These were the words of a new migrant parent when she was interviewed for a research project conducted by Whanau Marama Parenting several years ago. Behind her words are the deep concerns of many new migrant parents. In their country-of-origin children are expected to study for many hours after school every day, sometimes up to 11.00 pm at night. They believe that children need to apply themselves in this way to become successful, now and for their future. In addition, several migrant parents have told us that they feel at a loss of how to teach their children at home because New Zealand schools do not seem to provide the same sort of textbook with all the subject material in it as they are used to in their own country.

To add to this concern is the realization that their children are fast becoming Kiwi kids. It has not taken very long for their children to learn that parents of their friends at school don’t seem to have the same expectations concerning study time. Their friends appear to have lots of time for play, computer time, and other fun activities while their own parents have different expectations of them. Parents often tell us that these differences in parental expectations, and the resulting impact on their children, have caused stress and discord between them and their children. This is to a large extent because they want to be treated the same as other children.

To help new migrant parents relax a little about how Kiwi parents tend to approach study hours, which are in addition to homework already provided, by the school, I would like to offer the following example of a Kiwi kid who was educated in Invercargill, New Zealand. He is now at the age of 45, at the top of his chosen profession, and performing on the World Stage – definitely an ‘academic genius’.

Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab is an engineer with no university degree who’s learned rocket science by doing it. At the age of 18, Beck left his home town of Invercargill to work for Fisher and Paykel in Dunedin were working as an apprentice in Tool Making he gained hands-on engineering skills and access to top-of-the-line machinery and materials after hours.  Beck now has a long history of innovation, multiple awards, and a good reputation in the aerospace field. Since his first successful rocket launch into orbit in 2018, he has continued to make world-first technologies in the aerospace field. Rocket Lab had succeeded in becoming the first private company in the world to achieve such success!

Peter Beck follows an exceedingly long line of other New Zealanders who have, and still are, at the very top of the world in their chosen field of expertise. These include such famous names as Ernest Rutherford, physicist (1871–1937); Sir Edmund Hillary, mountaineer and explorer (1919–2008);  Sir Āpirana Ngata, Māori politician (1874–1950); Alan MacDiamid, Nobel laureate chemist (1927–2007); Dr Fred Hollows, eye surgeon (1929–1993); Sir Peter Blake, yachtsman (1948–2001); Sir Peter Jackson, filmmaker (1961–); Dame Whina Cooper, Māori leader (1895–1994); Katherine Mansfield, writer (1888–1923) – to name only a few.

So, if you know of a new migrant parent who may be experiencing anxiety over whether they have made the right decision by bringing their family to New Zealand, please encourage them. For such a little country we are doing well. We are exceedingly proud to have so many academic geniuses educated in our New Zealand schools.