days and I need something soothing and distracting, like reading books or watching a Netflix series…

It surely didn’t help that my mother in law fell, broke her wrist and had to undergo surgery in the midst of all this. She is fine now, but there were moments where the communication was lost and my husband was very worried. We tried to not make a big deal out of it in front of our children, but they “read the air”, i.e. sense what is going on, so we had a long talk about this. We explained that we can’t just take the car and go to Oma and Opa in Munich or to Grosi and Grospapi in Switzerland, we can’t just go and meet my sister in Ticino, our friends in Italy, France, Spain… These kind of discussions took place in the evenings, until I decided that these are too heavy for evening conversations.

They feel much “lighter” in the morning, when the sun shines and we have a whole day in front of us to talk about it, process the feelings and find ways to make sense of what happens.

What I learned during these days is that we have to have conversations about all that we think, what worries us, what makes us happy, our experience and fear during this time, but all this can’t be randomly shared.

We have to respect each others’ mood and psychological state and avoid a topic if we see that one can’t take it at the moment. We shared tears, we fought, and we shared silence, relaxed and exhausted silence: the whole spectrum of emotions is on our daily menu plan. It can sound scary and overwhelming, but it is important to at least acknowledge it because it helps us to connect and stay connected as a family.

At some point we talked about a series of books and movies about the topics that we tend to talk about and books like The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, or A la Recherche du Temps perdu, and movies like the Matrix etc. (the list was very long…!)

Independence Day comes to mind: although we all are spending 24/7 together, we have to make sure that we don’t disconnect with each other. We have to work on our communication every day

What kind of conversations are you having with your teenagers these days?
What are they – and you – reading at the moment?

Every person that has spent some time abroad has probably made this experience. It can either be during a vacation or during a long(er) stay in another country.

Someone just says something judgmental about our culture, our nationality, the way we look or dress, the way we speak or the way we do things, and we feel obliged to defend it. It doesn’t even have to be our own culture, it can also be a culture we’re familiar with, that we adopted or we simply embraced for whatever reason.

These observations are often done by people who are not aware of hurting our feelings but still, how can we deal with this and react – or not react – to this kind of small attacks to what we consider “ours” ?

We may feel protective as if they attacked or judged us, our children, our way of life or something we really care about.

I personally react differently to these comments when I am alone than when I am with my children and family. When I am alone, I tend to not take it personally and ignore the comments: if the person is not a friend, colleague or anyone that I have to live or work with, it’s easy to forget the incident.

If the person is someone I have to deal with on a regular basis, depending on the comment, I would reduce contacts with her or him to a minimum, for the simple reason that I don’t want to have to deal with people who are not flexible and understanding every day.

Before starting to explore why the person makes these comments I would try to find out if she is flexible enough to accept other perspectives or not. If not, there is no argument that will make her consider other points of view. It would be a waste of time and energy to try to make her understand (see my strategy n.5 here below). As an intercultural communication trainer I know how much people who express their bias can ruin a conversation and a relationship.

If my children, family or friends are involved, and are in any way affected by the comments, usually speak up and try to understand what makes the person say what she said, no matter if she is judging one of my cultures or any another one.

Here are the 4 ways I react to negative comments about culture (and anything else):

1) First of all I ask the person to repeat what she just said. In most of the cases judgmental comments are spontaneous and when they have to be repeated they lose their initial harshness.

2) I reformulate with my own words what the person just said like “so, what you’re saying is that…”. By reformulating what the other person said, we give her the opportunity to correct the wording and change perspective. Maybe she chose an unfortunate formulation and didn’t intend to be judgmental. – If her intention was to be judgmental, we can decide to whether explore the issue further (if we want) or simply acknowledge that we have different point of views.

3) I ask the person to explain what makes her say that– without pointing out that I perceived it as negative. Maybe she isn’t aware that her comment could be interpreted as negative, or she had a negative experience which lead her to making that comment. – Again, it’s up to us to decide how and if we want to discuss this.

4) Ignore it. This is the wisest way to deal with this. By not taking the comment into consideration, we can avoid any kind of discussion about it. Especially if we think that any kind of reasonable discussion with this person is a waste of time. – I follow the Bavarian way of “nedemal ignoriern”, but in a friendly way, after all, it is never good to add fuel to the fire.

