The Healing Power of Questions: How AskZein Is Revolutionizing Support for Expat Families

Moving to a new country can be an exciting experience for you and your little ones, especially one known for being as welcoming to children as the Netherlands. Cherished memories await. There are goals to be scored, ice rinks to be skated, and stroopwafels to be devoured. And most importantly of all, there are friends to be made.

In addition to making your kids happy, this could also help them build a future for themselves. In spite of its size, the Netherlands is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. Amsterdam alone hosts 180 nationalities. With labor shortages across many Western economies, adapting to other cultures will also give your kids skills for their future careers.

But for all the great experiences that lie in wait, there will be things they miss about your old home: friends, family, pets, favorite playgrounds, or beaches. According to behavior expert Robbie Zein, helping them flourish in the Netherlands is about more than substituting those experiences. It’s vital that you allow them to explore those feelings and, above all else, to feel listened to and loved.

Expertise built from expat experience

Zein has spent over two decades in the field of educational and behavioral advice. After 20 years of running her own childcare group, in 2021, she founded a lifestyle coaching consultancy, AskZein.com. It launched with a mission to support international families settling in the Netherlands.

Services include lectures, workshops, and access to information for everyone who is “working with children or working on their inner child.” Zein also offers occasional one-to-one counselling for parents in need of support. She invites people to “drop a question” any time via the website or social media, emphasizing that she is here to listen from a position of personal experience.

As the child of a civil engineer, Zein “grew up among cultures.” In her formative years, she lived across Europe, the Middle East, and North America. In the process, she learned first-hand the ups and downs of family life as an expat.

“I happened to be lucky that I lived that lifestyle,” she remembers. “You don’t see the borders; you’re a person who belongs to all the nationalities; you’re an earthling. And growing up that way, there are certain amazing qualities of life. In school, when many children learn geography, I lived geography. We were learning history, I lived history. For example, in summer in Spain, we’d see old things, old buildings, and we’d live among the history. So, you don’t learn about the culture, you live it – and that’s such a rich way of being.”

Of course, every upside comes with its unique set of downsides. All hellos portend eventual goodbyes – and life between borders often expedites that process.

Zein recalls a “continuous cycle of grief”; the consequence of “constantly saying goodbye to something that you got used to and you loved” before “moving on to something new again”. But as stressful as settling into new houses, communities, and schools was for her, she also remembers that it took a heavy toll on her parents.

She explains, “I remember so much watching my parents struggle because every parent wants the best for their children. My dad wanted us to be comfortable and happy so badly. But on the other hand, as a child, all you want is to see your parents happy and comfortable, right? Looking back, I always say I wouldn’t change a thing about my experiences because they made me who I am. But one thing I do wish I had, is to have seen my mom or dad happy, relaxed and joyful. That is something I really have no memory of a moment. That’s how much they stressed about getting us comfy and getting us in a situation where we felt at home.”

Expat parents should dare to do “nothing”

In many ways, AskZein was born as a means to put her experiences to work, helping other expat families. Because “learning how to deal with those challenges is really essential” for both guardians and their children. In a world where economic pressures mean we treat emotional responses to change as a ‘problem’ to be ‘fixed’, many of us start from an unhelpful position.

“Among the expat families I work with, one of the top themes I see among the expat families I work with is the need to keep busy. The kids have to be busy; they have to go to school, but then they have to go after school, and they have to go to activities, and they have to go on the weekend to football, and they have to go to swimming, and so on. There’s this feeling that if everybody’s busy, that’s the best way for them to cope with challenges in their lives. So, they run, and run, and run. But when we humans run all the time, it numbs everything. That’s not addressing emotions. It’s suppressing them. And suppressing feelings for a day, a week, a month, a year, eventually, becomes depression.”

But according to Zein, the most important thing for a human being is not distracting yourself from pain but “to feel heard.” If a child is always in motion, they will not get that chance to open up and speak to their parents. And they need to have “one-on-one” contact about the feelings inspired by the upheaval of expat life.

Zein continues, “My first advice to many parents is ‘it’s not about fixing it; it’s about loving it’. Moving with kids is a complicated situation. It’s always going to go wrong somewhere, somehow. It’s not about ending the challenge, it’s about how to deal with the challenge with love… Why can’t we just be at home and do nothing? There’s nothing wrong with doing nothing. It’s the whole basis of meditation, it’s the whole basis of the human being… It’s Wednesday, and the kids are back home. And guess what? We’re going to do absolutely nothing. Maybe we’ll bake a cake or make cookies. Let’s giggle. Let’s color. We’re going to cuddle. We might talk.”

