Best country to raise children (overseas or UK?)

[LadyCybilCrawley]

Started another thread in wrong place and then found this .....

Ok so we are fortunate to be living abroad at present - but after a recent trip back to the UK to see family we wondered if raising our children in another country was the best thing for them.

We are currently where we are for employment, outdoor lifestyle and quality of life. But does any of that matter if your children miss extended family?? I just don't know what's best anymore and would be really interested if anyone has had similar situation and moved back and if so, what was it like?

Pros and cons?

What am I missing ?

[Littlemisspawpatrol]

@Nothingorthebest where did you move to in the med? I'd love to find a place to raise my daughter which has a lot of activities for her and warmth from people out and about.

[marcopront]

This post is from 2014.

[chiweenie]

We are in California, pretty happy, good schools close to home, local friends, easy access to sport, swimming, good weather, wages are higher, nice clean parks. Beaches, mountains within an hour, amazing national parks less than a day of travel. I like how school is less pressurized and more broad over here and would not run back to the exam factory of gcses and A levels no thanks.

The downsides - I do have the thought about gun crime in school but in London I would worry about knife crime. Healthcare- we have cheap healthcare but of course many don't and I do miss British culture and friends and family. You do make new friends but there is an isolation to being in a different country but I do think our standard of living is so much higher even with the high cost of living here because we get paid so much more, have a more spacious home in a really good neighborhood, schools are so close to home, it is all just so much easier here than say in London where it was much more of a grind looking back. No where is perfect but the US has def given us a better quality of life than we ever could have had in the UK.

[newstart1234]

I lived abroad with children. Moved back to uk when they were tweens. Reasons were to be nearer family and give them a chance to learn their parents culture and own heritage. If they decide to go back (to scandinavia) when adults and I would be delighted. Or they can stay and I would be equally pleased. The positives of abroad, for me, was that they have experienced a different culture and learnt another language. They can carry this their whole lives. But in the end it was a case of diminishing returns. We got less and less out of it, and it came to a critical point in terms of schooling; we had to make a longer term decision one way or the other. We live near family now and see them weekly or biweekly. In almost every practical way, life in the UK is less optimal. Public services, healthcare, transport, traffic... so so so much traffic, noise, pressured work environment, let's not even go into energy prices. However, I do think we feel more relaxed, or 'embedded' now, after only a couple of years, then we ever did in Scandinavia after over a decade. For us, having family close by has been worth it.

[Paperthinspiders]

I lived in London many years ago but never with DC but thanks for an interesting point of view.

[Nothingorthebest]

living broad or in U.K if you have kids !?

I lived in London , Knightsbridge for many years and somehow at some point I really loved it .
you can only imagine , you wake up in the morning , opening windows and Harrods is right in front of you, all restaurants and caffe’s welcomes you , you are feeling like at home in each place you go. You have a chat with workers , with shop owners , you feel part of community.
Now I have 2 years old son and 4 years old girl. Over a year ago we have moved to Mediterranean country in Europe because seriously I can’t recognise London any longer .
even having good income you simply getting tired from primitivism.
sorry I am writing too long message , but want to
make it clear …
please count how many places you know where your kids might enjoy and entertain themselves.
playgrounds are so old and dirty , that there’s no pleasure to use them. Or they are made from metal construction , little toddlers easily can harm themselves . Bigger indoor playgrounds are far from central London , until you reach it through the traffic kids don’t want to enjoy anymore because got tired of travelling . Plus they are so overcrowded .
apart couple of south Ken museums and squirrels in the Hyde park , I see no other affordable options for normal families .
let me give an example from experience abroad .
plenty of new investment indoor playgrounds .
spacious , big , themed playgrounds .
kids goes horse riding, tennis playing, sea side 9 months per year , football classes , swimming lessons , outdoor parks with many amusement activities . Family has a dog, kittens , parrots , turtles , rabbits so kids can enjoy their pets . Daily bicycle riding, electric car riding, scooter riding, playing ball. All sounds simple but kids are truly alive and happy. All these activities are extremely cheap . Parents has less stress, kids are more happier . Most importantly they have constant friends . In London people moving from one house to another , changing schools very often too. abroad kids ha so much attention from another people , where in London people are too depressed . Apart wearing trainers and wrinkled clothing I can’t spot anything fashionable here anymore . The only disadvantage is learning perfect English language . But…, but so many kids abroad now speaks super good English only because they watch you tube or English cartoons.
many people don’t want criticism , but please , write me more of it , only then maybe I will start to like London. The other day I spoke with our friend in Knightsbridge who is owning many pubs ,( if not all ) in this neighbourhood. He said I must get rid of them all, because none brings any profit any more . Only electricity expenses reaches 90k annually per one pub. Dear reader , do you understand my point !? It’s so overpriced here but I don’t see anything much in return . Apart connections . That matters so much . Maybe that’s the only one point left I still admire and value . Anyway . Go against me , and write me how to raise kids in London. !? Happy kids . Active kids . Loving kids .