Most of the time, people who make negative comments about another culture (or person) are very insecure and not content. They are probably struggling with accepting the difference and the “otherness” of the situation, the way things are done, or look like.

If their negative comment is the expression of their surprise or them being uncomfortable, we can help them make sense of the different situation or habit, by bridging between something they know and the “new” and “unusual” one, and by explaining them why things are said, done in another way etc.

If their negative comment is a way for them to signalize that they are offended, we can reassure them that they don’t need to like the “other”, and that they are allowed to have their own opinion. But if they are offending us or our dear ones, we want to make this clear to them in a friendly tone.

The most important aspect of dealing with negative comments in any situation is to take a step back, not take it personally, draw a very clear line.

How do you deal with negative comments? Please let me know here below

We are living in an international community with a great amount of parents from the UK, Australia and the US, and among our friends, the question whether to send a child to a boarding school or not comes up regularly.

I am the kind of mother that couldn’t imagine being separated from my children, not until they’re 18 or whenever they are ready to go. Yes, I’m a “mamma italiana” type of mother, or a “Glucke” how it’s called in German: I like having my children around me. I love being a mother and I am very grateful to have the opportunity to spend plenty of time with my children, I want them in my life and want to take part of their daily life.

This is why it was very difficult for me to accept and understand how a parent could send a child under 18 to a boarding school. Especially because it means, in our situation, to send him or her to a school that is in another country, hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of kilometers away.

Sending children to boarding schools is more common in some societies than in others and some of my British friends started talking about sending their children to boarding school when they were still quite young.

I couldn’t understand how a mother of a 5 year old could already make plans to send her son to a boarding school at age 8 or 10. They were making plans on trips they would “finally do” with their husbands/partners when their children would be “away”. It sounded like the children were a nuisance. It took me quite some time to understand their point of view, their world view and look at it all from another perspective. – I still struggle with this mentality, but I understand where it comes from.

The UK has a rich history of boarding schools which reflects in one of the most read books in the past years, Harry Potter. Children from around the world read about life in a surreal boarding school, far away from home, without parents being active part of their daily lives, and they accompany these fictive characters for several years through adventures, sad and happy moments. I read Hanni und Nanni (aka St. Clairs) by Enid Blyton, when I was 10 and wondered sometimes how it would be to grow up in a boarding school. It seemed like a very exotic way to live to me. – But reading books about the life of fictive characters in that situation and living it yourself are two very different animals…

Boarding schools in Britain started in medieval times “when boys were sent to be educated at a monastery or noble household, where a lone literate cleric could be found”, but the institution has adapted itself to changing social circumstances over 1000 years. During the colonial expansion of the British Empire, they became highly popular as they ensured education to children of British colonial administrators.

“in some societies children enter at an earlier age than in others. In some societies, a tradition has developed in which families send their children to the same boarding school for generations. One observation that appears to apply globally is that a significantly larger number of boys than girls attend boarding school and for a longer span of time. The practice of sending children, particularly boys, to other families or to schools so that they could learn together is of very long standing, recorded in classical literature and in UK records going back over 1,000 years. ” (more information here)

If for some local families, sending their children to a boarding school means to help them develop wider horizons than their family can provide, families who spend many years living abroad, boarding schools represent the often unique opportunity for their children to get in touch with their heritage culture, its values, customs and beliefs during their childhood years.

Knowing about the historical background of sending children to boarding schools helped me to be more understanding.

When I saw this video some time ago, I started questioning the reasons that brought the parents to send their children to a boarding school.

I understand that if a parent grew up like this and saw the benefits of it, he probably wants his children make the same experience. Many parents don’t question the way they were brought up and assume that what was good for them is automatically beneficial for their children too.

I personally wonder if this option is not a way to escape parenthood at an earlier stage, a kind of handing over a child to someone else – like it’s said in this video by one of the educators.

I have several friends who have sent their children to boarding schools and I see them suffer, I see them keeping up the “brave facade” that I see back in the video here above. They don’t meet with others when they are sad and lonely, and when they feel some tears coming up when among friends, they say they’re “being silly”.

Sometimes they share their grief, the grief of a premature empty nest, the grief of not seeing their children grow up, become teenagers and young adults, the grief of not really being part of their childrens’ life. They are the bereaved. And there is the fear that their children may not want to come back and visit in the future, that they will resent their decisions. They are lonely and abandoned.

