Job Discussion Forums

[demitrescou]

Don't see this discussed much on here. Understandable really, but as it's something that's been on my mind recently I thought I'd put it out there. How do you guys feel about being abroad teaching while your parents are ageing?

I've recently been racking my brain and scouring the net about possibilities back home (London, UK). I'm not exactly desperate to be back in the rat race of life in London working 40+ hour weeks, but similarly life abroad is somewhat over glamorized.

The thing that's tugging at my heart strings is the issue of being away (probably far away) while my parents age, visiting once or twice a year then disappearing again. They raised us and waited on us hand and foot growing up, aren't we, to some extent, supposed to be there for them too in their later years. In the years after retirement when there not so quick on their feet and perhaps need a hand here and there. The years when they're alone at home watching TV and doing all the things the older folks do. Shouldn't we be around? At least to spend weekends with them and what not. Just to watch that silly TV show with them; have dinners with them; watch the football game with dad; do some DIY etc etc.

I don't know why, but this has been bothering me a lot lately. My parents aren't even that old yet (still around 60 mark). But the longer I'm away TEFLing and not building a career back home the harder it will be to do so later, if I so wish.

Sorry for the depressing topic.

[Aristede]

[fluffyhamster]

If our parents' generation were really serious about family and wanting their kids around much into the parents' old age, they wouldn't have been so happy to accept the previously ever-rising and now effectively frozen house prices, would they? (But perhaps you have halfway decent parents who would e.g. share the proceeds of any house sale in order to help their kids put up a deposit. Mine aren't very decent, unfortunately, pretty selfish and useless actually, which partly explains why I went into TEFL in the first place - there is literally nothing for me in the UK anymore, but then, is that really so much of a shame I ask myself! ).

Put blunty, our generation has been exploited quite unforgivably by western governments, if you ask me (I mean, there is more work thrown our way in Asia than there ever was in the west. Hmm, wonder when the taxpayer here will turn though!). Witness the apparent exodus of young Irish people for a start.

Sorry for adding to the depressing topic.

[the_otter]

Yes - it's probably the main reason why I don't plan to stay in TEFL. I'm an only child and very attached to the A.P.s. Like my father, I have a first class degree in anxiety. I worry that something will happen to my parents when I'm on the other side of the world; I worry that something will happen to me and my parents will end up collecting a jar of ashes at the local airport. And rather unfashionably, I miss them.

[Glenski]

I moved out at 17. Was 4 hours away by car for several years, then 6 hours away. Then 4 hours by plane! My visits to the hometown amounted to once per year, and phone calls were pretty much a few times a year tops. I cut the cord long ago, yet I still maintain a good solid relationship with parents (who are approaching 80).

Do you really need to visit them personally that often? There's a lot to be said for technology like Skype. Heck, I came to Japan 13 years ago, and neither of my (divorced) parents had ever touched a computer in their lives. A few short years later, they each owned one and were creating emails. In the past 5 years or so, we communicate by email and Skype. Email monthly and Skype 4-5 times a year max.

Keep a travel newsletter or blog going if you want them to know what you are doing. I have over 50 people on mine, and it's a good incentive to discipline yourself every month by looking at the culture and events around you.

Am I worried about my parents' health? Yes, like any sane person, but...

1. There's nothing I can do about their deterioration.
2. There was nothing I could do about their health back in the U.S., either, because of the distance.
3. They drive (and have always driven) me crazy with their medical reports anyway.

Plus, in my case, were I to return to the U.S. for whatever type of work I wanted to pursue, it would not be anywhere near my tiny hometown. Nothing there for me anyway, so I'd be just as far away from the parents as I was before I came to Japan.

[demitrescou]

Sorry to hear about your circumstances fluffy.

Glenski, you make some interesting points and I think that teaching them to use things like skype is a pretty good idea but still not enough (form a personal perspective).

Sometimes I think that maybe it's a cultural thing. I'm a British Greek and in Greek families sending OAP's off to a home is just not done. It's quite a rare thing in Greek cultures. After a certain age the children will usually take care of the parents. After one of the parents has passed away, the norm would be for the remaining one to live with their child/children until their time is up. I think in English families it wouldn't be so unusual to put them in a retirement home or whatever it may be, where they can be taken care of. I'm guessing it's a similar story in the U.S and Canada.

