Merve Erturk Agri’s gift to her five-year-old daughter involved moving bag and baggage. Four months on, there are no regrets.
The 38-year-old Turkish expat had lived in Qatar for 16 years when she and her husband were mulling change. “When the opportunity came to my husband to move here to Abu Dhabi … we were ready for a change. And Abu Dhabi is a good place, I had heard a lot [about it],” she says in an interview with Gulf News.
The architect recalls reviews of the emirate being child friendly, family friendly and very, very green.
When the opportunity came to my husband last July, I told him, ‘You just go and get what is offered to you and I will follow you.’ Our initial plan for me was to stay until this June and finish the project [I was part of]. But our family dynamics are such … my daughter is so attached to her dad, it was a difficult time for all of us to be separated in this way … we ended up joining him in December,” she laughs.
Merve was talking to Gulf News on the side lines of her daughter’s swimming class. These extracurricular activities were a huge draw for the family. “Here, the opportunities are huge. The diversity in the cultures are huge. The school options. These are the things that made my decision that it would be better for her, so she will know more cultures, more people and more activities. If you don’t like a class, there is always another option,” she explains.
Of course telling a five-year-old that you are moving countries is bound to come with some resistance. The family went step by step.
1. Show videos of attractions: “Actually, before telling her about the move, we decided to show her some videos of the aqua park and Warner Bros in Abu Dhabi, and we said,’ Oh, what a wonderful place, shall we move here?’ and she is five years old, but she replied, ‘We don’t need to move anywhere, we can just visit on a vacation. Which was really logical,” laughs her mum.
2. Explain the situation: “When was time for my husband to leave, we told her, ‘It is time’. He’s going to have a new job and she was welcome to go and help him with the job - because she feels very responsible when it comes to helping adults - and we will visit him.
3. Allow the child to express sadness: “She was a little bit disappointed and she was asking a lot of questions such as, ‘Are we going to have a new house? New furniture? What will happen to our old furniture? I will miss my friends – what about that?’ And I accepted it,” she says.
4. Talk about the positives: “Sometimes I would say, ‘I want a new this or that’. I’d encourage her to go for change, because I know some children can be more attached to what they have. And so this was a tough time, because when someone was knocking on the door and we were giving away some of the stuff, she was feeling really sentimental and was crying,” she adds.
5. Visit the place: She says: “We visited my husband here in October and we showed her the best of Abu Dhabi. She saw my husband is staying in a hotel and is waiting for us to rent a house. She could see everything with her own eyes. We took her to Warner Bros. where we made her see what she had in the YouTube video. So she felt happy. We also took her to the school where she got accepted and she felt welcomed, so this was the transition.”
6. Involve the child: “We checked the houses together and let her have an input on the house, where to put the sofa, so she felt more involved in what is going on. She was also attached to the car we had at that time and we said, ‘It’s okay, we can buy a new car here.’ Then she got used to the idea slowly. After we arrived here, of course she had a little bit of hesitation in the new routine. But now, even the teacher says, it’s like she’s lived here for a long time,” says Merve.
Once everyone was on the same page, says Merve, there was a lot to be done. She says her strategy to move without hiccups included keeping both herself and her child busy with work. “I kept my daughter extremely busy and occupied, so the time she spent alone was minimized; I would send her to fencing, basketball, swimming and piano classes. As I was working full time until the very last week of us moving, so I was busy with work, besides for the errands of relocation.
“First the house was became a mess with boxes and for sale/donation items (my daughter set up a small market in the house for a garage sale). Then we moved to a hotel for the last month. I was also trying to trying to keep some other things normal by visiting friends, having play dates, having a Christmas photography session and shopping as usual. It was really tiring.”
When she and her daughter moved, says Merve, her first impressions were … “I didn’t do enough homework … It was like an ocean, too many options and too many developments going on, the roads are huge. So the first impression was, ‘I like how it looks, but also a little fear.’ However, in very little time, I saw a lot of social media users’ posts and a lot of applications, websites through which I can really filter the information - these I have seen before but now, I’m in Abu Dhabi, I can use them more wisely.”
Merve also used this move to eke out a little break for herself, to gain perspective. “Taking time for myself also helped me see what I liked. Normally, I might complain about work. Now I understand, I’m really happy about my work. This period allowed me to listen to myself. Anyone who has an opportunity to take a career break when relocating, they should do it. The time really helped us.”
It was easy to slip into the folds of life in Abu Dhabi, says the expat, who uses social media to help her with tips and tricks on navigating the city. “I like driving and losing myself in the streets of Abu Dhabi to learn more, because I don’t need to worry. If I get stuck somewhere, I go to Google maps to see where my house is. This is nice time to enjoy everything,” she says.
Have you moved to the UAE recently? Tell us about your journey by writing in to parenting@gulfnews.com
