Never Host a Foreign Exchange Student! (what NOT to do)

Why in the...? What in the...? What was going through their heads?

Having hosted multiple times throughout the last 3 years, we have heard stories from other host parents, coordinators, students and their friends about some pretty unintelligent circumstances students were placed in... all because... the adult may not have been hosting for the right reasons.

So, to shed some light on why an adult should NOT host, I came up with 5 reasons and share them with you here.

Host Family, Exchange Student Life is here to help navigate through real life hosting and exchanging to help YOU create an extraordinary experience!

Question of the Day: Can you think of other reasons adults should not host? Leave them in the comments below, I look forward to reading them.

Host Family, Exchange Student Life on Social Media:

hfesLIFE is not sponsored by any exchange program agency. We work with an agency to provide hosting for our students, yet will not give recommendations on which one to choose in order to provide a neutral voice in the hosting and exchanging space.

#hfesLIFE #extraordinarystudent #extraordinaryhost

[karmagamechanger]

I have had exchange students before and loved it. Still keep in touch with them and I even traveled to their country.

[scottleespence]

Do not expect them to become a full time, unpaid language instructor for your own kids. They are here to learn English. if they are happy to teach your own family members some of their own language, fine, but don't expect daily language instruction.

A friend of mine, who went to Japan, had this happen to him.

[krisdunwoody]

I heard about an Exchange Student that slowly the Host Family kept adding Home chores to, where finally the Exchange student had to "Baby Sit" the Host Family children and do house chores up to the point where the Exchange Student only had time for going to school but no time to study, visit friends, or do school homework. The Host Family was basically just looking for a "Slave".

[ramhemi]

Hosted 3x so far. 1x as a host brother in the late 90s and we still talk to him. My sisters kids and my kids call him Uncle Thomas. Now as a host dad we hosted a girl from Italy (whom I love like my own daughter) and we just got our girl from Spain. She's such a sweetheart! Next year we're debating on what country to go for next. I love hosting and I know my family does too!

[davidhodge]

My wife and I have hosted 20 students over the years. Some good some not so good. We have opened our home and quite frequently added a new family member. The few times that it didn't work out was mainly due to the student having different expectations than the reality they received. By and large my best advice is do not treat your student as a guest. They are here for a year to assimilate and learn about our culture. Set your ground rules within the first 48 hours. Yes I mean ground rules! No drinking is a good one, "oh I'm from Italy we drink wine all the time there." Well spanky you are not in Italy anymore you are in my home and if you want to stay here is the rule. Oh over the past 20+ years we've heard it all, bottom line is a teenager is a teenager and they will stretch the limit if you let them. The second most important thing you can do is, " do not let the student or their friends run your home." Our rules were simple, you do not go out on a school night. You are not here to party and play you are here on an academic visa so school comes 1st. You must be respectful of your teachers and school. There is no law requiring any school to accept an exchange student, your actions for good or bad will affect future students you are an ambassador of your country. You are not here to financially support your student. If you start doing it then when you stop it will create problems. Don't get conned, some students just dont want to spend their money and will try to convince you they are poor. Their parents have to meet certain financial requirements or they cant come. (there are scholarship programs but that a entirely different situation) 3rd rule, These students have no idea what it is really like here, their concept of the USA is based on MTV or other popular media. They will make poor choices and that is your fault if you allow it to happen, while they are here YOU are the parent not Mommy in France, YOU. We had a boy from Australia who was rude and condescending to everyone. He was going to do whatever he wanted. He had made plans to go out with some kids he thought were his friends, fortunately I got a call from one of the "Friends" parents. She had overheard her son talking about the exchange student, they had planned on getting him drunk stripping him naked covering him with duct tape and leaving him in a field some 60 miles away. They were so sick of his superior attitude and his favorite saying "Stupid Americans". I pulled the plug on the outing and he went nuts. I was a liar how could I ruin his social life etc. So i put his butt in the car and we went to his friends house where the mom forced her son to reveal the entire diabolical plan. He was mortified and in a few days went home. Out of 20 students he was the only one who didn't finish the program. Hosting can be a fun experience or a nightmare. I would say that I am still in touch with the majority of our students, some of whom now have kids of their own. I still believe that hosting a student can help show them and their families etc back home that we are not all like the Americans they see in the media, we are people just like them.

