Katya Karpenko in English → Russian-Speaking Teen Psychologist Online for Families Abroad

Russian-Speaking Teen Psychologist Online for Families Abroad

Katya (Ekaterina) Karpenko — teen psychologist, systemic family therapist, EFT therapist · updated 18 October 2026

Why look for a psychologist who speaks Russian when you live abroad?

Because the hardest conversations in a family happen in the language the family argues in. You may run your whole day in English, German or Hebrew, and then at nine in the evening, behind a closed door, the shouting and the making up happen in Russian.

I work in Russian, online, and for a family that moved this is often the point rather than the limit. A local specialist can be excellent and still miss half of what goes on at home.

The parent explains the situation in a second language and loses the shades. The teen talks to the therapist in the local language, and the parent can't follow what was agreed.

When everyone in the room shares one language, nothing gets lost on the way. My groups for teenagers and the parents' group run in Russian, and that is how they stay. Where you live doesn't matter. What matters is that your teen understands and speaks Russian.

Which language does your teen use when they are angry with you? That small detail tells you a lot about where to look for help.

What does a move take away from a teenager that it leaves to the adults?

An adult usually takes part of their support with them. The job, the profession, friends online. A teenager's support is almost all on the outside: the class, the yard, the group of friends, the reputation, the role they had at school.

After a move all of that is reset at once, and a teenager has to prove from zero who they are.

Your teen didn't choose to go. The adults decided, for good reasons, and the child pays for it with friends and a familiar route to the shop. Anger in the first months is not a spoiled character. It's an honest reaction to a loss.

Then there is the language of habits. Different jokes, different slang, a different way of talking in class, sometimes a different language altogether. The first months go into simply not standing out, and that takes more strength than it looks from the outside.

Is it still adjustment, or has it stalled? Three signs to count

For the first two or three months a teenager has every right to be angry, to miss home and to want nothing. Arguing about whether the new city is better won't help. Counting signs will, because you can see them.

• Is there one person? Not a gang and not a best friend for life. One classmate they walk to the bus stop with, or someone they text after school. One contact by the third month means the process is moving. Can you name that person?
• Is life moving in small things? They know where to buy the snack they like. They agreed to try a club. They let someone come over. These steps say more than any talk: the new place has stopped being foreign ground.
• What happens to food, sleep and school? Homesickness that stays homesickness doesn't drag sleep and grades down. A heavier state does. They sleep in the day, lie awake at night and start missing school "because I feel sick".

By the fourth month the three signs usually give a clear answer. Two of them going the right way is a good picture, even if your teen still says the old place was better.

"Be glad, it's better here" versus "give it time, it will pass"

The first line sells your teen a decision they never made. "Look at this school, look at this park, you never had that back home." The answer is a closed face. For a teenager, admitting it's good here feels like betraying the life they had.

The second line is calm and half right. Most teens really do settle in over the first months. The trouble is that under "it will pass" you can't see the difference between ordinary homesickness and an adjustment that has stopped dead.

A few more phrases make the new place feel even colder. "We did this for you" hands a child a debt they can't pay. "Enough texting your old friends" takes away the only support they have right now. What would be left if you removed that too?

How a move lands at 10–12, 13–14 and 15+

10–12. A child of this age gets into a new group through doing things together: football, a club, a shared game. The homesickness is loud but short. Your job is a regular place where your child sees the same kids every week.

13–14. The hardest age to change schools. Groups have already formed, and a newcomer gets watched and tested. What helps is not many contacts but one person who brings them inside, and sometimes that's a coach or a neighbour rather than a classmate.

15 and older. Teens this age more often refuse to fit in on purpose: "I'll finish school here and leave anyway." Arguing is useless.

Agreeing that the remaining school years won't be empty is possible, through a job, preparing for university, any project of their own. If friendships at the new school are the sore spot, my piece on a 14-year-old who has no friends goes into that in detail.

How I work online with families who moved

Most families start with one message. You describe what is happening in your own words, from any account, without your full name, and I answer myself. The first question is free.

Plenty of parents find that the answer is enough; others then join a group or take a course on their topic. How that first step works is described on my page about online help (in Russian).

To make the answer precise, four things are enough: your teen's age, one concrete scene (what they did, what you said, how it ended), how long it has been going on, and what you have already tried. Add one honest line about how much energy you have yourself. Advice that needs strength you don't have is useless.

A teenager can also write to me on their own, without you, in the same way. For regular work there are live online groups. Teens meet in closed groups by age, 10–12, 13–14 and 15 and older, and I lead each group myself.

There are no parents in the teen groups, and nobody reads the teens' chat. Parents have a separate group where I go through your own situation with you.

Between the live calls there is a closed chat, audio sessions, days for anonymous questions and a film club. The calls are on Saturdays, at a set time for each age group. Before you enrol, check the times on the club page (in Russian) against your own time zone. The page is in Russian because the club is.

And if what you need is a comparison of formats, a parents' group against individual therapy, I lay it out in parent support group or therapy.

An exercise: a map of the new neighbourhood for two

A foreign place often feels foreign not because of people but because you don't know it. Where things are, where people go in the evening, where you can sit without a reason. This exercise works on that and asks nothing social of your teen.

Once a week the two of you walk one route and mark three points on a phone map: a place you could come to alone, a place to go with someone, and a place you'd rather avoid. No talk about adjustment. No "see how nice it is here". Just the route and three marks.

After a month there are a dozen places on the map, named by your teen. That is the first thing that turns a district into theirs. A side effect: on the way they start talking, because walking side by side is easier than sitting face to face.

What not to do: don't turn the walk into a guided tour of the city's advantages, and don't drag your teen to meet the neighbours' kids. Your teen picks the points. You only walk next to them.

When does a teen abroad need in-person help, not an online group?

Book a specialist if by the fourth month there is no contact at all in the new place and school has turned into a daily fight with morning stomach aches and missed days.

A second signal is when your teen stops talking about the future: no plans, no wishes. A third is when food and sleep have shifted and stay that way.

Body complaints go to a doctor first, not to a psychologist: morning nausea and headaches have more than one cause, and a check-up sorts them out quickly. Talk about the facts, not about character: "You've been waking up with a stomach ache for weeks. Let's see a doctor first, and then someone who helps with this kind of thing."

Some situations need in-person help and a doctor where you live, without any delay: talk of not wanting to live, signs of self-harm, refusing food, a heavy state that holds for weeks. Online messages and a group are not the tool there.

If your child is in danger right now, call your local emergency number. For a plain overview of teenage mental health, the World Health Organization fact sheet is a sound place to start.

This page is general information for parents. It is not medical advice or a diagnosis. If your child is in danger right now, call your local emergency number.

Katya Karpenko

teen psychologist, systemic family therapist, EFT therapist

I work with the family as a system: what happens with a teenager is almost always tied to how talking works at home, so change starts with the adult. I run closed online groups for teenagers and a separate group for parents, and I write books for teens and their parents. I'm a mother of two teenagers myself.

About Katya (in Russian) →