020: Yulia Carson | Great Advice For Expat Families

Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast: Raising Multilingual Children, Multicultural Living, Growing Up With Multiple Languages.

Yulia Carson is a multicultural trainer and she specializes in working with expat families. She relocated from Moscow, Russia to Chicago, Illinois 14 years ago. She studied History in Cultural Anthropology both in Russia and the USA – this led her to pursue the career.

I get a lot of questions from people who email me – How to do, what to do when a family moves abroad and plan to stay at a different country for years, what languages to use, etc . Basically, Yulia will be answering these questions in this podcast as this is her field of expertise and she works with these families who move in a different country.

In this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast:

00:47 Introduction to Yulia Carson

01:50 Personal bilingual story of Yulia Carson and what led her to pursue a path in a culture language

03:19 What is the difference between expat families and immigrant families?

05:17 What are the options of languages and cultures that expat families face when they move abroad?

08:10 Discussed children adjusting in a completely different environment

10:20 What do parents normally choose (on raising the kids bilingual) when moving to a different country?

11:20 Do kids still acquire the new language even if they’re studying already in the international school?

12:40 What is the most common nationality of families who move to different countries?

15:21 Learning a second language and a common language in a different country

17:50 What can parents do to prepare their children (linguistically and emotionally) when moving abroad? What steps should they take?

21:07 Coping techniques for kids with the intercultural training

23:22 Expats vs Immigrants resources and services

26:29 Who finds it harder to adjust in a new environment? parents or children

30:41 What is Yulia Carson’s advice for parents who wants to keep the culture and save the language for kids in a different country?

32:45 What to do if parents send their children in local schools and they still want to keep the language when they go back home?

35:30 How the action of the parents impact the intercultural training for their children

39:00 Fears of moving to a different country – impact to the children

43:30 “Once you discover a new world, you can’t shrink it back”

46:57 What are the resources they can use to prepare families for the transition?

50:01 Closing remarks

Quotes:

• If you decide to put your children in the local school, it’s up to you to teach your kid the native language

• I think Mandarin is the language of the future

• You need to start and prepare them for the transition as young as 5 years old. The older the child is, the harder it is for them to undergo the transition

• If the parent express hostility to the experience, the children will mimic the behavior as well

• The parents themselves make a point to stay connected in the culture and make a point to speak the language – this serves an example to the children

• Once you discover a new world, you can’t shrink it back

Items mentioned in this episode:

TCK World: The Official Home of Third Culture Kids

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