AIBU to think homesickness is no excuse for moving to a different country away from your child?

[SaucyHorse]

Excluding very temporary arrangements, which I understand could be the right choice even if difficult, I can't understand how anyone could do it. And I don't mean moving between neighbouring countries with land borders so that it might not actually be that far.

My friend and I are both immigrants. We both have children with natives of the country we moved to. My friend left the mother of his child a few months after he was born, but so far has been co-parenting his son quite well with his ex. The boy is now 10 and my friend is making noises about moving back to his home country (3 hour flight away) because he's just so homesick and he can't bear it any more. He is a citizen here, speaks the language, has a good job and a wife who is also a native of this country, so he's well 'integrated' if you want to call it that. His ex is obviously going to be staying here with his son no matter what he decides.

I just couldn't imagine even considering moving away from my children. DH and I are still together so it's different, but when I chose to have children in this country with a native of this country I knew that I could never move away unless we all went together. I committed to that and if we ever did split, I'd be staying here no matter what because I couldn't live in a different country to my children, at least before they reach adulthood. And my friend's son was planned but even if he wasn't, when you're a parent you have responsibilities.

I said to him something along the lines of yes, that must be difficult, but there's not really anything you can do about it because of your son, but he just sort of uhmed and ahed about it.

Am I being unreasonably judgmental to think that a parent shouldn't even have this option on the table, or at least not for something like homesickness? In my experience as an immigrant, homesickness can come in waves occasionally, but it passes, and it's usually a case of rose-tinted spectacles anyway. I can understand wanting to be closer to parents, siblings etc. but not at the expense of being so much further from your actual child.

Yes 6 would be minimum really if both where you start and end are near the airport. Could easily be 9.

And anyway why should it be the child having to make the 3/6/9 hr flight? Surely it should be the parent who has chosen to move to another country who has the hassle of that?

@wherewildthingsare

Yabu Aged 10 is an acceptable age for a child to make a short flight to visit a parent.

You can do that for your own children if the need arises then. There's no way I'd let my 10 yo get on a plane alone, that's assuming the 3 hour journey is all that the trip entails.

Plus why should the child get on the plane and not the parent who decided to move away?

It’s very different spending 3 hours in the car with your dad, taking a break to stretch legs and grab something to eat, chatting, catching up, singing with him, telling him all your news, than spending 6 or 9 hours travelling alone, aged 10 to go and see him. Why can’t dad do the 6/9 hour travel to come and see you?

If someone asked me in real life what I thought of someone who'd done this, I'd probably say, "well everyone's different, you never know someone else's circumstances, I'm sure they'll make the best of it" etc. etc.

In reality? I would judge the hell out of that person and they would be 'marked' in my head forever!

Can you imagine their mother making the same decision? She'd be excoriated.

Oh brilliant- well that’s great news: I can’t wait to parent my children from a 5 hour distance 🙄
I’m gonna be there via FaceTime. Perfect.

Seriously though, if it wasn’t your DB, do you seriously think if it was you that you could really be parenting from a 5hr distance, whilst say a nanny had them the rest of the time?

Three hours is quite a long flight for a 10yo, but the airlines which allow children to travel alone do look after the children properly - they are accompanied from the moment the parent brings them to the departures gate, to the moment the other parent picks them up at the other end. A flight assistant walks with them from gate to gate and checks on them during the journey, and the people collecting them have to provide proof of identity.
I was sometimes put on a coach to my dad's, for a 3-hour journey in the UK. The only difference really would be if there was turbulence or they found the flight generally scary - the parents would have to judge that.

@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo

If it holds true that anyone can be a great parent from 5 hours away, or 3hr flight as the OP posits, then it should be the case that both parents can ‘parent’ from equal distances.

Put both parents at equal distances (hours away) from the child/ren. Now what? Does this look like gold-standard parenting to you? FaceTime?
Because fucksake.. I could really be living my best life if that’s the case

[quote eightxmaspaws]@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo

If it holds true that anyone can be a great parent from 5 hours away, or 3hr flight as the OP posits, then it should be the case that both parents can ‘parent’ from equal distances.

Put both parents at equal distances (hours away) from the child/ren. Now what? Does this look like gold-standard parenting to you? FaceTime?
Because fucksake.. I could really be living my best life if that’s the case[/quote]
Yes, it’s called boarding school.

@eightxmaspaws I'm not quite sure why you have such an issue with my brother trying to make the best of a shit situation for him but you're coming across as a bit of a dickhead.

He fought tooth and nail in court, he sold his house to pay the legal bills and essentially she won. He couldn't compete against a very wealthy new partner and a shiny new lifestyle with a damn pony at the end of the garden.