I understand that for many internationals who move frequently, a boarding school gives some continuity their children usually miss, but I can’t but wonder: why would they choose a life far away from their children, a life that tears their family apart? Isn’t it one of the reasons we have children, to raise them ourselves, and not to let this part to someone else, some stranger?

I have seen children suffering because of frequent moves. I have seen these children being sent to boarding school because of their suffering. I honestly doubt that being separated from their parents, who usually are the pillar and only constance in their young life, is the best and healthiest solution.

I could go on and on writing about this topic but I leave it here, open… for everyone who reads this continue the discussion in the comments.

I surely am not here to judge.

Like one of the mothers says at the end of the video: I wonder what the long term effect is on children who are growing up like this. When children are separated from their parents it always has an effect on everyone involved, and there is not one right solution that fits all.

Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs there are, because it involves emotions, requires tough decisions, and leaves us with many doubts, uncertainties that affect us because they involve people we love.

Ruth van Reken wrote a very important book about her own experience at boarding schools. Letters never sent is a collection of letters she never sent to her mother, where she shares her thoughts, experiences, her sad moments, her worries.

I can also recommend Unrooted Childhoods,a collection of stories from adults who grew up abroad.

What is your opinion or experience with sending children to boarding school? Please share it in the comments here below.

It was so for me and my family when we realized on the 25.12. that someone not invited, and surely not Santa!, had walked into our home while we were sleeping.

What happened

Someone took my husbands’ wallet and my sons’ phone. The fact that the burglar didn’t consider taking our children’s tablets and cellphones who were laying right next to my son’s phone, all recharging for the next day, made us hesitate to believe what happened. We thought they were just misplaced, but we quickly realized that this couldn’t be the case as my husband always places his wallet on the same spot and my son always puts his electronic devices on the same spot to upload.

It was an unfortunate combination of coincidences that lead to the burglar having an easy job: we forgot to lock the door on our backyard – the famous achterom in Dutch houses – a door we never use, and only open occasionally for the window cleaners*, and we left the door to the backyard unlocked. Someone let out our dog before going to bed and closed the curtain without locking the door. – It’s one of those things that happen when you’re distracted and tired…

The burglar could just walk in, grab something, apparently he/she was just looking for cash and something that’s easy to sell, and walk out again.

I must add that two days before what happened, the alarm went off twice at our neighbors’ house, without anything happening. Although it put me into an alert mode, the rational part of my brain kicked in and tried to distract me from being overly worrying. Nevertheless, for some reason that evening I decided to take my handbag upstairs. I shouldn’t mention that this precaution of mine was being observed with amusement, but how grateful was I for my premonition the morning after !…

My children were the first ones going downstairs that morning and didn’t notice anything unusual at first. It was only when my son couldn’t find his phone, neither my husband his wallet, and when closing the door of the living room we realized that the door to the garden wasn’t locked and the curtain wasn’t closed…. that we became suspicious.

We started looking for the wallet and phone in the most funny places, also because we couldn’t believe that our dog seemed not to have noticed anything. – It took us a while (and a breakfast) to accept that no, our very attentive dog probably had enjoyed a good night sleep in my daughters’ room that night and that yes, someone had been in our house while we were sleeping. (I still want to believe that our furry companion noticed something and went downstairs interrupting the burglars… he just didn’t bark…)

What happened next

I immediately checked the movements on our bank account and my husband printed out the scanned IDs for the police and embassy to file. We called the local police to report the theft. They took a protocol, checked the doors, windows, reassured us and left.

I am very thankful for the way they addressed our children: they were asked and listened to. It is so important that children who make this kind of experience are taken seriously and listened to! 

How to cope with the after…

I didn’t feel personally attacked or unsafe at any moment, which is new to me, because I experienced similar situations before and was expecting to react in a more emotional way. But maybe because this time I had to make sure to stay calm because of my children, or maybe because I had developed a coping mechanism, no idea, but I was very rational and calm.

I had the urge to clean the room, the doors and all that was possibly touched though. I don’t have OCD, but I know from previous similar incidents that the cleaning is a way for me to find closure. I’m sure my psychologist friends have their very own theory about this, and leave it to them to interpret more into it.

All I know is that for us it was important to make sure our home felt “ours” and safe.