[arianna]

The religion part is really on point, I had to change family when I was in the US bcoz they were trying to convert me and basically re-educate me the way they wanted to. Of course I reported this to my parents in Italy and they were really mad at this, coz they felt like they were being judged by these people thinking my education was rubbish. I couldn't wear shorts or skirts in Texas when it was 40°C outside or I couldn't go out wearing some of my clothes, it was really terrible. Please don't force your religion or your lifestyle to anyone.

[elissavett]

i wish I had watched this during my exchange year, my host parents were usually absent and i also feel that my host mother wanted to fill the void of her children moving out of home

[sunnyflower]

My kid just signed up with the CBYX program, I am so excited, and so scared for him at the same time. He is such a soft spoken young man, hard working and respectful with integrity. Im hoping he finds a good host family with morals, and wont take advantage of his kind nature. Im praying that this is a wonderful experience, not something he'll have to recover from.

[davidvail]

Glad I discovered your videos. I'm in the Rotary Youth Exchange program in the USA. I think your Reasons FOR Hosting and What Not to do will be quite useful in our host family training along with our regular training content. Thanks.

[soy.constanza]

The last one!! We were two teenage girls in that house and they always said things about the food, apparently we ate too much oh but it wasn't bc of the money, they said that it could make us sick, but when I spend my dads allowance on food (even though they we paid) it was suddenly OK to eat whatever amount. When we talked about this to the coordinator they got "upset" bc they've never had a problem, and I told the woman that by contract she had to feed us 3 times a day, SHE WENT TO PRINT THE CONTRACT AND RUB IN OUR FACES THAT IT SAID ONLY 2 MEALS A DAY. My part of the town didn't have any busses so we had to ask them every weekend to drive us to the mall but a lot of times "the weather was too bad" but suddenly the next day we didn't have any plans they said things like "oh we can drive you, we spend a lot on gas for you two, but it doesn't matter".
The host mom would look through my phone, I was 15, I didn't have anything bad but when I showed her a picture she would go through the others and say "I just want to make sure you don't have anything bad" or in videocalls with friends and family she would grab my phone and "look who I was talking to" like wth???? I finally changed families 6 months later, my last 4 months were the best.

[f.k]

My best friend is an international student and twice she has had to have police intervene and change home stays. And her last didn’t try and force her to participate in this religion but they might as well have since the wife would play Buda music for hours a day, making it hard for her to study, sleep or relax.

[axlent]

Great, great, great Hosting a student is a blessing! It’s a treasure! Not only is it fun, it’s a responsibility!

Responsible to that student..
Responsible to be caring, loving, sharing, patient, humble…
All things that make a person just a great human being in general!

I’ve hosted 30 students, and now work with an exchange program, now that I can’t host students due to lack of space in my house.

So thanks for sharing this advice!
I’ll be watching your other videos now!

[RicaClaudia]

Tried it twice and kids were very unappreciative and conceited because I lived in an apartment and their friends lived in a house. They knew this prior but chose to wait until they were living with me before complaining... they eventually got what they wanted and relocated to a family with a house. Never again

[fivebluelakes]

We will never do it again. While our student was generally a sweet young lady she was also lazy, unmotivated and totally wasted her entire year because she lived on her phone the entire time. It was so discouraging to plan an outing or trip or event only to have her barely look up from her phone. Yes, we tried to talk to her and yes, we made rules but it became a battle so we just gave up. We all got so sick of saying, Please put down the phone. She was ungrateful and had no interest in anything, not at school, not with us and was totally unwilling to embrace and learn from the world around her. It was so sad and we were pretty annoyed at all of our efforts being met with apathy. She

[Razorpig]

My family and I have hosted 27 students, all very good students except for 2. Both from Germany. One, the female, actually expected we go out every evening to restaurants or coffee bars and expected us to go away every weekend, we don't because it's expensive. We had a talk with the exchange student rep and the student. We'll, it was finally resolved. The male we had asked to use my laptop and corrupted it with animal porn. He was gone that night. So it is hit and miss. The two females from China hardly left their room, but eventually, they adjusted to our way of life and one young lady did enjoy our church youth group that when she returned to China she joined a Christian church in China. She eventually returned to the US to a Christian college and then transferred to SMU, where she graduated and was offered a job. We are so proud of her, although we did lose contact with her. She was a joy to have. The last one we had was a last-minute request to take in, and she was from Japan. She was an incredible young woman. We were invited to visit her and her family in japan. It was amazing except for the fact that I'm 6'9" and Japan is not built for my size. Well, neither is the US, but I've adapted. My family and I did have a really good time in Japan, especially during Halloween. It was a blast. It was the most fun I could have had dressed as Jason Voorhees. Try it out. It's not as bad as you might think. Just keep in touch with the coordinator.

