Our greatest challenge when we took the decision to move back to India was to prep our children ages 7 and 4 about the move. It was filled with turmoil and guilt as we felt we were uprooting them from their only known environment. With the big promotion, a negotiated expat move to Bangalore and a chance to return to homeland India, the decision was made.We had to help our children understand, cope and deal with the relocation. Kids are very resilient and can cope better sometimes than adults and adjust well to new environments. But they also feel the pain and emotion of separating from their comfort zone. We had to make an action plan to make the transition easier for them.
We had three months before we made the move to India. We felt it was sufficient time to sit down and share the news with the kids and give them enough time to prepare for this. At first the kids protested loudly and we listened, acknowledged and accepted their reaction. My seven-year-old daughter refused to leave her school and expressed her concern that she would miss her teachers and friends. My four year old asked, when we would come back. She was used to our yearly visits to meet Grandma in India and assumed we would be back.
After a lot of hugs and kisses when they were both finally ready to acknowledge that the move was going to happen, we decided we would make it fun and informative for them. We shared with our kids the school web site to show them the campus where they would enroll. We exchanged emails and mailing addresses with friends and teachers so they would always keep in touch with our children. I volunteered to go to my daughter’s school to talk about India and its vast culture and how I spent my childhood there. We talked about the different festivals India had, the wonderful places we could explore and the chance to catch up with family. The more we talked about India the more excited we got as a unit. We talked about their new room and how they would decorate it. When it came time to shipping boxes and furniture to India, they gathered the things they wanted to take with them and put them in a box marked “special”. Slowly over time, the anxiety and the questions started to thin out.
When it came time to find relocation services we chose Globe Moving and Storage Co. in Bangalore who were very professional in packing our personal belongings and furniture and even helped our kids get more information about life in Bangalore.
Finally we organized a farewell party for our children’s friends and made it into a celebration with promises made to keep in touch and invite to all of them to visit us. I think the kids liked the fact that they were able to say goodbye to their close friends and yes there were tears and never ending goodbyes but in the long flight to India we were all looking forward to our exciting future in Bangalore.