He prioritised his daughters emotional health so she didn't have a clue how upset he was. Or that he spent hours on the phone to the samritans week after week. And it paid off. As an adult his dd knows where stability lies. And it doesn't have a pony at the bottom of the garden.

@ravenmum is correct. Unaccompanied children are very well cared for by the airlines. Age 10 is when we started sending ours unaccompanied back to visit cousins/family in China. Which is a 10hr flight. But the hrs don’t really matter so much, so long as it is a direct flight. Your child is never wandering alone in an airport. On the plane, they usually have gift bags with age appropriate activities and a free games console. Family drops them off at one airport, and family picks them up at next airport. Who is doing this is pre-arranged with airline and they check ID and so on. Your child isn’t going to be handed over to a random claiming to be a relative.

Plus why should the child get on the plane and not the parent who decided to move away?

Usually that’s what parents do when the child is very young. The parent flies out, picks up child and flies back to their home with the child. When the weeks/months there are over, the other parent flies out, collects child and flies back with them. But around age 10, a child that is used to regularly travelling by air is generally happy to fly unaccompanied and so there is no need for the extra expense to the parents.

@AccidentallyOnPurpose

When children are young the parent often travels, sometimes to collect sometimes they will stay in the country. When my friends ex wife left the UK he used to fly out and collect his daughter and fly out to take her back as well. When she was older and happy to fly alone she did.

Airline staff are brilliant with lone children, I used to fly to Pakistan every summer holiday and I was looked after very very well by staff.

I’m horrified that on a parenting website, a third of people think it’s just fine and dandy to abandon your young kids because you want to go “home”. That’s having chosen to leave “home”, settle somewhere else, marry someone local, have children, bring them up to be locals of that country etc. Just astounding.
And yes I can understand homesickness, which is why I would never go and live in another country in the first place!
And as someone else pointed out, journey times should be quoted as door to door. A 3 hour flight is actually likely to be a 6 hour journey at least, once you factor in travel at either end and checking in at the airport and so on.
I guess some people just don’t love their kids that much.

My sister is horribly homesick - has been for a long time - and she now has a terminal illness and is resigned to never ‘coming home’. She has grown up children (and now grandchildren) and she chose to stay to be close to her children.

I can’t say what’s right or wrong for this man - he must know that the grass is never greener?

@Bagamoyo1

I’m horrified that on a parenting website, a third of people think it’s just fine and dandy to abandon your young kids because you want to go “home”. That’s having chosen to leave “home”, settle somewhere else, marry someone local, have children, bring them up to be locals of that country etc. Just astounding. And yes I can understand homesickness, which is why I would never go and live in another country in the first place! And as someone else pointed out, journey times should be quoted as door to door. A 3 hour flight is actually likely to be a 6 hour journey at least, once you factor in travel at either end and checking in at the airport and so on. I guess some people just don’t love their kids that much.

Sorry but that’s really ignorant. It’s like a SAHM saying that a working mum doesn’t love her kids that much because she chooses to work all day and put her baby/toddler in a nursery (which I have heard called a “day orphanage” to my face before). Or parents who send children to local school being “horrified” that other parents send their child to a boarding school. Or being shocked because a mother in the Armed Forces is gone for 6 months to a year on deployments to a war zone where she could be killed- how dare she choose a career that take her away from her child and risks her life..she must not love them right?

It’s not ideal to have parents living a days travel away from each other, but it can be made to work. It’s not “horrifying” and its got nothing to do with lack of love for your children.

OP, is he thinking of having children with his new partner?

I’m very cynical and wonder if he will subtly or slowly disengage from his child and won’t pay things like child support when he has other children.

Comparing the bloke in the OP to someone making the sacrifice of military service is absurd. He wants to move back home out of choice away from his child. He’s not defending his nation.

[quote WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo]@eightxmaspaws I'm not quite sure why you have such an issue with my brother trying to make the best of a shit situation for him but you're coming across as a bit of a dickhead.

He fought tooth and nail in court, he sold his house to pay the legal bills and essentially she won. He couldn't compete against a very wealthy new partner and a shiny new lifestyle with a damn pony at the end of the garden.

He prioritised his daughters emotional health so she didn't have a clue how upset he was. Or that he spent hours on the phone to the samritans week after week. And it paid off. As an adult his dd knows where stability lies. And it doesn't have a pony at the bottom of the garden.[/quote]
Er.. I have no issue with your brother. None. Call me a dickhead if you like but it's completely unwarranted. It is entirely commendable when any parent is fighting to remain an active parent.
Many many people get shafted by someone (male or female) that they once thought was a good decent person, and really believed in to have kids with and be in a forever relationship. Sounds like your DB's ex is shitty - but the irony there is that as he's the guy who fought tooth and nail and prioritised his daughter- he was always going to win in terms of an affectionate relationship with his child.