We talked a lot that day. We came up with stricter rules concerning safety – but I had to stop my children from wanting to install cameras and other devices… I was amazed on how our children were discussing about possible scenarios, the many ifs and found their very own way to process what just had happened.

One very important step we took was to inform people about what just happened. My children texted and called their friends, I shared it on my personal facebook page, only my husband wasn’t ready to share it (and still isn’t) : everyone has his or her very own way to react and cope with things. In my experience, talking and sharing is an essential part of processing this kind of experiences. It surely worked for me and my children. My husband has his very own way of processing.

That day we almost forgot to have lunch – no festive Christmas lunch for us to remember this year. When we finally sat down to eat, I was happy to see that the children were hungry as I took it as a sign that they were feeling better. – I guess my husband and I just were more aware of the more scary ifs and needed a bit more time to process those in silence.

Glück im Unglück

I am so thankful for the very useful advice I got from my facebook friends: to look under the bushes and trees, to track my son’s phone etc. It was in fact after my son tracked his phone that we had visible evidence that someone had been in our house at 6:24 and walked away with his phone to a place Leiden, where at 7:30 they must have taken out the sim-card. This was the moment it really sank in. I had to go out again and comb the streets in the neighborhood.

For some reason I not only looked under bushes, trees and in the gardens –my neighbors must think that I’m a crazy lady… – but I also looked into the canals. Call it intuition, but at some point I went to a canal and a duck that was looking at me caught my attention. I walked towards it and that’s when I thought to look closer to the water. I spotted something among the cut reed not far away from the duck: it was my husbands wallet! The burglar had taken the cash, bankcards and IDs and thrown the rest into the canal. – Luckily the driving license was still in it: one less document to replace!

They only took material things, but yet…

We kept on repeating that they only took material things and not even the most precious ones for us, so we shouldn’t worry too much. We were lucky that nobody went downstairs while they were still in the house – it would have been a very scary encounter!

They only took a wallet and a phone, yes, but they took my husbands and sons’ ID cards. Knowing that someone knows your name and how you look like, knows when you were born and where is not nice. An ID card can be replaced of course, but what will they do with the actual one? Will there be someone using it? For what purpose? – These are questions my husband and son were discussing and trying to find answers for.

Of course, it’s only things they took, but they did this while we were sleeping upstairs. The home that is supposed to be our safe place isn’t that safe all the time. We all know it: there can be fire, a flood (we’re in the Netherlands!), anything and this house that is like a cocoon, our “home” can be gone in no time. It’s once again the rational thinking that helps keep things in perspective.

Lessons learnt…

A part from checking all the doors before going to bed (!), we learnt a few lessons this time, I just want to share a few: Our privacy can be invaded anytime. The way we react and cope will determine how we feel about it: If we take it personally and overthink the many ifs, we become a victim and feel powerless. If we choose to not take it personally and try to understand the why and how, we can make sense of it and even see the positive aspects of it. – For this incident, we imagined that the person who did this must have been desperate and lonely, or was looking for an extra kick and couldn’t find any other way to get it.
I’d say that another lesson is: to give all that happens a place and move on. I call it “put it in the right box and tidy up” way of thinking: whenever something unexpected happens that shakes us up, we have to process it, talk about it (a lot! – but not everyone is the same, some prefer to process it in silence) but also find closure, a kind of closure that I like to compare with the end of a game. When you’ve finished playing, tried all your strategies, you tidy up and put it away. – The place I give to this incident is right next to the other accidents, thefts and more upsetting experiences.

It’s also time to take the best out of it: we spent a lot of time talking and listening in our family… we would have preferred doing so with other topics, but that’s life. The interesting aspect of this all is that we had a very low key Christmas anyways: we played boardgames and exchanged very practical gifts that we anyway needed (like clothes and new mugs etc.). We decided weeks ago that what we need most right now is to spend quality time with each other and that’s what we did and what we do.

This incident didn’t rock our boat, it just gave it a little kick, nothing more than that.

After all this, I may say that movies like “While you were sleeping”, “Kevin home alone” etc. have a whole other meaning…

– Have you experienced something similar with your children? How did you manage to get back to “normal”? What was the surprising or positive fact you got out of it? Please share in the comments!

• houses in the Netherlands have windows that you can’t open on the second floor or above, that are not reachable via a balcony or other window. For these windows – and the others too, of course – there are window cleaners who will come and clean the windows every 5-8 weeks.