Resilience and the Internationally Mobile Family

Maintaining your sense of security and personal well-being while navigating through the change and transition process of each new international relocation requires a considerable degree of personal resilience. Resilience encompasses the ability to set a positive, productive, goal-oriented, and fulfilling course in life. It further involves the ability to bounce back from stressful events, change, adversity, difficulties, obstacles, or failures and to handle such setbacks and challenges in stride.

Resilient individuals are able to adjust, adapt, and continue navigating their way successfully through life’s difficulties and challenges; they continue to grow and move forward in a positive life direction. The decision to move abroad and experience new cultures, lifestyles, customs, social networks, schools, and languages clearly requires considerable personal and familial resilience.

Resilience, the research evidence indicates, develops out of four primary and interrelated factors: a) the presence of strong social support systems (family, schools, and community) b) the development of one’s social-emotional competencies, c) an optimistic, growth mindset and, d) opportunities to develop a positive self-identity. The Internationally Mobile Family life experience offers a unique opportunity for developing such a deep sense of both personal and family resilience.

Individuals and families differ in regard to their degree of resilience. We refer to this as one’s ‘RQ’, or Resilience Quotient. Research evidence suggests that it is one’s RQ (not IQ, GPA, Self-Esteem, Test Scores, etc.) which best predicts academic, career, familial, and personal success in life. Your RQ is learned and developed over time; it can be enhanced and strengthened. One increases his or her RQ by learning essential social-emotional competencies associated with personal and family resilience as well as by experiencing positive, supportive social environments in the home, school, workplace, and community.

Our degree of resilience (RQ) serves, in many ways, much like a psychosocial vaccine. As we develop our personal RQ, children, adults and families become increasingly immunized from the stressful effects of change, transitions, loss, failure and other adverse life experiences. Individuals with a high degree of resilience (RQ) are found to be less vulnerable to the myriad of social ills/problems in life such as mental health difficulties (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc.), substance abuse and relationship problems. Resilience incorporates such personal qualities often referred to as character, grit, optimism, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, confidence, empathy, problem solving, aspirations, personal responsibility, and social responsibility.

We cannot avoid facing periodic changes, challenges, and stressful or adverse events in life. We can, however, work to increase our own and our children’s ability to navigate through and handle such events successfully. We can enhance children’s internal strengths to be always able to ‘bounce back’ and move on toward creating their best life. The international lifestyle provides both a potential challenge and a special opportunity to help you, your children and your family develop an ever higher RQ.

Importance of supportive communities

Healthy organisms can only develop and thrive within healthy, nurturing and supportive environments or, ecosystems. Accordingly, international schools, employers, and expatriate communities are the primary “social ecosystems” in which Internationally Mobile Families live and work. As such, they all serve key roles and functions in the international transition and adjustment process. The international school, in particular, is ideally situated to provide proactive programs supporting children and families as they navigate through the international transition and adjustment process. Programs can be designed and put in place to assist arriving students and their families in successfully navigating through the various challenges of their international relocation and nomadic lifestyles.

Children and adolescents require not only good academic programs from their international school but supportive social-emotional programs as well (i.e., pastoral care). The school can best assist and empower their students by providing them with the supports, knowledge and social-emotional competencies required for successfully facing emotionally challenging situations, cultural adaptations, and life transitions. This is needed not only to facilitate positive adjustment in their new school, job, country/culture, or community, but also to provide internationally mobile youth with those essential social-emotional competencies associated with optimal personal and social adjustment as well as optimal academic and career success.

Family Ecosystem

The family system is, without doubt, the single most important environment impacting children’s development. Educational research indicates that family dynamics account for more variance in the academic achievement of children than do all the school’s instructional variables combined. Warm, supportive, encouraging and cohesive families are associated with higher academic achievement and positive psycho-social adjustment in children and adolescents. The additional challenges and stressors presented by the international transitions of Internationally Mobile Families only increases the need for developing such strong, positive and supportive family relationships.

International School Ecosystem

International schools also assume a unique role in the lives of the students and the families they serve. The international school, unlike public neighborhood schools in one’s home country, lies at the center of the expatriate social and communal life. There no longer exists for international parents and students a network of extended family, community organizations, and long-time friendships for support as previously existed in their home country. Professional support systems and services are also not as readily available to the Internationally Mobile Family.

The international school is often the one and only resource available to students and their families as they navigate through the global transition experience. This is the special and unique challenge facing international schools. By actively working to support and assist Internationally Mobile Families as they navigate through the international life experience, the school ultimately becomes all the more successful in achieving its goals of facilitating optimal academic success and social-emotional development of students.

Stress, Resilience & the Transition Process:

Some individuals handle the stress of change and transitions relatively smoothly. Others however, find themselves struggling with culture shock, depressive or anxious mood swings, anger, confusion, and emotional upheaval. While one new ex-patriate finds the international transition to be exciting, fulfilling and interesting, yet another may find their personal, marital and family life deteriorating.