loopiestrats

hi

Before you got to australia did you
(apart from talk to your children about oz in general)
prepare them
like land marks, royals, animals,parliament, etc
things we just pass on to our children or they pick up at school will it just come to them over there or do they need a bit of help so they dont feel so unsettled

is there a good website for children?

sorry if this sounds bizarre but it just came to me and i wondered
Thanks

Grayling

They probably already know about the Queen and royal family of Australia

moneypenny20

Children, generally, settle far quicker and easier than many adults. They get into school and life goes on in much the same way.

bourbon-biscuit

We bought our 11 yr old a book on Australian geography, history and culture- one of the Steve Parish ones so not at all heavy but has helped her bridge some of the gaps. Other than that I think just getting them into school and clubs asap and letting them watch Australian TV, read Australian books (both mine are doing the NSW Premier reading challenge and there are heaps of Aussie ones on there). Also, never pass up an opportunity to look up the names of birds, insects, plants etc, so worth getting some basic guides or using the web!

Sometimes I find it daunting when I consider how much Australian 'context' is unknown to us

K14

Hi

Here's a few things we did.....

1. before coming showed them anything we could about the area we'd be living in, photos of their new school and uniform etc.

2. used google earth and streetview to show what it would be like

3. about 2 weeks after they started school started inviting friends home from school once a week to help them establish their friendships

4. joined clubs - it was the start of basketball season, they'd never played before and joined one of the school teams. They loved it and really helped them "belong" to something.

5. I volunteered to help at school with lunchtime games and reading. Helped to get to know the other kids. (I do appreciate that I was lucky I didn't have to find a job straightaway).

6. Stress that they can keep in touch with their old friends - using msn messenger etc so that they didn't feel it was the end of their friendships completely. However, too much contact didn't help them feeling homesick. But I think they've got past that now (6 months later).

7. There were a couple of activities they wanted to carry on over here - ballet and horseriding, so we found a ballet school that did the same syllabus (RAD) and sorted the riding too.

8. Something maybe not to do was that we went over to Melbourne after being here for 2 months. Holiday was great but when we got back to Perth it turned out it had really unsettled 2 of us. Took a while to get used to being back in Perth again. Maybe should have left it longer before we went away for a trip.

We've had a few ups and downs with homesickness, with us and the kids. It took one of ours a few months to settle and the other was pretty much ok since we landed.

One of our girls really didn't want to come and now doesn't want to go home, the other was ok about coming and is pretty certain she wants to go home! Can't win whatever we do can we!

Good luck

Dorothy

Maybe if they're originally from UK, but what if they're from someplace else? They may not know. My kids didn't know that Australia had the same queen we did in Canada, for instance.

sue1964

My kids were only 3-7 when we came so i think jut going on holiday.
I did them up photo albums of family n friends 1 each.As they had no toys on arrvial gav e them both $100 each to buy toys.
Once at school started having people over for them to play with.
Don't panic most settle better than u think.