What I am sick of is the idea that anyone can parent properly from 100s or 1000s of miles away. It's nonsense. If that's the definition of good parenting then what does that mean for the rest of us? If we all just decided that the day-to-day needs of a child isn't 'parenting'. We can all just parent via Zoom? Fan-fucking-tastic, I'm off to parent from the Cayman Islands.

This is not a swipe at your brother. Maybe learn to stop taking everything so personally.

I actually have a father who 'just' worked away a lot and very long hours, though he did live in the same house and my parents are still married. Although I love him, I do think he was a pretty bad father and I know he has regrets now because we aren't particularly close, which is a direct consequence of the fact that he only did the fun, occasional bits of parenting. My mother did all the day-to-day work of actually raising us. We hero worshipped him as small children, but in the end I realised he didn't really know us that well. It's my personal feeling based on my own experiences as a child that being there in your child's life for the boring, mundane everyday bits is really important. I appreciate that everyone has different perspectives and experiences that colour the way they see things and I don't say that I'm objectively correct in this. It's just something I prioritise.

I would have said that my friend is not like this at all and he has always been very involved in his son's life. But it would be impossible to maintain that from such a distance. It's unavoidable. You simply wouldn't be doing any of the day-to-day stuff, just the fun holidays. Video calls are OK, but it's nothing like being in the same room.

I do see that a severely depressed parent is in nobody's best interests, though.

I’m horrified that on a parenting website, a third of people think it’s just fine and dandy to abandon your young kids because you want to go “home”. That’s having chosen to leave “home”, settle somewhere else, marry someone local, have children, bring them up to be locals of that country etc. Just astounding.
And yes I can understand homesickness, which is why I would never go and live in another country in the first place!
No-one thinks it's fine and dandy. People considering this are usually highly conflicted, and know that it is far from ideal. And they are not generally thinking about abandoning anyone - that's tabloid newspaper language.

As I said earlier, not everyone has planned their life out to be like this. Things happen - not all children or moves abroad are planned from the outset. Not everyone is as insightful as you are when it comes to judging quite how homesick they will be. Or they feel a bit homesick but don't realise that it will get worse in another five or ten years' time. Or they don't feel homesick at all until their relationship falls apart and they are alone and cut off from the local friendships and family they enjoyed through their ex.

OP, it sounds like you have had a similar experience to me. Did you also learn to put your own needs and wishes second, as it was pointless hoping for more?

@turnitonagain

Comparing the bloke in the OP to someone making the sacrifice of military service is absurd. He wants to move back home out of choice away from his child. He’s not defending his nation.

How is it absurd? Everyone in the armed forces is a volunteer who made a choice. It’s still a choice that takes you away from your children. And let’s get real, they’re not “defending their nation” these days, the wars are all about defending political interests abroad. No one is invading the U.K.

The OPs choice is to choose to take care of his mental well-being and live where he has a support system. How many times have I read on here that a happy mother means a happy child. So this doesn’t count for a father who is terribly isolated and homesick, a stranger in a foreign land?

What I am sick of is the idea that anyone can parent properly from 100s or 1000s of miles away. It's nonsense.

But that’s not what we are saying. The “parenting” happens when the child is with a parent. Why is it so horrifying if a child has to travel 3hrs or even a full day between their two parents to then get said “parenting”? What’s your cut off? 20minute drive? 1hr car ride? 45minutes on the Tube?

Can a couple that splits and one goes say, back to Manchester and the other stays in London not make arrangements to share child residence in terms of weeks/months with one parent followed by weeks/months with the other parent? What is so superior about parents that drop off the children every few days as opposed to every few months?

YABU...I don’t think anyone is a position to judge unless they’ve experienced being a migrant and living far from family and friends. Irrespective of the length of time you live in a new country, you’ll always miss your home, your family, your culture. As it happens, I married and had children with a “native”. I will stay for as long as dc are young but will definitely retire back home when the time comes.

Irrespective of the length of time you live in a new country, you’ll always miss your home, your family, your culture.
Some people feel that way, others less so. I'd miss my adopted home and culture, and my family here if I went "back" to the UK, even now the kids are adults and I'm no longer with the guy I stayed here for originally.
Not being allowed to vote on Brexit has made me feel as if the UK does not value me as a citizen. I'm fine with never going back now.