Went to pick Skipper up from the bus stop and asked her what she thought about learning Vietnamese with me. “Why?” “Well, maybe we really COULD go there?” Cue the waterworks. Instant tears. Instant shut down. I felt terrible. I was the worst. I thought she was at least open to the idea. I was wrong.
But Skipper has had difficulty making friends, and the ones she has… she loves them dearly and doesn’t want to leave them.
What could I do? I just hugged her and told her it was okay to NOT want to leave your friends. But that she might want to try looking at it from the other side – she’s not losing friends, she’s gaining an opportunity to make more friends. Nobody says she has to say goodbye forever to anyone. These friendships will just have to exist more on FaceTime and texts than in person.
It was torture, but I knew I needed to just give her the space to feel her way through it. She like solitude when she’s upset. So I told her I’d be in my office if she wanted to talk but that I’d let her think. And I went to do some research. Because if my girl was upset, I was going to make sure I found every possible thing that could give us an idea if she could maybe be happy there. I spent pretty much the whole weekend looking into everything I could think of that might matter to her.
Apparently making friends is much easier in Vietnam – people don’t generally “perform” socially. They just are. And the people there appreciate you for just… being. This hit totally different for me. Ken, Harry, Skipper, myself…. we ALL had trouble making friends. And now I was seeing that it might very well be AMERICAN kid culture that was the problem – but each of us felt like WE were the problem our whole lives. Why can’t I just act the way people expect me to? Why can’t I just mask what I’m thinking and be someone I’m not? Because I’m not. And Vietnam might just be a place where who I am is completely acceptable. Okay, that makes me feel better for all of us. But taking that one with a grain of salt – nobody can truly know how it’s going to be making friends unless they are there and trying to do so.
Skipper still wasn’t ready to talk, so I stayed up until all hours of the night researching all her favorite things. Art. Hoi An is basically the art capitol – she can get every type of quality art supply there for cheap. Music. Everywhere. Baking. How hard would it be to get all the right things so she can continue baking? Not easy, but not impossible. Ube. There’s tons of Ube around – she’ll be amazing at all the things she can get or make with it. Pho. WHAT? BREAKFAST PHO??? What is breakfast pho??? I needed to know. She was going to flip out. Turns out, breakfast pho is just pho for breakfast lol.
What about schools? She’s only 11, so I need to make sure the schools are going to be a good experience for her – it needs to have the right ratio of quality education and social interaction. Turns out there are international school options that are basically targeted at the Expat community – one in particular that is primarily English-speaking, focuses on all the arts (big win for Skipper), has an excellent curriculum…. and their guiding principles are things like “happiness first, exams second” and “will this help our students become happy, loving, responsible adults?” WHAT. A school that ACTUALLY CARES???? If every school was like this, the world would be a better place. And I might not even be researching moving to another country right now. Skipper is such a great student, but I worry about her perfectionism. Currently, she could get 99% on a test and not see the 99% of questions she answered right – only the 1% she answered wrong. I worry that she’s bored, and for now that isn’t a problem, but later? That boredom will result in the same thing it did for me – bad behavior, refusal to participate, and poor grades.
She still wasn’t ready to talk. But I needed my girl. Even if we didn’t talk about anything related to Vietnam. I just need to be in the same space as her and know we would be okay – whatever came of this whole thing. So, we did what we do. We watched the Gilmore Girls. (My mom might be the Lorelai to my Rory, but Skipper is the Rory to my Lorelai.)
That evening, I was brushing her hair after her shower. (She has a LOT of hair.) I told her I thought we should talk a little. I told her that I understand why this is scary for her and that I can’t promise we won’t go. But that I want to understand and address her feelings on the matter. And that I had spent the last two days in a hyperfocus spiral of research so I could figure out if Vietnam could be good for her. She was pretty quiet. So I told her that I wonder if the difficulty with making friends is WHERE she’s making them not HOW she’s making them. If the problem is the place, not the person. And that all the rest of us had similar trouble growing up. She seemed surprised by that one. I told her that I can’t possibly “know” because I haven’t experienced it, but what I’m seeing is that social structures are very different in other countries, and that in Vietnam they respond to consistency, not performance. And it might take a little longer, but they quietly start to recognize that you don’t like onions in your bowl, and that becomes a conversation. That conversation becomes a friendship – and all you had to do was show up. The one thing we’re all pretty good at. And the things that built that friendship are really a part of you – it doesn’t matter if you wore the right clothes. They didn’t notice what you wore – they noticed that you picked the onions out of your pho.
I told her that if we moved, she would have to go to a special school. And that it would be different because ALL the other kids there would be expats too. The all come from other countries. They all know what it’s like to be the new kid who doesn’t know anyone or recognize the street names. And she asked about if they had art programs. “So many art programs! Wanna see?”
So we looked at the school’s website – at the textile classes, the drama club, the soccer team, the gardens. And. The business classes. “What??? Business classes?” “Yep, check it out.” And I showed her the business elective classes where the school helps students to understand business from all the sides, and encourages them to start a business of their own. And she was sold. Because here? She had to convince her teachers to let her bring her business to school when they were doing an assignment about running a business. They were actually going to have the kids create business plans and sell goods during a marketplace event. And hers was… new to them. They had a standing rule of “no edible goods” but they never had anyone try to sell pet treats. So she convinced them that because it wasn’t for human consumption, it should be allowed. At this school in Vietnam, she would be accepted for who she is, without having to explain herself.
I told her that I worry about her being so hard on herself about the VERY FEW things she misses. And that those things don’t matter in life, but I know they matter to her. And that I think they only matter to her because of how schools in the US focus entirely on test scores. “But I don’t like getting things wrong.” “But you like learning right?” “Yes.” “If you never got anything wrong… that would mean you already knew it all. And there wouldn’t be anything left to learn.”
“You know mom. I was scared about leaving my friends. But that school…. I’m kind of excited now.”
Leave a Reply