How do children adjust after returning to India and what kind of problems they face
Are you looking for information on how do children adjust after returning to India and what kind of problems they experience in the schools, society and family? Read our experience after returning from USA to India and see the challenges our kids experienced.
If you ask why did you return to India to any family who came back to India, these are the possible answers:
1. To make sure our kids grow up with Indian values and culture and provide an education similar to what we all received.
2. To take care of our parents who are getting older.
While most parents return to India from USA, UK and other countries for their children. A lot of parents think kids will get a better education in India and the Indian education system will help them grow up the same culture and with the same values we all grew up. At the same time, one of the biggest concerns for the parents is, how do children adjust after they come back to India. Some of the doubts we had when we decided to return to India from the USA were:
We had a lot of worries on how the children will adjust to the school and the challenges in Indian schools. But no matter what, we were determined that we will return to India. Our policy was, we faced the challenges here and millions of other kids do the same. So, why not our kids?
How do children adjust in the schools in India after returning from USA
John went to 3 different schools in the USA and studied 4 years in American schools. He is very determined on what he want to do, what he want to eat and whom he want to speak. He is pretty good at studies, but we were really concerned in his case due to his character. If does not like something, it is very hard to convince him to accept it. But if he decides to achieve something, he will probably achieve it.
On the other hand, Chris is just 5 years old and he has gone to a Kindergarten school in the USA less than a year. His nature is, he can be easily pushed to do anything we want. He is much more soft character than John. So we were not much worried on how he will adjust in schools in India after we come back. We thought he will like it here without much efforts.
It has been almost 3 months after our children started going to the St Patrick's Academy in Bangalore. So far so good. First 4 weeks we all struggled a bit. Kids frequently complained about teachers being rude and cruel punishments given to kids. I think this is one case where we failed to prepare the kids ahead of time. We underestimated the effect of punishments in Indian schools on kids who came from abroad. One day Chris came back saying teacher said she will chop the fingers if they come to school without trimming nails. Another day John came back complaining teacher banged and pushed hard on the head of a child and his neck bent and broke. (these were not true but were just exaggerations by kids since they were very scared)
We went to the school every few days requesting teachers to be little bit nicer to the kids for first few weeks until they adjust to the Indian schools. We met the principal complaining about the cruel punishments. The principal assured us that there is no such punishment in the school and it is all exaggeration by the kids since they have not seen the way teachers talk loud and strong to control the naughty kids.
Eventually, we realised the teachers are just 'threatening' the kids about the potential punishments if they do not follow the rules. There are naughty kids in every class and instead of hand picking such kids, the teacher makes general comments to the entire class about the punishments they all will get if they do not follow the rules.
Our kids have seen only the nice-talking in the USA. No matter what the kid does, teachers generally give no punishment in the form of harassment or any physical punishment. In the USA, probably the punishments are in the form of negative remarks in the progress report, but here in India, kids get it on the spot!
After almost 3 months in the school, our kids have adjusted well with the Indian school system. Now they realise everything the teachers say is not really targeted to them.
John is pretty good at studies in the school. The preterm exam is over and he scored more than 95% for most subjects. Hindi is the only subject he still struggles a bit, which is he is progressing good so far. He never studied Hindi before but here Hindi starts in 1st grade. In his class (3rd standard), there is a pretty big textbook for Hindi and he has a lot to learn.
Chris is in UKG here and there is nothing much to study yet. He likes the school but we will know the real progress once they start some real teaching.
The sports meet at St Patrick's Academy was finished just 2 weeks ago and kids really enjoyed it. I think this one program made the kids love the school more than anything else so far.How do children adjust with food after coming back to India
We were leading an Indian life in the USA even though I lived there for more than 10 years. We tried to bring up our kids like Indians and not like Americans, even though we had a lot of challenges after they started going to schools in the USA. However, food is one thing that we could not really "Indianize" for kids. In the mornings, they had to rush to school and we had no time to prepare dosa or idly. So packed up tonnes of serials for the breakfast. For lunch, most days they eat sandwiches and burgers at school. When we go to dinner on the weekends, kids settled with pizza. We were expecting that kids will have a tough time managing with food in India. We cannot afford to buy pizza and burger every day. Serials are available but are expensive. So we carried a lot of serials for kids to survive first few months until they adjust well in India. We shipped the food in the container. But the container took more than 9 weeks to arrive in India and by that time kids were well adjusted with the typical Indian food. They started liking dosa and idly. When we go out in Bangalore, my son's favourite is Paper Masala Dosa, which will spread in a large area on the table. He said NO to his all time favourite Subway Sandwich, even though I offered him to buy it a couple of time just to make him feel good in India. However, he still likes to have pizza once in a while.
So the bottom line is, kids took no time to get used to the Indian food. They are yet to get appreciate a lot of spices in the food but love non-spicy Indian food.
If you are worried about how kids will like the food after they come back to India, keep aside your worries. Kids will simply adjust with anything in no time.How kids adjust with friends in India after returning from other countries
Initially, kids had a bit difficulty in adjusting with other kids. But it took very little time for them get used to the environment here and start playing with everyone else. In 3 months, they simply forgot all their buddies in the USA and started making friends here.
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It was a good read. I think that the kids get used to changing situations better in comparison to adults. I wish that your kids always keep smiling and making others smile too.