Temporary Kids: Oak Lawn Family Hosts International Moraine Valley Students (Part 1)

The trend these days in American households has been toward a multigenerational makeup. Grandma takes the basement, Junior gets the attic.

But for one Oak Lawn family the momentum has not been generational but ethnic: children and pets on top, foreign students below.

"It really enriches your life,” Rita Bringe said. “A lot of people are afraid to take the risk of doing this, because you just don't know, and maybe it's fear of the unknown.”

About 12 years ago Ken and Rita Bringe took the leap and answered an advertisement seeking host families for the young adults from ’s . Today they are the proud temporary parents of Russian, Swedish and South Korean students.

Coupled with their three biological children, the Bringes and students live aptly in a cedar-sided home reminiscent of the cottages that housed lodgers during the Great Depression. Only this suburban backyard holds a pool and these quarters span the entire length of the basement — an apartment unto itself, fully-furnished, complete with three bedrooms, bathroom, living room, kitchen and a separate back door for tenants to come and go when they please.

“It's a decent set up,” Rita said. “If you're one of those international students and you're in a host home, you have your bedroom, that's it. You can imagine you're kind of walking on egg shells ... Here, they have their freedom.”

But being isolated from the rest of the house makes it easier for dirt and damage to aggravate without the family’s notice. Ken Bringe took a trip to the kitchen one morning and found that a sink pipe had completely rotted away. Like scarecrows the lodgers began pointing fingers at one another.

It’s the role of parent and landlord which the Bringes constantly juggle. A teacher by trade and tradesman by summer, Ken, 51, seems to prefer tough love to any love at all. The college screens students and sets rent, but the discipline is all Ken's.

“I don't deal with things the way (Rita) does,” he said sitting in his basement. “I deal with them straight on. I just come down here and tell them, 'You know you kids are idiots, I can't have this crap.' And they can go out and get the vacuum.”

Rita, 56, a caregiver at Park Lawn, is perhaps better equipped in the role of guardian.

“I tell them where to buy (food), what to buy, when to buy it on sale,” Rita said. “I guide them along."

Teaching them to cook the food is a hassle unto itself. Rita once caught a young student putting a Styrofoam cup into the oven.

Still others avoid the kitchen entirely, with partiality toward booze. Dozens of empty bottles of vodka, rum and whiskey crowd the dresser of the Russian student, who’s spending summer vacation back home. On a recent morning he thought he got stuck inside his bedroom. Rather than exit through the open side door, he kicked in the front one.

COMING TOMORROW: The Bringes share more incidents of humor and heartache amongst the international lodgers. We also meet their biological children and learn how, no matter what the background, a college student is a college student is a college student.