[ElizabethMedora]

LairyPoppins if you are comfortable sharing I'd love to know where you are, I am keeping a spreadsheet of places in Cornwall to consider moving to!

[evalyn]

Thanks pupsiecola.

To answer your question; I don't want to be too specific and out myself. But, apart from times when we just travelled with no specific home to go back to, which was a while ago now (and before DCs) (and a lot of fun!), we lived sort of permanently in four different countries (three continents) ... touched base back in UK between times ... over about thirty years. Been back in England a while now.

Lots of people are more well-travelled, some diplomats for instance. And our children only really remember the one country they grew up in apart from UK. I count myself as lucky to have lived the life we did, though ... even if this last summer in particular has reminded me why we chose to come back and live in England. Climate, people, countryside, towns and cities ... it's lovely here! (Apart from the awful etonian government we've got, but that's a different matter.)

[pupsiecola]

Enjoyed your post evalyn. How many times did you move/how many countries over what timespan?

[TheSarcasticFringehead]

We're in the US. DC were born here. DH moved over here as a teen, but all his family are in Ireland otherwise. I studied here. It feels like home.

Pros are that we have a wonderful outdoor lifestyle. Swimming, the beach, more walking. The summer camps and the sport they do at school is must better and more varied. The education system is fairly good and there is a focus on their social development too. We are in a perfect place in terms of weather, social life, nearby colleges, trips out and also can afford a nice house for cheaper than I'd get even in cheaper parts of the UK. It is one of the only places where I can work in my field.

Cons are that we're far from family. Find it hard to keep in touch with old friends. Life has gone on without us, the DC have never met relatives I used to be very, very close to and who they would have loved, because of the cost. Education system is, like I said, good, but not as good as in the UK imo. Healthcare is pricey. Although we are active here and can do more, there's less average every day walking and more car use, bigger portions and so on, and I worry what effect that might have on the DCs.

If we moved back to my home, they'd still miss out on being close to DH's family, and vice versa, but it would be cheaper to see each other. But people would speak differently - they don't have English or Irish accents - and they wouldn't have the roots.

I don't think the US is the best place to live for a variety of reasons, but it's still pretty good, and that's as much as you can hope for, I suppose.

[evalyn]

We moved abroad just before eldest DC started proper school, and back a few years after the youngest left for university. (For which they all chose to go to UK.) We'd always had itchy feet, had lived abroad before (different continents), but came back to UK to begin procreating (thanks, NHS!). We would have kept moving, too, except that once DC started proper school we allowed them a vote; they always simply wanted to stay in the same place, so we did that.

(My and partner's feet, not so itchy now, in fact. We like where we live and very rarely go abroad except to visit family. Age, I suppose.)

Turned out fine for us and for DC. They have an internationalist outlook; speak different languages; have good qualifications and now decent and interesting careers; variously settled in UK and elsewhere; friends around the world; partnered-up variously with British/foreigners; are confident in choosing their own lives and styles. (Some are raising their children monoglot, British-style, others making shift to raise bilingual children. Which is better? Their decision, anyway.)