[ZeldaZelda-RichesToRags]

The two girls we're hosting at this time have been horribly disrespectful to us...like keeping a horrible mess...refusing to stop eating chips and leaving half bag chips all over the floor...half hour late to dinner...we thought they'd enjoy going places in our HUGE motorhome, but they complained, is too boring.
I posted a video on my YT ch...they left a horrible mess and destroyed table top leaving spilled nailpolish remover...ground in cookies in new carpet...
its horribly upsetting with their being so disrespected. We have a LOT of money invested in their coming here. They refuse to eat our food as one hates ALL fruit, ALL veggies...wants just noodles and candy. She sobbed, when I took away her 20 bags candy...she promised was buying to take home...but she ate most of it.
Her diet is horrible....she refuses to eat most of what we prepare...healthy meals...we're feeling pretty bad and we've spent a lot of money so far.

[sapphire]

One case here in Ireland that really scared a lot of people was when a Swiss exchange student was murdered in Galway City, having only been here a few days. She apparently refused to listen to her host parents instructions and advice not to take a short cut in to the city which had had several attacks on women in the previous months and years. She promised them she wouldn't take the short cut, but did anyway, and was raped and killed. Her body was discovered right along the route she had been told not to go. I really cannot imagine the torment her poor family went through and also her host parents who are tormented to this day. Unfortunately she was 17 and almost an adult, but still enough of a teenager to think she knew better and to take a chance on taking that short cut and paid with her young life. It also seems she didn't want a lift in to the city to meet her friends and insisted on walking. It turned out that her killer had attacked and raped a French student only 7 weeks before and was under investigation for that crime also.
Thankfully he was caught and got life imprisonment for the murder plus an extra 10 years for theft and then he got 2 further life sentences for the French students rape (life in Ireland can mean 15 years, so the judge was trying to ensure that he will not see the light of day for at least 45 years and rightly so).
What a dreadful nightmare for everyone concerned. A thing to note here is that the agency involved apparently behaved very badly and the host family have allegedly said that as soon as the trouble started that the agency immediately started dodging responsibility and accusing the family of 'victim blaming' when it was pointed out the warning she had been given about certain areas. This is very unfair. As with any 17 year old teenager you are dealing with a young lady who is almost an adult, but who may have lived either a very sheltered life or indeed in parts of Europe parents have a much more liberal attitude than we would have and kids are encouraged to be much more independent more early in life than Irish kids. Add to the mix the fact that they are away from home often for the first time and that they may push and test boundaries more do than they do at home and its a big worry for host parents. I myself hosted and the girl was a good girl and not rebellious but I still worried about her constantly. Unfortunately as with anything else in life when they reach a certain age of independence and start moving around themselves there is only so much you can do to protect and watch over them. My heart breaks for her poor parents as she was their only child.
I also advise checking with the agency who is the child's legal guardian while in your host family or the agency?? And where would you stand legally, if, God forbid a similar situation were to arise? In my case the agency are technically the legal guardian's of the students, but the family in this case did complain that the agency tried to wriggle out of this and throw blame at them. So I made sure to check my facts with my solicitor before agreeing to take on anyone else's child.
Biological parents back home also need to be careful of what they say and liaising with the host parents also. Another lady I know who hosted at the same time as me overheard the girl complain to her father on the phone about strict rules and he said "oh make yourself independent of her and do your own things". First -'the girl was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY - this was reckless advice on his part. Secondly who is "her"??? That is an extremely disrespectful and rude term to use about anybody, especially someone he had never met or spoken to. Thirdly he should have advised his daughter "please listen to your host parents. They have your safety and best interests at heart and thry are trying to keep you safe and they know the area". Instead he more or less seemed to be saying to the girl to more or less, be defiant and do as she pleased. I was frankly, shocked at hearing his attitude and thank God I did not have to deal with him!! These are the kinds of things you can come up against unfortunately.

[saratariq]

I am applying for YES myself as a student
I think it all depends on the kid you are getting and for sure it's hard to be with someone completely different from you for 1 year

[gargamela]

We fit all criteria, we did it for the right reason, didn't get reimbursed at all. They found a friend who they wanted to live with more and were able to move homes because they "weren't bonding" we feel completely disenfranchised

[bookishmillennial]

My husband and I are 35 and would like to host in a couple years when we have a bigger house. We have no kids. I've worked with kids and teens a lot. I actually thought it was volunteer and no stipend.