First published by Dr. Yi Yang on 9/4/2018 on Wechat 微信公号“孩子出国后”笔名杨麒桢
In the United States, 35% of international students come from China, with a total of 350,755 in the 2016/2017 school year.
The Report of a Mental Health Survey among Chinese International Students at Yale University published in 2013 was among the first to look at the emotional wellness of Chinese international students in the US. According to the study, 29% of the Chinese students at Yale had anxiety symptoms and 45% experienced depression symptoms.
Recent attention was raised by the New York Times articles The Parachute Generation and Chinese, Studying in America, and Struggling published in February and December of 2017, respectively. The mental health of these Chinese international students has an important impact on themselves, their schools, their communities, and their families back home.
To troubleshoot and promote their psychological well-being is such a multifaceted issue, and writing about it is such a humbling challenge. I’d like to devote a series of writings about this topic. But I honestly don’t know where to begin.
01
Then, the students that I work with in my private practice –one after another— hop into my mind. They are girls and boys, from middle school to grad school, some struggling with studying abroad at a young age, some having developed paralyzing depression and anxiety under the pressure to succeed, some stumbling in unhealthy relationships, some battling with acute trauma that happened in the US.
But they all have at least one thing in common: Their parents do not live in the same house, country, or reality as they live in.
As I think of them, they each have a distinct facial expression and posture sitting in front of my mind’s eye.
Qi appears adamant, matter-of-fact, and proud when stating how she does not tell her parents anything important because they seem “unable not to impose” their opinions.
Yu couldn’t help pulling the corner of his lip up on one side of his face when talking about how his mother “does not have the brain” to understand his situation and his father “does not have the heart” to.
Min hunches his shoulders and stares into space with listless eyes, as he recalls that his parents scold him for being “ungrateful, spoiled, lazy” and wasting the opportunity of studying in the US –an opportunity that came with his parents’ sacrifice.
Lan covers half of her face with her palm, as she tells me that her mother (who was cheated on and is divorced) would take over and start her own complaining spree when Lan talks about her difficulties.
Jie shrugs her shoulders with a wry smile, when she describes how her parents attend self-growth workshops and read self-help books, and as a result they view Jie’s complaints about life in the US as a force of “negative energy” and they urge her to start being positive.
02
No parents are perfect. All parent-child relationships have ups and downs. And, the above scenarios can happen to an American student too. However, for American students who can’t or won’t come to their family for support, they probably have their friends.
These Chinese students have to lose the friends they have made in China. They lose them not only to the distance but more to the fact that they no longer share life experiences, a living environment, or pop culture.
Meanwhile, making new friends here is not easy or guaranteed. Many Chinese students are motivated to make friends with local students, but struggle greatly with the difficulties that come with the differences in humor, songs they listen to, sports team they follow, interpersonal expectations, and more. Even if they want to make friends with other Chinese students, it is limited by whether and how many Chinese students are available at school. Therefore, the vast majority of students feel alone and lonely studying aboard. They are on their own.
As a culture, Chinese parents treat their child as the primary significance of their lives. To have your child study in the farthest place possible (both geographically and culturally) is no small deal.
This child likely is your one and only, to whom you have endowed all your love and discipline, sweat and tears, hopes and dreams.
And here s/he goes. Far away, and for a long time. How is s/he? How is s/he, truly? Do you want to know? Do you, really, want to know?
What I have in this moment is a wish. I wish that some parents of Chinese international students read the above-mentioned articles, this post, and many more.
And yet, they likely won’t. Most of the parents don’t speak or read English. Many of them lack nuanced understanding or sufficient awareness of mental health. Also, they are likely unfamiliar with foreign sources of information. The mixture of these obstacles is a microcosm of the unfortunate situation in which these parents and students find themselves. Studying abroad creates and enlarges the gaps between these parents and children, between two cultures, across two generations, as well as in time and space. As a result, the parents are out touch with the students’ reality. And they barely have the means to bridge the gaps.
Can we find a way to start building a bridge? Yes, Qi and Yu don’t talk to their parents; but Min, Lan, and Jie do.