The power of questions

According to Zein, that last point is at the core of where “the healing begins” for children and parents alike. In particular, asking questions – and not necessarily finding the answers. More important is that people who are hurting feel “my voice matters.”

“It’s not really about the question. It’s about being heard… 99% of the time, humanity does not want to be understood. We just want to be loved. And in that dialogue that you have with one person to the other, you feel heard. And when the feeling of, ‘Hey, someone is actually giving me his valuable time or her valuable time so I can say what’s going on with me. ‘And they might throw in insights, but they don’t tell me what to do. They just understand and value what I have to say… It’s all about listening. When we feel heard, healing starts. And that’s because the brain and the heart are more in sync when you’re heard.”

This is at the core of AskZein’s own methodology, too. Parents should not neglect their emotions in response to seeing how their child is struggling with their new life. So, if a client comes to her, Zein will first always make sure they have her full attention and empathy.

She explains, “As a parent, if you come to me and you explain a big, complicated situation with your child in grade one, grade two, ‘this happened, his teacher, and so on, I’m worried,’ it boils down to the same essence. ‘I’m worried about my most valuable thing in life: my little one. Is he going to be OK?’ So, at the beginning, the most important thing is to say, ‘I’m so sorry for your turmoil. I cannot imagine how hard it is for you as a parent to travel and move from country to country, a second career, move your wife, move your kids. I can understand it must be difficult.’ And it’s this understanding of your turmoil that will start your healing. When your healing starts, then I can say, “Guess what? We can do steps one, two, three with your child and step so, so, so with you.” But to immediately jump to the solution would be neglecting your emotions again!”

The importance of listening

Asked for a case of her methods in practice, Zein recollects “one of the cutest examples” at her disposal.

“This little one, she was between five and six years old. Her mom would say it was mealtime, and the first thing she’d do was get to the table and start acting out, throwing cherry tomatoes on the floor and so on. For us it’s cute, but I can imagine it was worrying for the parents at home because it’s naughty according to our rules… The mom came to me asking what she should do. She tried everything, you know, the yelling and the punishing and this and that.”

It’s the kind of problem that might seem small from the outside, but those of us with kids know it will keep parents awake into the small hours. It was also a matter of communication, which, as luck would have it, is Zein’s forte.

She argues, “One of the basic needs of children is attention. Children need to be looked at, held, cuddled, loved. And we all thrive with contact, even as adults. Everybody wants their boss to tell them they did a good job. Or they want their parents to say they make them proud. And when we don’t get it positively, we start doing bad stuff so we can get it negatively. Adults might think twice because there are consequences for being bad. But for children, they don’t know that yet. So, the minute positive attention feels too low for them, if they break something or throw something, and you shout or punish them, they realize, ‘That’s how I get your attention!'”

To her parents, the girl’s behavior might have seemed destructive or underlying some deeper concern. But in this case, it was a means of communicating—a reflection of someone “crying out for attention,” negative or positive. It was a problem that could be solved by listening.

Once Zein had heard the mother and validated her worries on the matter, she recommended some “very simple and easy” steps to help. Whenever the child was doing something “not naughty”, like sitting and reading a book, doing homework, or anything “nice and quiet”, her parents should make the most of the situation. The more they could praise her and encourage her positive behavior, the better.

“Now, the child was receiving all this amazing attention and contact for doing things like reading a book or being quiet or playing a nice game or doing homework. And when that attention went up and the child felt saturated, the need to throw tomatoes to get her attention that way, subsided. Sometimes it takes a few days or a few weeks.”

Questions for the future

When prompted to consider how the firm might change in the future, Zein simply says, “We will cross that bridge when we get to it.” Beyond AskZein.com‘s lectures, workshops, and multi-educational channels, she will continue to provide one-on-one counselling. “Depending on the time” and “the needs of the place I am in,” though, she is receptive to whatever new opportunities present themselves.

Whatever the future holds, she is happy to continue to help international families arriving in the Netherlands.

Zein concludes, “I find it so beautiful to be in a position where my studies, my past, and my personality all come together. I love helping people. It’s really my thing. And then I lived the challenges I studied, and they all intertwined.”