Host Family

What does it take to be a successful host family? Compassion? Patience? Maybe even a little bravery? Yes, all that and more. Since meeting Joseph from Taiwan, I’ve wanted to discover what it was like to be a host family. Our family couldn’t host an international student when we lived in Columbus, Ohio, because we didn’t have the required extra bedroom for the student. When we moved to the Philadelphia area, one criterion for a new house was that extra room.

Ready, Set…

After scrabbling in the crazy housing market of 2021, we found and settled on a home with an extra room. Next, we let the International Student Program (ISP) Director at our school know we were ready for a student. All was humming along until the American Embassy in China denied our student his visa. And just like that, the international student we’d been looking forward to hosting couldn’t leave China. Now what?

…Host!

Then, the ISP Director called to ask if we were still interested in hosting a student. An international student from China who attended our school needed to find a new home. His name was Dan, and his current host family’s college-age children were returning home amidst the uncertainty of Covid. Dan felt it best to give back the bedroom he was occupying since it originally belonged to one of the returning children. So on a day in early September 2021, I met Dan for the first time, and I knew the second I saw him that he was our student.

Host Family Year

Dan settled into our home and family quickly. His laid-back but outgoing personality was a good fit with our laid-back, outgoing family. He adapted to my son’s and husband’s baptism by humor in record time, understanding that true acceptance into the family came with a bit of well-placed sarcasm, good-natured razzing, and a lot of laughter. We laugh a lot in our family, especially at ourselves, and Dan’s wonderfully infectious laughter added to our ability to do that.

Before we knew it, we fell into a pattern of life that included Dan in every aspect. We celebrated holidays and birthdays and went on family trips together. Dan’s senior year and our son Aidan’s sophomore year in high school included track and wrestling practice and meets, award ceremonies, and the daily transit back and forth to school. There was traveling to get Dan’s senior portraits taken and celebrating Dan’s graduation. We spent many hours helping Dan in the writing process for college entrance essays. And we rejoiced when one of those colleges accepted Dan.

My biggest regret is not keeping up with this blog during that time and chronicling that wonderful year we had with him, but I know that I will be writing about Dan in the future because we created lifelong ties.

Host Family 101: Looking Back on What We Learned

So what did we learn about what it takes to be a host family? Well, you must be willing to take a young student from another country into your home. But you also have to be willing to take them into your family. And you have to accept that you will take them into your heart if you do this right. While nine months may sound like a long time, when you’re standing at the end of it, sad that they are leaving, you realize it wasn’t long. Aidan and I drove Dan to his college this past August, and I cried when we left him standing in front of his dorm hall just as I would have if it had been Aidan I was leaving there.

GROHF

For me, hosting is taking in someone else’s child, and if it was the reverse situation, how would I want a family to interact with my child? Would I want Aidan to be with a family who met his basic needs but nothing more? Or would I want this family to forge a deeper bond with him that would sustain everyone through the ins and outs of daily life? Definitely the latter. I think of it as the Golden Rule Of Host Families (GROHF): Do to someone else’s child as you would have done to your child.

Hosting includes guiding, helping, protecting, and positively influencing. It is car rides wherever they need to go (most international students are not allowed to drive while in the US) and taking them to the doctor when they are sick or injured. Give them guidance with homework, show them how and when to help with household chores, and don’t allow them to get away with things your children can’t do.

It is also laughing with them as you navigate cultural differences and make them comfortable by including things in your routine and day that are part of their culture. Helping them find a touchstone to something familiar is just as important as assisting them in acclimating to American culture.

The Core Host Family Requirement

I found that it simply came down to loving Dan as if he were my son. My international son. If you could meet Dan, you’d understand. It’s impossible not to love him. And that is the core requirement for a host family: love these young people. Love them through actions. They will recognize what you are doing. Because no matter what nation anyone is from, love is the wordless language everyone understands.