Parenting Abroad

Rating:
Summary: I know the author and this book is great ....
Review: I've known the author of this book ever since she left her homeland of New Zealand at the age of 17 and spent a year at my hometown high school in North Carolina, USA as a foreign exchange student. That was the beginning of her expat experiences. After her marriage to a Swiss, she lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Liberia, Zaire, Cyprus, and Austria - I may have left a place out, she's lived in so many places. Her children were born in Switzerland and as her husband's business took her to different countries, the children were right there with them. Ngaire's children have gone through many different experiences - from living in the fine art atmosphere of Austria to hiding in a hallway dodging bullets during a civil war in Zaire and having to evacuate the African countries. No one else could be better qualified to write such a book and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: for all expat parents!
Review: This book has loads of helpful perspective, not to mention the advice which is practical and insightful. As a parent of four children raised as third culture kids I find that this book resonates with so many of the discussions we shared with other expat parents, problems we worked through together, crises agonized over with our children and even the successes of a very rich family life. I wish we had this resource in the many years as our children and their friends grew from toddlers to children to teenagers and now young adults.

I am going to get copies for my children to read with the full expectation that it will help them gain a fuller appreciation of the special difficulties they have grappled with and overcome in their lives. As we fully expect our children to live as expats I also expect that they will appreciate the wisdom of this book as they contemplate parenting, both in passing on their own experience and their attempt to do improve on the experience their own parents.