When hosting an exchange student its normal to have their natural family want to visit. I mean, I would want to see where my kid was living and going to school, and meet the people that are taking care of her/him. Some students will bring this up immediately (one of ours brought it up on our first video chat), others will never bring it up, or others somewhere in the middle (usually as mom/dad bring it up). So for those students that are plan orientated and want to know immediately, it is a good idea to have an answer ready.
Our organization recommends waiting until the spring, and I mean actual spring — not the spring semester that starts in winter. They really would rather parents wait until the very end of school for visits, but sometimes that just isn’t in the cards. And honestly I would rather have those last few days with my students to myself and not share with the excitement of mom/dad/whoever being there.
So, my recommendation is still the spring, but sometime in the spring semester, whatever works for you.
We have only actually had one family come visit us, but that was because of COVID 19 sending everyone home early (we had a visit planned). Our first student had her family visit twice! The first time was for her 18th birthday (big deal, especially in Italy), a bunch of her family came—some that live in Miami. They stayed for a long weekend, they went to pick her up at school on Friday and then she spent most of the time with them at their hotel. The second time it was just her mom and she went on our Spring Break vacation with us, which was interesting because she doesn’t speak English. But it was nice having another adult since we had 3 teenagers with us (our student plus 2 friends); but I wouldn’t do it again because it kind of took away spring break with her for us. We did almost the same trip the next year without any additional people and we were able to bond much more with our students just having a fun vacation together.
We did have one student last year have family visit but they met her in New York City over New Years. So she flew up to them and spent a week and then came back, we never met them.
It is a good idea to have some rules to go with natural family visits, you need to go over them before anything is agreed on. (You will notice I am a fan of rules, if only to give guidance and some sort of boundary).
Mine are:
Cannot interfere with school, may take 1 day off if grades are good and attendance won’t be a problem: think long weekend.
Cannot interfere with our plans. Thus not over any major holidays (where we do things).
Not on spring break.
Family must stay at a hotel (we make exceptions for one person, but if its more than one we ask them to stay at the hotel downtown). Student may stay with family as long as they still go to school as agreed.
If your student is a semester only student I would recommend only allowing visits at the end. Yes, you will have to share your goodbye but 5 months is too short to have a visit and not expect a homesickness reaction.
Basically there are recommendations and all, but you have to fit what works with your family and the natural family’s schedules. Also talk to your student, see if they want mom/dad/anyone else coming to visit. Do they think this will cause a homesickness reaction (which is difficult to deal with). Will a visit cause other problems? Do they think they can handle it? They know themselves and their family well enough to hopefully make this judgement; so I base a lot of my decision on family visits on their reaction to the idea. And if we decide it is a good idea then we start to work on the when and the how.
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