The Foreign Service Journal, December 2004

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 89 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT I was just sad because it was hard for me to adjust to going to high school in the U.S. I was also playing catch-up my freshman year since even the pub- lic school was a lot more challenging than the international school I’d attended in Chiang Mai, Thailand.” Jonathan, an American Foreign Service child, lived in Uganda, Ethiopia, Brazil and Israel as a young- ster. He attended the American International School in Tel Aviv and Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Md. (with 171 students and 2000 students, respectively). He loved AIS because of its size, and hated Whitman for the same reason. “I real- ly disliked Whitman for the usual clichés associated with high school: cliques, fakeness, nobody really seemed interested in anything ‘differ- ent.’ High school taught me to be tol- erant of stupid and intolerant people,” he added. Not all students enjoy their inter- national experiences. One was angry at her parents for moving her. She says that she did not make friends easily and was often depressed. Both she and her sister went through counseling. “We are extremely inse- cure. I feel like I have no base, no home. Relationship-wise we have both been very clingy and intense in the past, although we now have suc- cessful relationships. A lot of soul- searching was involved (but maybe that happens with everyone?),” she reported. “I am sure I would have been a more balanced person if we didn’t move so much — although, of course, we saw a lot of cultures and different countries, and it’s quite use- ful on my CV as it makes people interested to know more.” Of the international lifestyle, she said she “would only do that to my children if they were very young.” Sage Advice: What Experts and Parents Say Helen Rudinsky, who lived in Slovakia as a teen, is a licensed clinical marriage and family therapist and a licensed professional counselor, with extensive experience in international consulting, expatriate support and cross-cultural counseling. From her own personal and professional experi- ence, she says that it is hard for chil- dren who have been raised overseas to return to high school in America. Often they don’t feel American, and many do not want to participate in the anonymity and consumerism of American high school, which is almost a different culture unto itself. Kids who are brought back for high school often spend years “playing catch-up,” says Ms. Rudinsky, where they have to learn the culture of high school and being a teen in America. It is easier to Continued from page 81 Continued on page 91