Partner and I more-or-less retired to UK. Enjoy life here now, whilst missing some aspects of where we spent the majority of our working lives. There were many advantages to living where we did, and we'd make the same choices again.

However, DC have, at various times, felt a bit rootless. They didn't share much general culture etc. (childhood TV shows!, fashions ...), with their friends/peers at uni, for instance, which they found tricky in certain ways. 'We're anglophone British but we don't think the way British people do,' one of my DC expressed it, 'People expect us to know all about things we've never heard of.' Neither British nor non-British, the expat condition -- sometimes this falling-between-two-stools aspect of it all was uncomfortable for them as they grew up. Perhaps still? I'm not sure. They seem fine now.

DC did miss the extended family, it's true ... but really I think that would have been the same even if we'd just moved to another part of UK. And anyway, like many of our cohort (footloose baby-boomers), partner and I were from different parts of the country, so at best we could have lived near half the extended family, supposing we'd wanted to.

Of course our expat experiences were different from others of our friends. (We have lots of friends/acquaintances all round the world as a result of our wanderings.) Much depends on where you go - Australia is a very different place from East Africa, neither is like continental Europe or Scandinavia or USA ... But all-in-all, I reckon our lives and the lives of our children went better for our indulging our itchy feet the way we did.

You might be the same. Or it might work out differently or worse for you. And the world is different now in so many ways. But it might be useful to read what, on reflection, turns out to be an overwhelmingly positive view on moving abroad with children. It certainly can work out very well -- I know because it did for us.

[Calgary]

This is likely controversial, but As a serial expat with 4 nationalities between me and my dh I feel that the best place to raise your kids is whatever place and country you and your dh are happy with at that time. For us that means, opportunities to do new things and have challenging and interesting jobs. Kids are smart and sensitive to how their parents are feeling and will pick up if you're unhappy about your situation, for whatever reason. It's very easy to project both good and bad feelings onto children so I'd suggest keeping that in mind when you make any decisions. I have yet to come across unhappy expat children with very happy parents but there are plenty of the opposite.

[pupsiecola]

I hear you. DH loved his job in SE Asia and the commute was very fast and very cheap. He's traded that for a commute of 2.5 hours to some of his customers, and 70 quid a pop (thankfully expensable). He goes up on a Monday morning and comes back on a Wednesday usually. Thursday and Friday is working from home, mostly. It is such a drain for him though and he can't do this forever. Thankfully he is still working for the same company. It has taken him a year pretty much to get to the acceptance stage. Still not sure what our long term plans are. We have just bought a house (Completed today) but we made sure it would be easy to rent out.

[rushingrachel]

Thanks pupsiecola. DH was dead set against leaving Brussels because he loved his job. And he hates it now that he has to commute (and in fairness the railways here are pretty crap). But I was convinced to my core that I knew what would be best for the kids and felt we had a responsibility when everything was derailing, especially when the little one stopped talking. I was as you say uptight and unable to relax and now feel such relief seeing them more at peace and at one with themselves (esp DS1).

[pupsiecola]

Glad all is going well for you now rachel and the kids are settled. It is so hard to relax and make the most of things if they are stressed and unhappy. We always know what's best for them, don't we.

[rushingrachel]

We moved back in March. We had been in Brussels for 8 years, my DS1's private international school had raised the question of whether he had ASD and it was hard and expensive to find a psychologist who could deal with the issue in English. DS2 was in a local Belgian school and loathed it and gave up speaking. Pretty much entirely. We couldn't afford to pay for him to go private. I had a strong sense for personal reasons both would thrive better in an English language environment.

I would say broadly its been far better for both of them. DS1 is happy in the local village primary. Nobody has mentioned his behaviour once and they say he is a lovely boy. Little one is like a pg in sht at nursery and has blossomed. He chatters away a lot. I love being able to have tea with my mum without having to see her for a week, and it's so good for the kids to be able to be picked up by grandparents and aunts and play with different children in the family again without a massive treck to get there.

