What is Reverse Culture Shock?
Culture shock is the disorientation you feel when you first experience a new country or place. Similarly, re-entry refers to the period of adjustment that you will experience when you come home. Sometimes this is referred to as reverse culture shock, but I prefer the term re-entry. If you were only gone for a weekend, re-entry probably won’t take much. There will be some jet lag, but your kids will bounce back pretty quickly.
If you’re gone longer, re-entry might be more involved. The longer you’ve been traveling or the more exotic the location, the more they will have changed. They’ve had new experiences and seen new things. Their worldview has expanded. That’s ok – that was part of the point of traveling, right? You should expect a period of adjustment as they move back into their old routines. Disorientation is common. Here are some ways to reinforce what they learned and to help them to re-adjust to home.
Get back to routine
Routines are important. Your routine was disrupted while you were traveling. Chores weren’t done, bedtimes were adjusted, homework didn’t happen. Now that you’re back home, it’s time to start all of those routines again.
There will be resistance. After all, who wants to go back to chores and homework? This is normal and will subside with a little patience on your part and a little effort on theirs. It helps to set the tone by getting back to your own routines. This will probably happen naturally since you have to go back to work.
Talk about your trip
So what do you do with all the experiences that you had? Talk about them. Discussing it helps to reinforce their memories of the trip. It helps them to make connections from their daily lives to the lives of people that they met on the trip.
You have to be a little sneaky here. Kids won’t respond well to this if it seems formalized. Instead, suggest connections when they occur naturally. Eating dinner with chopsticks might remind everyone of the trip to Tokyo. Seeing an article in the paper might remind you of Spain. Their schoolwork probably includes a session on geography or social studies that will tie in with your trip. When that happens, don’t say, “Remember when . . . ?” That leads to a yes or no answer. Instead, ask, “What do you remember about when we were in . . . ?”
Younger children can bring something to Show and Tell at school like a souvenir that they bought. Older children may choose to write about their experience in an essay for school, or an article for the school newspaper.
Be ready for random connections
Kids make connections in their brains that adults sometimes don’t. When that happens, ask them to explain. Watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off recently, my son noticed the painting that Cameron stares at in the Art Institute of Chicago. The painting is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat. It’s a good example of pointillism, a technique that developed from Impressionism. My son exclaimed, “We saw that painting in Paris!”
We haven’t seen that painting because we haven’t been to the Art Institute of Chicago. We have, on the other hand, been to the Museum d’Orsay in Paris, which houses impressionist works by artists like Monet, Manet, and Degas. This connection that he made allowed us to discuss a whole range of topics, like how artists draw inspiration from one another and why some art is in one museum versus another museum.
This conversation only happened because we didn’t default to saying, “no, you’re wrong. We’ve never seen that painting.” Instead we asked, “Why do you say that?” and the conversation got rolling from there.
Temper their expectations
It’s often said that the only thing worse that looking at your old vacation photos is looking at someone else’s. Not everyone wants to hear about your awesome, life-changing travel experience. You probably realize that. Your kids may not. This is another teachable moment. You can help them to not become insufferable travel snobs. Yes, they’ve had a tremendous privilege in being able to travel. Not everyone has that, and not everyone wants that. Every sentence shouldn’t start with, “well, when I was in Argentina this summer . . . ”
How have you handled reverse culture shock or re-entry? Share in the comments below.