UK expat mum: "How life in Dubai made me a better parent – and helped my dreams come true"
Living in the UAE helped Polly Phillips achieve something she’d never thought possible
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be sitting in Australia with my first book about to be published in different countries all over the world, I might have laughed in your face. Although I’d been writing for years – my book even won the Emirates Literature Festival book prize in 2019 – I never imagined it could become a reality. But that’s the thing about Dubai; it has a way of making your dreams come true.
The funny thing is, I didn’t actually want to move to Dubai at first. I didn’t know anybody there, and I pictured it purely as a party town, which I didn’t think would suit my lifestyle as a new mother. But life in London was becoming a daily grind. My husband worked away a lot and I was tired of raising our daughter on my own. My mood was often duller than the weather. Lured by the promise of wall-to-wall sunshine and a better work life balance, we decided to take a chance and moved to Dubai in December 2016.
The Dubai village
Within days, I realised all my preconceptions about the United Arab Emirates were wrong. Ironically, given that in London I was surrounded by school friends and lived a five-minute walk from the house I grew up in, it was in Dubai that I found my real extended family. They say it takes a village to raise a child and that’s exactly what I found in Dubai. From the team at our property agents who helped us find a villa and then invited us to Christmas Carols in the desert within minutes of our arrival, to friends we made at nursery and school, Dubai welcomed us with open arms. And we embraced it right back.
Open-minded parenting
One of the things I found so amazing about raising a child in Dubai is the total lack of judgement. With so many nationalities – some of our closest friends were French, Egyptian, Indian, English, South African and American to name just a few – there’s so many different parenting styles that I had total freedom to develop my own. It was a far cry from my daughter’s London nursery, where parents frequently commented on each other’s choice of food, sleep or discipline routine. In Dubai, I found my parenting feet for the first time and the confidence in my own abilities and decisions.
Striking a Mum/ Life balance
We were lucky enough to have a live-in helper from Sri Lanka. Rani was a godsend when it came to keeping our daughter Lala entertained and giving me time to write when I needed it. Without her, there’s no way I would have finished my debut novel about toxic friendships in time to submit it to the Emirates Literature Festival competition. It was winning that competition that led to me securing a London agent and wining a publishing deal.
Rani also gave me the space to be a better parent. Being able to take five minutes to myself when things got on top of me or to do the supermarket shop without dragging a reluctant toddler down the aisles definitely made me a lot more patient when it came to dealing with tantrums, toilet training and the tougher bits of being in the parenting trenches. The ability to absent myself when I needed to made me more present when I was with Lala.
Melting pot of cultures
Rani gave us more than that much-needed time though; by making Sri Lankan food for special occasions and teaching Lala bits of Tamil, she made my daughter curious about the world. Being in Dubai, with all of its different nationalities and easy airport access to different cities across the globe, turned Lalage into an intrepid traveller and I hope she maintains that wonder about those different to her wherever the world takes her.
Sadly, all good things come to an end and in December 2019, my husband got a job opportunity that meant we had to wave goodbye to the life we’d built for ourselves in Dubai. In the flurry of garage sales and goodbye parties, I didn’t have much time to consider what it meant to leave Dubai. I knew I’d miss the friends we’d made, the amazing school my daughter was at, the home we’d created and the lush compound swimming pool, but I didn’t think about what it might do to my sense of self.
Leaving Dubai, losing part of myself
Moving back to Australia, the country that my daughter was born in, was a huge culture shock. There were no longer dozens of different nationalities and countless ways of approaching any given situation. The uniformity made me question my own parenting and at first, I struggled.
But if our experience as ex-pats in Dubai taught us one thing, it was the ability to adapt. Just as I had to learn my way around Dubai, braving driving on the Sheikh Zayed Road and learning which public buildings you have to cover your shoulders in, so I had to learn my way around Australia. The dos and don’ts may have been less obvious, but they existed just the same.
The other thing that Dubai taught us was more heart-warming: that good friends can become family. You just have to find them.
Polly’s novel ‘My Best Friend’s Murder’ is available as an e-book on 22nd January and in paperback in July.