I really liked the idea of them being bilingual and cosmopolitan world citizens in the capital of Europe. But it just wasn't happening for them and they're just so much happier being home.

Which brings me entirely back to what the other posters have said that it depends on your children and your family.

[lostprince]

If family is the draw back to UK then just make sure you would live where you would actually see them. It is very easy to get wrapped up in your own lives. I have two siblings, oNe who lives a few hours away and one at the other side of the world. I only see them in person once or twice a year bit we talk on phone/ Skype loads.

[nooka]

We live in beautiful British Columbia (Canada), and the fact that it really is quite beautiful is a major plus. We've been here for almost six years and have no plans to return to the UK. Might move somewhere else once the children are in university though. We really like the school system here, all the local children go to the same good comprehensive and it's very low stress (for example at 13 and 15 neither of my children have more than half an hour or so homework) if I compare that to their cousins in the UK I'm very thankful to be here.

Of course there are downsides too, but for now this is a good place to be.

[AggressiveBunting]

The heart is a fickle friend indeed I had major wobbles last year after spending a glorious month in the uk in that beautiful summer. My heart kept wandering over to Rightmove, looking at houses to rent in Clapham. Then I went back at Christmas- it rained non- stop, the kids bickered and the traffic was awful. I stopped looking at Rightmove.

[SwiftRelease]

Not sure the heart always know though! The more i travel the more i see both the good AND bad in each place, rarely straightforward decision. Always costs & benefits, everywhere.

[CommonBurdock]

Home is absolutely where your heart is. And only you know the answer to that. So if you completely love the place you have moved to then stay there. If not, go back to the UK and face up to the devil you know.
I moved back last year and the only thing I really didn't like was the coffee and the ridiculous bank charges. Everything else was miles better.

[chloeb2002]

For us our kids have been born and bred here. Three out if four have never been to the uk. Work dictates that we need to be in the commuter zone for a major city, so that limited us in the uk. Here we have the rural life with all the city perks!
Settling is hard. We gave ourselves an initial 4 years in which however hard it got we wouldn't make any plans to leave. It got hard, missed family , friends, dd struggled at school, ds has big health issues. But somehow 7 years on we wouldn't leave as it's now home. I still miss people, but I'm making new connections. Dd loves school as much as any other 12 year old!
Certainly where we were in the uk there is no nhs dentist and the cost was eye watering. We have private health here so only pay 10%. Medicare is based on nhs.
As far as pro and con of where you call home, it depends on what drives your desire to move else where. I know if we moved back to the uk our lives would be ruled by others. The cost of May sports are huge compared to here, ds is far better off here than the uk. I worked in the nhs.
He gets more help and funding here than the uk.
Schools here (private sector) I love. Not expensive and varied curriculum.
Cater for ds too. With far less drama than I read from uk schools!
I guess home is where you choose to make it.

[HolgerDanske]

For me it would be Denmark.

But I am danish so maybe a little bit biased

And the UK has treated me and my children very well, so I'm not complaining.

[giggly]

Lairy poppins sounds like a wonderful place.
We moved abroad 2 years ago and despite"putting ourselves out there". Or pimping myself as I prefer to call it it is so hard to make friends. I have been desperately lonely and have watched my eldest vibrant dd suffer badly trying to fit in.

The thought of my girls being stranded here with no support when we are old/ dead with no history is to much. So much so we will, be back in the UK before Christmas. Yeah!!!!!!!!

[Nospringflower]

I am doing it from opposite perspective - reasons why I don't want to move abroad.

Like the seasons here even if weather not always great.
Family and longstanding friends here.
Culturally people 'get' you
Money doesn't drive me enough to sacrifice the above.
Lots of sporting outdoor opportunities for children you just have to accept the weather.
Great education system
Etc