Hosting A Foreign Exchange Student: What No One Tells You About The First Week After They Arrive
The Uber pulled into our rain-slicked driveway at 7:12 PM on the second Saturday of August, and I immediately started twisting the dish towel I’d been holding for 20 minutes. My two teen girls, 14 and 16, leaned against the porch rail scrolling TikTok, too cool to admit they were just as nervous as I was. When the door opened, Lucas stepped out in a faded Belgium national team hoodie, his hair plastered to his forehead from the rain, and shook my husband’s hand so firmly I could see his knuckles whiten. He had two overstuffed black suitcases and a carry-on full of Belgian chocolate he’d brought for us, and he said “thank you” so softly I almost missed it.
I’d prepped his room for weeks: new cotton sheets in his favorite blue (the exchange program had sent us his preferences), a welcome basket with local maple syrup and a printed map of our hiking trails, a fan for the August heat. All the host parent checklists I’d read said to give them space, to jump into family activities slowly. What none of them mentioned was how that space would feel for the first three days: Lucas said “yes” and “fine” to every question. Did he want pancakes for breakfast? Fine. Did he want to come to my daughter’s soccer game? Yes. He sat on the edge of his bed when we left him alone, his phone clutched in his hand, and kept his door cracked an inch even when he was sleeping. I kept waiting for the warm, fun cultural exchange I’d seen in all the host parent blogs, and instead I had a quiet 16-year-old who never complained and never asked for anything. That’s when I started worrying I’d messed this whole thing up.
The turning point was random, on the third night. We’d finished cleaning up dinner, and my older daughter Mia announced she was heading to the drive-in with a friend who’d bailed last minute, so she had an extra ticket. I opened my mouth to do what I’d done every day that week – push Lucas to go, tell him it’d be fun – but I stopped. I’d been pushing him to do everything all week, and it obviously wasn’t working. Instead, I just kept wiping the counter. Lucas was drying, a thing he’d started doing automatically without being asked, and he paused before saying, “Can I come? Can I bring my Switch to listen to my own music if the movie’s bad?” Mia shrugged and said “Sure, whatever.”
When they got home at 11:30, I was folding laundry in the living room. Lucas stopped by the kitchen to grab a root beer, and he said, quiet, “She let me pick the second feature. No one in my family lets me pick the movie.” That’s when I asked him, “Why haven’t you said anything if you don’t want to do stuff? It’s okay, you know. We won’t be mad.” He blinked, like no one had ever asked him that, and said, “At the orientation, they told us if we are too much trouble, host families can send us home. We have to be agreeable.”
That’s the thing no one tells new host parents or teachers with new international students: that constant “yes” isn’t shyness, and it isn’t contentment. It’s self-preservation. These kids leave their whole lives behind at 15 or 16, and they’re terrified of doing anything that will make the people they’re staying with want to send them back. So they overcomply, they hide their preferences, they eat peanut butter they hate for three days straight just because you put it out for breakfast (that’s exactly what Lucas did, by the way – he never said he hated our sugary American peanut butter until two weeks in).
After that night, I stopped doing all the things the checklists told me to do. I stopped asking open-ended questions like “what do you want to do today?” that put all the pressure on him to please us. Instead, I started saying what we were doing, and gave a clear, specific out. Instead of “do you want to come grocery shopping?” I’d say “We’re heading to the grocery store in 10 minutes. You can come along if you want to walk around and pick out snacks you like, or you can stay home and play your game, no problem either way.” I spelled out all the unspoken family rules I’d assumed he knew: “We only close our doors when we’re changing or sleeping, but if you want yours closed any time at all, just close it. We won’t knock unless we text you first.” I stopped acting like everything had to be perfect and fun all the time – I’d complain about burning the toast, or argue with my husband about taking the trash out, normal boring family stuff, and that seemed to relax him more than any fancy welcome activity ever did.
It’s been six weeks now. We don’t have this perfect, magical cultural exchange every night. Last week, Lucas and Mia had a screaming fight about who left the milk out on the counter overnight, and that’s probably the best thing that’s happened so far – it means he’s comfortable enough to argue with us, instead of just saying fine. He still spends two or three hours every night texting his girlfriend back home, and he closes his door most of that time, and we don’t knock or ask him to come out. Some nights we all play that terrible Belgian card game he taught us, and he laughs when we all forget the rules. Some nights he gets takeout and eats it in his room, and we don’t take it personally.
I still don’t know if this is all going to work out perfectly for the rest of the year. He misses home sometimes, I can see it in his face when he gets off a late call with his mom. But I know now that the first rule of hosting any kid who’s far from everything they know isn’t just “make them feel welcome.” It’s give them explicit permission to not be perfect, and tell them exactly what the unspoken rules are, so they don’t have to waste all their energy guessing what you want from them.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Hosting A Foreign Exchange Student: What No One Tells You About The First Week After They Arrive