To think this is cruel and genuinely unfathomable?

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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?

But that’s just the fact he had bad family not the cultural practice. I know many white British friends with traumatising childhoods who only lived with mum and dad- you can’t write off a cultural practice based on one anecdotal experience.

We have had cousins stay, some for years at a time - the culture worked in reverse for us. To this day they’re like siblings to us and call my parents mum and dad. The ones that had good relationships with their own parents before staying still do and the ones that didn’t, still don’t. But that’s nothing to do with the culture and everything to do with their parents

And how often do you think the child has met these grandparents and been to their home, given they live so far away, hmmm?

I'm looking at this through the gaze of child development, where being separated from their parents for an entire year at the age of three to live with virtual strangers is inevitably going to be traumatic.

I disagree! I went off to france for a year when i was 10 to learn the language, no severe emotional trauma, PTSD etc was caused by this experiance - That all came about 15 years later!
Imersing yourself in the country is by far the best way of doing it, and seeing as there is much more in terms ofcontact options now - as oposed to when i went which was a landline and long distance calls once a week... Kid will be fine

We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.

I personally think it’s disgusting and shameful to compare a child going to live with extended family with female genital mutilation - that completely downplays FGM it an appalling way, just to point score.

I completely agree with this. It's an extended-family way of raising kids and I can't see anything wrong with it; it's just different.

Strangeworld also makes an excellent point about UK child-raising culture; the flipside of it being child-centric and focusing on keeping nuclear families together is that it relies on mothers (it is almost never fathers) being there 24/7 while also working and running the house. We see how much pressure this puts on women time and time again in the threads on here.

Resilience and independence are great qualities to instil in children and I do think they're often lacking in the usual UK parenting/family model.

Not years non-stop, as I explained very clearly. It's hours, followed by seeing their parents.

The boy in the example you replied to was there for weeks non-stop. No seeing his parents at the end of every day and at weekends.

The mother should be teaching her child the language. My kids are bilingual through my dh's effort and my support. If she wants the kid to go for a year, she should go with her.

I didn’t understand what you meant by “it”, and I’m still not sure to be honest.

I don’t think this situation is necessarily the end of the world. Would I have done it? No. But then plenty of people, in the UK and abroad, wouldn’t do some of the things I think are fine.

The UK is not a shining beacon of stellar child rearing. Our children are unhealthy, unfit and unhappy. So whatever we are doing (societally speaking) isn’t working.

You’re looking at it through the gaze of British cultural superiority complex. You have people telling you they’ve literally experienced the very thing you’re denigrating, yet you continue to tell them they are wrong based on nothing but you’re own belief in the superiority of your culture.

Calling grandparents virtual strangers also shows a lack of understanding of these cultures. No doubt the mother’s mother will have spent a lot of time already with the child. I’m not Chinese but from a culture with similar practices- my mum came to stay with us for several months after the birth of all my children. She also lived with us for a year at another point. If I then sent my children to live with her for a year, it will be in the context of a culture that already sees family as fluid. My child’s home is not just my home, but my parents’ home, my husband’s parents’ home etc.

You can think what you like, it matters not to me.

There are no points to score with strangers on the internet. ANY cultural practice that has the potential to cause harm to a child, at any level, should be unacceptable.

I've known two families that did similar. One was Chinese and the other Nigerian. Once the kids turned one they were sent to live with Grandparents in their home country.

To me as a working class Brit with an Irish background it's insane. But as a counsellor who has worked with people from a myriad other cultures I know it's very normal.

I've worked with clients who emerged from their school experience stronger and wiser but mostly I've encountered young people who were very damaged by it. The upper Class British custom of sending little kids off to boarding school at age 7 has very similar effects.

It's at the extreme end of the wedge but it's the same wedge.

Don't be disengenuous.

But it is very normal. Just not in the western world. The “normal” you speak of is just what you are used to. But there is a whole wide world outside of your country and unsurprisingly they don’t do things the same way.

Does that wedge include British parents who feed their children crap, put a phone in their hand at 6 months, give them TikTok at 8, pander to their every whim so they’re completely dysfunctional? And so I can lump them in with those who perform FGM on girls?

Nope - it was a stupid comparison and pretty disgusting and shameful to make it.

In Ireland it wasn’t unusual for children to live longterm with people other than their parents until the fairly recent past, though, especially in big families. Sort of informal fosterage. Usually grandparents, but aunts or uncles, too. And I can think of two London Irish people I know, roughly my age (early 50s) who, while their parents lived in London, spent years living with grandparents on west of Ireland farms.

He didn't have a bad family - the bad thing WAS the cultural practice. I don't know why you're bringing up white British family as a counter point because there are lots of traditional white British values that are also traumatising - sending small children away to boarding school for example. It doesn't matter WHICH culture, the fact is that just because something is accepted and 'traditional' doesn't make it ok.

I find it ironic you calling the poster disingenuous.

What does ‘extreme end of the wedge but it’s the same wedge’ even mean???

This is fairly normal in contemporary Chinese culture, leaving dc with grandparents whilst the parents work is common especially in rural areas, by leaving I mean as in only returning once or twice a year! It’s also more common for couples to live apart as in even on different continents! My dc’s friend didn’t see her father for 5 years as he was in China she was in the uk with her mum, a mature student … I wrongly assumed they had split but no, they are very much still married and a couple albeit unconventionally set up.

I couldn’t do this I should add but sending kids to learn culture and language isn’t that uncommon in other expat communities too

People judge all the time. It's whether they act on that judgement...

Culture is not a get out clause for cruelty.

Cultural practices such as genital mutiliation, stoning adulterers, 'honour' murder, beating of women and children, women forced into servitude for husband's family - these are negative things.

Culture can be harmful and oppressive as much as it can be celebratory.

'It's cultural' doesn't matter when it's abusive or illegal - it must be challenged.

Yes the wedge includes all bad parenting.

Not sure why that's not obvious to you.

It's bad parenting.

But taking a very young child away from the primary care giver is even worse than those behaviours.

They're not mutually exclusive.

Do you usually think in binary extremes?

It wasn't a stupid comparison - they're both damaging things being excused on this thread by "culture".

Comparing murder and abuse to cultural practice of children living with grandparents is just plain old xenophobia.

shameful to make it

Much less shameful than what that family is doing to their young child.

A grandmother is not a mother.

It's a poor cultural practice.

It being a cultural practice doesn't exempt it from assessment.