[Tsuwabuki]

I had a student named Alfred who is exactly in your situation. Every year during the warm months, his mother has made him go to school in Japan. Poor kid has next to no summer vacation. His native language is English, he sucks at Japanese, and considers himself American. He's, to not put too fine a point on it, completely miserable here. He's a bright kid (wants to be a microbiologist), but his peers bully him and consider him stupid because his Japanese is poor.

I understand his mother's desire to acquaint him with her culture as fully as she can, but I think constantly changing schools every six months from culture to culture and country to country is just making him bitter and angry. This would be true just of changing between two schools period. Since he considers himself an American, if I were her, I would just have had him visit Japan over American school holidays. He's old enough at this point to clearly articulate his wishes and desires.