Here’s a situation to break the heart of a mama of a TCK. These are beautiful pictures of Elliot with other Tanzanian children his age. What’s not to love? Let me tell you what I see when I look at these pictures. I see a child who is in his […]
The other day at our breakfast table, Elliot came out with, “They don’t say grace before they eat at my kindy.” Arthur and I tried to work out what he was drawing the comparison with. We have never been a big grace-saying family. We’ve been doing it a bit more […]
Arthur and I have been trying to put our finger on why kindy drop off is so different in Australia. At his new kindy, Elliot enters, signs himself in, hangs up his bag, puts his hat on, and goes off to play. What’s unusual about that? Contrast that with his first […]
We are in Australia again, somewhat unexpectedly. And I find myself parenting TCKs through transition once again. Except we don’t know how long this stint will last for, which means I can’t use my go-to strategy for making things concrete, that is, having a countdown. There are the initial transitions, […]
Elliot changed nursery schools recently. At first we were motivated pragmatically: because of our religious and cultural background, we would be unlikely to get him into the primary school we wanted (read: affordable without being an hour away from home) unless he was already in the nursery school. But then, […]
Imagine living in a place where the government monitors your every move when it comes to your children. When your child is first born, they send someone into your home to check the child’s health – and to inspect their bed. They tell you in no uncertain terms how your […]
When Elliot and I arrived in Australia, I had to give a tremendous amount of energy to thinking about how we would get along in Australia, since Elliot’s upbringing and my parenting had been influenced by our context in Tanzania. Since then we’ve both learned some things about how to […]
Meet Jesus at uni 