When our child talks to us about their difficulties or indirectly communicates with us through their posts on Wechat, what can we do so that the child’s difficult situation will not be worsened by insensitive, inappropriate, or unsupportive responses we unknowingly give, and that they may want to open up more with us and experience being supported and loved?
03
Here are nine things to start with:
1. Be prepared that what you hear may not seem important to you. Be prepared that what you hear may not make sense to you. Be prepared that you may not like what you hear. Instead, you may be annoyed, disappointed, or worried by what you hear.
For example, your child may be experimenting with things you don’t approve of, or they don’t care about the things you care about.
But if your child tells you things like this, treasure it first, before your emotions get between you and your child.
2. Anticipate that your child will change and may feel uncomfortably unfamiliar to you.
It is understandable for parents to think because you raised your child you know them. This isn’t necessarily true and will be especially challenged by studying abroad.
You have to really understand and accept that your child is now living in an entirely different culture. For them to survive and thrive, which you’d like to see, they will not stay the same as what you remember.
3. Expect that you may not know how to help.
But it is okay. It is actually less annoying than if you refuse to think you are not helpful, if you pretend you know, or if you try to fit a wrong sized shoe onto your child’s foot.
In fact, it is heart-warming if they feel that you are there with them despite the fact that you can’t help. You are witnessing their struggles. When their struggles have gone beyond your experience, they may actually feel proud of themselves and be motivated to figure things out for themselves. It becomes uplifting.
Don’t underestimate the positive impact of you not knowing how to help but being there as warm company on the way.
4. Be mindful of your own anxiety and expectations.
It is hardly possible for parents not to have expectations for their child. It is the people who are closest to us for whom we develop the most expectations, some of which we are aware of and others are extremely hidden.
As the child starts studying abroad, you are likely to develop further concerns and expectations, which are related to the anxiety and expectations you have had for yourself, as well as your comparison with other families and children studying abroad. The first three points will help with this practice.
5. Bear in mind that what your child is experiencing is complicated and your response should be nuanced too.
What is “nuanced?” I’ll devote an article to talk about that. For now, a quick reminder is not to be absolute or forceful in your communication. Your child’s surroundings, experiences, and inner world are by no means simple, straightforward, linear, or clear-cut. Point 4, keeping your own anxiety and expectations in check, will help with this.
6. Be alert to your cognitive distortions.
For example, all-or-nothing thinking, over-generalization, discounting the positive, jumping to conclusions (fortune-telling, mind-reading), and “should” statements. Point 5 may help remind you to check your cognitive distortions.
7. Keep track of how many times you have repeated something. Nagging doesn’t really work, so you might as well stop it.
But it can be hard to stop because you are still worried about your child.
So what you can do instead is to find out how your child responds to what you have said. If what you said or how you said it had no effect or no good effect, then consider discarding it and adjusting. This is an ongoing process of making observations, taking in feedback, and trying out new methods. It is learning that no one can do for you what only you can do for yourself. To stop nagging and find effective ways of communicating, it will need to involve the 6 points above.
8. Set realistic expectations of your relationship.
Studying abroad is a testament to the nature of your relationship with your child. It reflects the strength and the weakness of the relationship like a mirror. Problems that used to exist are likely to persist and it won’t be too surprising if they worsen.
If the child used to be close to us but is not any longer, it may be a developmentally healthy separation; it may be related to the distance, time difference, lack of overlap in experience, and exposure to different cultures between us; or it may even be an exaggeration on our end.
9. It is understandable and only natural if you want your child to open up to you more. It will get there with some effort. Up until then, though, it’s better not to demand your child to open up to you or blame them for not doing so. Work on the above first. And they will be more likely to come to you after they sense the changes in you.
04
The generational and cultural gap is a fact and a fault of no one. Same as the gap in time and space. What is different, though, is that there is nothing we can do about the gap in time and space and yet there are mountains we can climb, sunrises we can watch, and hands we can hold when it comes to the generational and cultural gap. But they are mountains, still.
