This year Premier Education will welcome 29 junior high and high school students to live in the great city of Austin for the 2018-2019 school year. It’s an exciting time filled with new relationships, schools and homes. We’re excited to see how God works through their time here.
“…and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and boundaries of their inhabitation.” – Acts 17:26
With all of this movement for our students, it’s important to be reminded about the stages of homesickness that are typical for any person moving to a new culture.
- The Honeymoon Stage
- The Culture Shock Stage – Irritation/Hostility
- The Gradual Adjustment Stage – Humor and Perspective
- The Feeling at Home Stage- Adaptation and Biculturism
You can read about the typical signs and symptoms of each stage as published by Princeton.edu.
As your new student enters your home, it’s important to remember that they are entering a whole new culture of new smells, transportation, language, foods, friends and all of this is coupled with the lack of his or her daily parental presence. The journey through each of these stages of culture shock and homesickness will vary from student to student. It will most likely fluctuate greatly from hour to hour in the life of your teen international student.
As a host parent there are two things anticipate:
- Your host student will go through culture shock and experience some level of homesickness.
- God is sovereign and has established your host student to live in your home at this time. He makes no mistakes. For this reason, God is with you, He is for you, and He will help you as you guide your student through this exciting next school year in your home.
“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us.” – Acts 17:27
