Traveling abroad to study can be a thrilling experience, which can contribute to growing up and becoming more mature. However, the distance from parents can lead to emotional challenges. An international student who was happy about moving to another country may start saying that they want to go home, calling often, avoiding discussions, and constantly comparing everything to their previous life.
These are symptoms of homesickness in international students at the beginning of their adaptation period. As a rule, they include missing parents and siblings, food, native language, friends, routine, and familiarity with the way people live.
Parents cannot reduce that distance; however, they can help their child cope with these feelings. The best way is not to distract the child from the idea of home. Parents need to provide their children with enough emotional safety to get accustomed to the environment.
Listen to Your Child Without Dismissing Their Feelings
One of the most useful things parents can do is listen. When your child begins to say that they hate living in another country or that all they think about is their home, the first thing you need to do is not to convince them that everything is okay.
Telling your child, “You will get used to it,” or “Everyone experiences homesickness” may make them feel that you are dismissing their struggles.
You can ask them what they miss the most. Or “What is the most difficult thing in the past week?” What your child says may uncover a different concern, such as feeling lonely, finding their studies difficult, struggling with the local language, or being unhappy with where they live.
Listening will help parents to identify the problem instead of solving the wrong one. It will also show your child that their feelings are accepted and that there is no point in hiding anything.
Avoid Turning Every Call Into a Conversation About Home
Contacting relatives regularly is helpful as it makes one feel safe and supported. However, too many conversations about one’s life at home might intensify homesickness among international students, as every call will focus on what is happening there.
One can unintentionally do this by constantly talking about how much parents miss the child, asking when they will come back, or telling detailed information about family reunions and activities. Even loving messages can strengthen the feeling that a child misses all the things that happen to them there.
It would be better to keep a balance by asking what the child did that day, what was learnt, whom the child met, and what is planned for the weekend. One should listen to what the child wants to say about their homeland, but pay attention to what kind of life the child has abroad.
Also, it would be useful not to offer the child the option to go back home after each problem they face because such visits can be helpful sometimes, but constant suggestions of leaving the new place can prevent a child from learning how to solve problems.
Create a Healthy Communication Routine
Parents usually try to contact children more often to overcome their homesickness. Thus, constant messaging and multiple calls per day are very useful at first. However, constant contact is not helpful for developing independence in a child in the new environment.
Instead, one needs to negotiate with the child and discuss a good communication routine which will suit both sides. It can be several video calls during the week, a long weekend call, or daily messages.
The choice of routine is not important; what is really important is the fact that it must be regular and comfortable.
Such a call will be something that one can wait for, but it will not require permanent presence at home.
One should also use technology to have more meaningful connections. One can use video calls, voice messages, family photographs, and family activities to stay close to the child without always talking about the distance.
Help Your Child Stay Connected to Home Without Living in the Past
It is normal for students to feel attached to familiar things. They can be sent photos, allowed snacks where possible, a familiar book, or any object that reminds them of their home.
Such actions can give emotional comfort in hard times. For instance, a familiar recipe will make the kitchen feel more like home.
However, memories of home should help in getting adjusted to new surroundings, but not prevent this process. When each package, talk, and weekend event becomes an attempt to recreate childhood life, the surroundings remain temporary.
Promote familiarity but do not prohibit development of something new. A student can prepare one evening a familiar family meal, and the other evening they can try some local cuisine or go to some student activity.
Encourage Small Steps Instead of Telling Them to “Make Friends”
Sometimes it is very easy for a parent to say something like “just get out and make some friends” when a student is feeling homesick. However, it may seem very difficult for homesick children to approach unfamiliar people.
Parents can help their children with small but concrete steps like having a chat with a classmate after a lecture, going to coffee with a roommate, participating in student society meetings, or doing activities related to their current interests.
In no case is the goal here to form a large social circle. One familiar face can change an unfamiliar environment into a much friendlier place.
Instead of asking whether a child has made friends yet, parents can ask “who have you talked to this week?” While the second approach may highlight a perceived failure to make friends, the first encourages the child to think about how far they have come.
Help Your Child Build New Routines
When every day is different, homesickness may grow worse. A good way to combat this issue is helping a child to create their own routines. A child should try to establish regular hours for eating, studying, exercising, sleeping, and communicating with family members. Certain daily habits from home may be preserved, but some other routines may be changed to fit university life.
For instance, a person who used to eat every evening with their family may recreate that routine by having dinner with their roommates and classmates. If they had weekly walks with their family on weekends, they could organize walks around campus or in a nearby park.
It means that a child should not repeat the daily routine of life from their house, but build a new one based on the routines they liked before.
Support Your Child Without Solving Everything for Them
Parents naturally want to protect their children from harm. In such a case, parents’ desire to solve all kinds of problems that are happening abroad may worsen homesickness. Before doing anything, one should find out what kind of help their child really needs. They may need someone who will listen, but not call the university, landlord, or solve an argument for them.
A useful question is whether they would prefer you to listen or help find a solution. This small difference will allow the child to analyze his or her issues independently, while knowing that the family is ready to help.
Thus, the idea is not to leave the child alone with their problems. The aim is to provide some assistance which will increase the level of self-confidence. Such self-confidence is very important since feeling confident about oneself in a new place can be critical in overcoming homesickness.
Know When Homesickness Is Becoming More Serious
While missing home does not automatically suggest there is a serious problem, for many students homesickness is periodic and gradually dissipates with acclimation to new surroundings.
However, parents need to be concerned if the problem persists and affects the child’s everyday activities. If your child consistently cannot participate in class, withdraws from interactions with other people, suffers from ongoing insomnia or appetite disturbance, and cannot cope with daily tasks, they require more help than you can offer.
At such a point, you should motivate the child to take advantage of the services offered at the institution where they study. Various university services like counselling and student support services, healthcare providers, or any other suitable services can assist when the process of adaptation becomes hard to cope with.
Seeking professional assistance does not indicate failure. It means that the person uses the resource to overcome a complicated period.
What Parents Can Say to a Homesick Child
The way of talking to a child can greatly influence the situation. The most effective responses accept the feelings experienced by the child, but do not imply that all their decisions should be based on these feelings.
Rather than telling them to be strong, remind them that it is natural to miss home. Instead of “Why are you still homesick?” you can ask “What is the most difficult for you recently?”
Do not say to your child, “Just go out and make friends,” but ask them, “What is the one little thing that will help you tomorrow?”
When your main concern is the time when the child is returning home, say, “You don’t have to solve everything now.”
Conclusion
Helping a child overcome homesickness is not about persuading them to stop feeling homesick. Longing for one’s family and familiar places is quite a normal feeling for someone who lives far from home, and it will probably come and go during the first several months abroad.
Parents can facilitate adaptation by listening patiently, maintaining good communication, offering familiar comfort items, and making attempts to get used to the new reality. In addition, parents can give their child some freedom to solve problems independently while always being ready to provide support.
The most important thing is that adjustment takes time, and a difficult week does not necessarily mean that it was a mistake to go abroad.
It is not about making a child stop loving their home. It is all about making them feel safe enough to build up a new life while being sure that they have a place to return home to.
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