To think this is cruel and genuinely unfathomable?

[StormCloud52]

An acquaintance of mine has a three year old child. My acquaintance is Chinese but has lived in Britain for a long time.

Today, she shared a story that her DD had had her last playtime with her little friends for a while. When people have asked why, she’s said that her DD is going to China for a year to learn the language. I assumed acquaintance was also going, but no. It is then filled with people commenting that she’ll miss DD but it’s a wonderful, selfless gift acquaintance is giving her daughter. Acquaintance agrees she’ll miss DD.

Her most recent post is them at the airport. AIBU to thinking this is barking mad? It had made me feel so sad for the little girl. Surely she’ll be confused and distressed? AIBU?

Awful!

@RawBloomers Some children may have the ability to form secure attachments as you suggest but not all do. We are taking the risk of a child failing to do so and or being emotionally damaged in some way. Can we guarantee, as most are here, that all Chinese grandmothers are willing and able to be a satisfactory surrogate mother? There appears to be an acceptance of the tradition for grandmothers to be ideal loving caregivers only too happy to take on the role yet this is absurd. The one child policy will mean that the average mother will be less experienced at child rearing than her grandmother. (I am speaking here from common sense, though I have some insight from being adopted into a mixed SE Asian family).
Personally I think education is better left until the child is old enough to become literate in what is a very complex system that requires constant to be retained at a useful level.

Exactly what I was going to say.

At 3 years old her daughter won't even remember her friends or life, probably not the year in China much either. Young kids are resilient, I moved around different countries when I was a child and only remember certain things, which were all experiences and so glad to have travelled.

There isn't a mould which fits all and to be overly concerned about moving around comes from those who are happy to stay in one place and expect others be in the same mind frame.

I had the best childhood living in different countries, wouldn't swap it for staying at the same school. I had friends here, then made other friends, came back to the same group eventually and was fine. The main thing I noticed at even such a young age was the closed mindness of those same friends and that all they had experienced was the same thing every day. Xxz

My DD was a day student at an independent school and my DD always brought her Chinese and Spanish friend home to stay with us at half terms if we didn't go on holiday. They both invited her back to stay with their families in the summer break.

I don't think it's cruel at all. It's an amazing opportunity for the child. She will learn a lot more than just the language.

I take it she'll be going to a loving, caring, trusted extended family or something like that.

I would do the same if I could.

it is possible the grandmother is not going to be a good caregiver, but there is also the possibility that the mother is not a good caregiver. Neither possibility makes the practice of mothers or grandmothers being taking on the caregiver role a poor practice in general.

She can’t learn Chinese from her mom at home? There is something more to the story. Sounds like they are communists indoctrination and it’s required by the party. They come to our countries to pop out anchor babies but remain loyal to CCP which is waging a genocidal war against western civilization.

You probebly don’t have a lot of contact but I am in San Francisco and Chinese dissidents have been ruining the alarm on CCP Chinese supremacy for awhile. They are more brutal than Nazis. (not all of them but the CCP and loyal party members).

Everyone is different, some love it, some don't.

Same as boarding school.

This sounds awful, she won’t be bonded with her normally after that. I had a Chinese friend years ago and she spoke to her daughter in Chinese and the girl understood it well. My husband is Bengali and families speak Bengali at home so the kids know it well enough without being shipped off to Bangladesh. I left my eldest daughter for a month years ago when I went to Bangladesh and it was a stressful time, it was a mistake to go and leave her for that long she was just 3.

Exactly! They have opinions about the western ways of parenting too, they think our children are spoilt and badly behaved and overweight. But also very independent, ie support themselves at the university, pay their bills and student loan, most Chinese students here are fully sponsored by their parents.
I can’t imagine sending my children away for this long so I do judge putting the education higher than children’s emotional needs. I live in a foreign country and teach my children my language so they were fluent and bilingual by the age of 3.

I think this is a situation that is impossible to view as reasonable/unreasonable. You as a parent personally feels that this is unthinkable and you have concern for the child, as you would if it were you own 3 year old understandably so. HOWEVER, it is the cultural norm within the Chinese community. The view of ‘it takes a village’ is strong and grandparents are typically heavily involved in the raising of grandchildren.
All I can think is that this child’s experience of being raised between birth and the present day is different to your own child’s, I cannot make any assumptions but often grandparents stay for long periods of time and are heavily involved in the child’s care, their needs are met by multiple caregivers and comfort is offered in many ways.
my child who has never known anyone but me to comfort them with skin to skin, breastfeeding, 24/7 availability to them would be very traumatised by this. Another child who has been raised and needs met by multiple caregivers givers may have built the resilience and perhaps there is a sense of normality for them already.

This is very common in Chinese and Vietnamese culture, possibly other cultures too. Not your culture, not your place to judge.

So Russian roulette then.

I went to live with my Gran in Scotland when I was three. My Dad had to stay in London to work the years to get his pension. I remember phone calls and singing on the phone and daft stuff, going on walks and grocery shopping with gran. I never felt particularly traumatised.
I only have flashbulb memories of my time in London and the time without my parents was over in a flash. I knew they hadn’t abandoned me. Whilst there was no video calls back in the 70’s they still kept in touch.
I consider myself to have turned out fairly well balanced. As other posters have said the child is three and she is staying with her grandmother, not a stranger. Also it is much easier to learn a language when you are engulfed in it rather than having one person occasionally speaking it to you.

Why doesn’t acquaintance go with her baby?

It’s not normal.

Good point. Then the child would have time with family, immersion in language and culture, and still have their mum.
Obviously not straightforward but it depends who's the priority here.

On that basis do we turn a blind eye to child marriage and female genital mutilation because it’s not ‘our culture’ so we shouldn’t judge?

Don’t defend outdated and cruel practices in the name of wokeism!

While I won't choose this option myself personally, I agree with others saying it might be a difference in parenting approach. The concept of a villiage is much stronger in other cultures than a western society can understand. From a young age, the kids are used to being bonded with multiple family members. Grandparents in China are seen as primary carers whilst parents are working so there is not a large demand for daycare. The kid might not be as traumatized as you would think because being with extended family is the norm.

To be fair, I’ve never said she’s staying with her grandmother. I have no idea who she is staying with.

It sounds like you have such scant information about this situation that I have to wonder why you’ve formed an opinion on it AND posted about it?

She runs a business here.

The types of separation in the paper you cite are defined as ‘…exposure before age 18 as institutionalization, foster care placement, parental incarceration, separation due to parents migrating for economic reasons, or asylum and war..’

Can you please cite a more relevant paper where separation is due to staying with Granny.

Reread the OP then.