Saturday, August 18, 2012

Sora asks


Sora has left a new comment:

Hi Isaac,
Our family is preparing to become missionaries in a developing country. What can we do as parents to help our kids adjust to all the changes this will involve for them? Is there anything your parents did or do that you and your siblings found particularly helpful? Anything we should NOT do? Our children are ages 10, 8, 6, and 4.







parental notes: 
1.isaac is Haitian but was adopted at 14 months of age and lived in MN from that time until he was four - his language skills developed in the USA therefore English is his first language. moving here as a Haitian-American kid and not knowing Kreyol was and is hard - mainly because the expectation when people look at him is that he would speak Kreyol fluently. the expectation is what all three of our Haiti-born kids struggle with and it has served more to discourage their learning of Kreyol than to encourage it.  we'll get there! 
2. we spent a ton of time with our kids at the beginning and tried not to jump right into too much work.  that kind of happened, i think. our kids have always been encouraged to tell us whatever they feel and think --- so from time to time that means "I hate it here" is what we're hearing. when we moved we had: 15, 10, 4, 4, and almost 2 year old (no Phoebe or Lydie yet).  I think it was by far the hardest for our 15 year old daughter at first -- which makes tons of sense. 

prayers for you as you move and transition and make lots of adjustments! 

8 comments:

  1. HI Isaac,
    My name is Josiah. I live in Minnesota and I am 8 years old. I love to ride bikes and play at the beach in the summer.

    My mom has been to Haiti 4 times and and my dad has been 2 times. Whenever they get home I love looking at their pictures and watching the videos. I can't wait to come visit Haiti someday.

    I noticed in many of the pictures taken in Cite Soleil that the boys are naked and the girls are too except that they wear underwear.

    My mom also follows your mom's blog and noticed that your little sisters also sometimes are naked except for underwear in some of her pictures.

    I think it is because it is so hot in Haiti but my mom thinks their must be a different reason that being naked in front of other people is acceptable for children in Haiti. Do you know?

    Thank you,
    Josiah

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  2. Does this video work for anyone? It doesn't play for us in Haiti. Hoping it is there for real for you guys.

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  3. Nope, video doesn't work for me either

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  4. shoot. well --- I will try to load it another way sometime this weekend and re-paste in a new one sometime.

    sorry!

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  5. Tara, the video works fine (at least in CA).

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  6. I think we fixed it. If you cannot see it at your house - let us know.

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Hi! I'm Isaac. Ask me anything!