Regardless of these cultural expectations, I feel that I want to be around them in their older years to do the little things together (it doesn't take much). Knowing how much happier they would be to have me close by, just to see me on weekends or even once or twice a month makes me feel guilty.

And what exactly am I giving up the opportunity to be close to them for? To be a TEFLer? Is it really worth it? Don't I/we have an obligation towards them as well as ourselves?

[HLJHLJ]

It's something I worry about a lot. No, there is nothing I could do to help with their actual health, but if I were closer there are many more things I could do to help practically. I keep in touch with Skype, email, etc, but that doesn't help when they need someone to lift something heavy or climb a ladder into the attic, things they really shouldn't be doing now.

I'm not especially close to most of my family, but the ones I am close to mean a great deal to me. I recently had a problem when my (virtually estranged) biological father became very ill elsewhere. I ended up having to make an emergency trip home. Not so much through any feelings of obligation to him, but because the pressure on my siblings was immense, and I already feel guilty that they are doing more than their fair share, whilst I'm off doing my own thing.

For me, I don't think there is any way around it, one day it'll take me back to the UK whether there is decent work there or not. When it happens, I think my worries about my parents will far outweigh my worries about work or anything else. So I'll deal with it then.

As my (step) father is likely to pass on before my mother, there is still the possibility of her coming to be with us, wherever we happen to be, but that would be another can of worms, and I don't know how it would work out. If she was still in relatively good health I would like to think she could split her time between us and my siblings, but she may not want to, or she may not be physically well enough, who knows.

Just to clarify: I don't, by any means, think that everyone should feel or have this sort of obligation to their parents, but if you do, I don't think there is much you can do about it.

[Hod]

We can�t judge others, but in the big majority of cases our parents did a huge amount, if not everything, for us.

Years ago on an Asian teaching forum, I read about a British teacher�s gravely ill mother. He travelled back to see her, in hospital with days left. There just aren�t words to describe the joy she would have felt. But then he went back to Asia to �finish his contract� and could see �the hurt in her eyes� as he left. I never understood how he could have done that. It wasn�t a question of finances; he was back for her funeral days later.

On the same forum. another teacher�s mother had days to live. He didn�t have enough money to fly home.

My parents are nearly 80 and a right pain. They cook the most woeful, blandest food and watch the direst TV programmes imaginable. I wouldn�t even talk to my parents if they weren�t my parents, especially my dad.

But they�re old and did the best they could for me and my brothers, and we realise that now. I�m in Germany and would think twice about a job further afield for the time being. In five to ten years time, my parents will be (with 99% certainty) dead.

I was once also the conscientious teacher �finishing contracts� in Asia or wherever, not phoning my folks for months. In 2011, I don�t know or care about any of the students from back then. I am only in touch with a small handful of former colleagues. If my parents had died during that time, I would still be regretting it now and who knows for how long.

I�m not suggesting teachers relocate to their home countries immediately, but at least keep in touch. Teaching is only a job, and for me anyone caring more about students, colleagues or so-called great lifestyles than their parents is messed up when it comes to priorities.

[Aristede]

[Aristede]

[bdawg_2]

Keep in mind that end-of-life experience (and subsequent legal bureaucracy) can be extremely stressful. I observed my dad age about ten years as he dealt with my grandmothers rapidly deteriorating condition and final death over the span of two years. Unfortunately my dad is an only child, which meant he had to shoulder a burden that was very, very difficult to do from the other side of the country.

Obviously everyone has a different situation. Just something to consider.

[fladude]

If there were reliable enjoyable work in America then I would stay. But my parents generation made choices they have to live with. They decided to have fewer children, to make America much more bureaucratic,to pass a lot of laws legislating morality, to ship the jobs overseas so that they could buy things cheaper and to load up the future generations with debt to pay for their bloated pensions. As such, they get to live with their choices, which in my case means living alone in their elder years. I hope that they enjoy the pension and the police protection.... They could have invested in the future of the country, but they made a decision that buying cheap items and having high real estate values were more important than being part of a social community. So there you go.

Anyway, there is Skype and letters home.

[demitrescou]

[fladude]

[demitrescou]