Julia Simens is an author, educator, consultant and presenter with a focus on international relocation. This has kept Julia coming and going from the USA for over 20 years. She has worked on five continents with families who are relocating all over the world. With a focus on family therapy and early childhood education she has helped many children and families adjust to their global lifestyle. Read more: http://www.jsimens.com/
Doug Ota, child psychologist has forwarded the book. He writes that the book "has broken the skill of understanding feelings into easy digestible and imminently practical steps that any parent can apply. No book has ever done so with the special issues of an expatriate or mobile population in mind."
Definition of the word "Resilience" according to Wikipedia:
"Resilience refers to the idea of an individual's tendency to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected."
The book is essentially written for families with younger children (unto approximately 8 years old) but it contains lots of information on different kinds of emotions (like fear, anger, grief, sadness, and aggression, just to name a few). It would be good for parents, grandparents, teachers and anyone working with third culture kids (global nomads) or expat children to read this book. Let's face it we all want to raise resilient children, don't we?
In the book Julia writes "Reflections about moving" and one sentence just jumps out of the page. It is the sentence:"Children understand and want to talk about what their life has been being an expat child". I think it is so true. Remember I know what she is talking about, I made several international moves as a child. I think this would also be true for children of refugees, immigrants, international adoptees and other kids known as cross cultural kids. So please let's make an effort to talk with these kids moving globally.
Watch this film and experience the book launch in May 2011 at the New International school in Thailand.
Here is a book review of "Emotional Resilience and the Expat Child" written by Wordgeyser (an expat blogger living in the Netherlands).
Listen to Jo Parfitt interview Julia Simens on the Writers Abroad Radio Show. It's all about why Julia wrote the book.
Julia wrote an article for the website Expat women For Mothers: But just how resilient are you raising your children to be?
Read more on Moving globally with kids: part one and part two.
Interested in reading more books on this topic?
Do you have any tips to raise resilient children? Please add your tips.
I'm currently working on a book about the importance of emotional resilience in expat life, and feel that Julia Simens' book is an excellent place to start when dealing with younger children. Helping children (anyone, really) to accurately identify and address their feelings is the start to the conversations and activities that help them express themselves. This is especially important when dealing with mourning the loss of as well as celebrating the people and places in their previous life, and making the adjustment into their new situation. Thanks for including my interview with Julia in your article.
ReplyDeleteHello Linda, Thanks for your comment. Great to hear that you are working on a book about the importance of emotional resilience in expat life. We need more books on these kind of topics. I'm glad Julia Simens wrote her book. I like the word "resilience", I associate it with some kind of "power". A "power word". Looking forward to your book!
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