Living in a very new place, left our homeland for a long time, is never easy. Especially if you go to a place that have so much differences than your origin. There are few things that make our family unhappy with our new place, but there are things that make us happy. Far away from our parents and grandparent, our cats, and our friends are things that makes us unhappy. Togetherness of the new adventures, knowing different places and cultures, and for my husband it is about working in a different circumstances, those are things that makes us happy.

But, sometimes I ask myself, does my son has the same feeling with me and my husband? He is one very important person in my life, I should not make him sad for a long time. I keep our relationship closer during the first days in our new place to make sure I know what he feels. And of course I want to keep this closer relationship forever in our life. We frequently talk each others, and every night we play board games together. I really grateful that we are homeschool family, so that we can spending more time together, and minimizing problems that he may get from school.

It has been two months since we are move here, in this remote area, I tried to ask his feeling for his new life, here are our conversation:
Me: Do you like being at Kuala Enok? 
He: Yes.
Me: Why?
He: The internet connection is good, better than Sidoarjo.
Me: Do you like go around this area?
He: No.
Me: Why?
He: Wet and dirt everywhere! Sidoarjo is cleaner. (in Sidoarjo he play outside with our neighbour everyday)
Me: How about our trip to Tembilahan, do you like it? (it is the nearest city from our place, it took one hour to reach Tembilahan. Tembilahan is a place where we usually buy our needs)
He: I like it, I like to go by boat. I don’t like to go by car, it makes me sick.
Me: So you like the river?
He: Yes!

The conversation stopped here, he said that he want to play Minecraft.

In my opinion, the most important thing from parent-child relationship is good communication, this will make you understand about your child’s thoughts. Comfort talk is the way to achieve the advantages of good communication. I use it to understand my child. I know that our moving to this remote area could affect my son’s happiness, that’s why I need to understand him better through the comfort talk.

As parent you don’t need special coaching to manage comfort talk. Here are what you need:
Avoid judging. No one like to be judged, so does your child.
Don’t hesitate to say sorry when you do something wrong. “Sorry” can cure hurt feeling, of course you don’t want to hurt your child’s feeling by your words or your acts. But say “sorry” with good intentions, not just word.
Do not force, persuade! No one like to be forced, you too, and your child’s too! So stop it, learn to persuade rather than force. I like to persuade my son by showing the good effects if he did as my suggestion. That will make him accustomed to seeing the goodness of each act.

By writing this, I’m not declare myself as a parenting consultant. I just share my parenting tips and experiences. I can’t say that I’m successful parent with “happy all day” son. But I will like to help my son reach his happiness even in hard situation such as moving to this remote area.

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