TEENS ABROAD – HOW TO PROTECT THEM FROM STRESS
Lana shares her thoughts with RWA

Is there anyone who doesn't know an old commonplace rule: do everything in the right time? It goes without saying, we all do. We know for sure - don't eat late at night, unless you want your boyfriend to spend hours trying to find your waist. We don't doubt we have to give birth to the first baby until we turn over 30, otherwise not only will we have a bunch of diseases, also at our child's wedding party we won't be able to dance with his gorgeous father/mother-in-law!

A lot of tiny hammers tap in our brain –
Don't want to get pregnant - take a pill on time...
Don't want to be fired - come to the office on time...
Don't want to be a cat-loving spinster - get married on time...
Don't want to catch a bad flue - get vaccinated on time...

Dear women, if you have made up your mind to leave your country and settle down across the ocean, make sure that you do it in the right time as well. The definition of "the right time" is long and complicated, so I will try to convey the main point.

Leave your country when your child is young and don't procrastinate it till he grows up. Little children perceive the whole charade of moving to America as an exciting adventure and are totally happy because now mama can afford more toys and tropical fruit. But teenagers burn the bridges leaving too much behind - dear people and things, habitual values, native language, first love. They come to the States and feel themselves outcasts, misfits in the alien world.

Dear mothers, don't try to compare yourselves with your 14-16-year-old children. For you, single mothers, sick and tired of the constant and exhausting fight for survival in Russia, settling down in the Promised Land of America is an escape. But your children didn't have to face that many hardships and weren't mature enough to estimate the unfair world they lived in. They do miss what constituted their life.

Seven months ago I left St.Petersburg for Washington with my 14-year-old daughter Valeria. I asked myself many times what I gained out of this bald step and admitted that the benefit is greater than the loss. I got a wonderful husband - loving, caring, well-doing and handsome at that (one more Cinderella's story, isn't it), easier life (no money chasing, no heavy bags in the hands, vacations to the beach and so on), breath-taking-away perspectives (like one more little daughter) and what is the most important, the end of the daily fight for survival. As for my daughter, she has a bitter feeling that she lost everything she had - her full and sparkling life of Miss School (she is very pretty and smart) turned into humdrum and stagnant, isolation replaced communication, mama became somebody's wife and doesn't belong only to her any more, the best friend forgot her completely and even the beloved guinea pig Madelyn is at somebody's place.

I, so sophysticated and sober-minded, keep comforting my daughter describing fabulous perspectives and miraculous opportunities that America gives her, especially if she materializes her ambition to become a dentist! But my girl is much more pure and honest than her pragmatic mama and doesn't want to sell her soul for American Prosperity. I know the day will come and she will change her mind. But it will take time...

Dear teenagers living in the USA! Are any of you happy here? Put my daughter and me wiser what you did to achieve it, please. Perhaps, you are more flexible than my Lera? Or maybe your mothers are wiser than me?

Lana