If your family emigrated as a child, how did it impact on you?

[BigGwen]

Thinking of moving overseas but have primary school age children who are very settled, doing well and school and have lots of friends.

I am worried about how a move might affect the children so wanted to ask your experiences.

Did you find it difficult to forgive your parents and feel desperate to go home and resume old life, or did you embrace the new experience and make friends quickly, never looking back?

Thanks in advance

mumhum thank you, that's really reassured me. We are veering more towards going than not going. We thought it was incredibly beautiful out there when we visited earlier in the year but wasn't sure if the glorious weather made it all rose-tinted. And after all, I'd be working rather than being on holiday. But I could swim in the lake on my lunch break

We will be looking at local schools which makes it a bit more daunting.

Sorry to hijack this thread!

Go for it, you would regret not trying it. Kids are so adaptable, when I have found it tough I have taken my lead from the DC who have settled so well here.

We emigrated to Switzerland when I was 12 and I returned to the UK at 18. I'm now back in Switzerland.

It may be a matter of personalities, but to me it feels as though I have two homes and it's wonderful! At the same time, I am a bit of a stranger in both places as I can't really relate to many of my British friends teenage experiences but do feel like an expat here because I completely missed out on the learning to be an adult in Switzerland part.

My international background is a large part of why I got the job I'm in and means I essentially have two sets of friends. I think it's fab.

I think we would regret not doing it... I'm just worried about the impact it could have on the DDs... My parents split when I was 7/8 and I moved house and school. It was largely fine, but I did feel like I'd missed out on some things and didn't have quite the same affinity for the local area. And as I got older I felt a slight twang of envy when looking at friends whose lives had had no real disruptions....

Thanks magical, your situation sounds great!

Yes - we moved to Asia when I was three. Wonderful childhood outside, the fabulous weather, travel, food, experiences. I would love to move back but its far more difficult to get a job as expat there now.

I thought I might have to hide this thread, but instead, I find that a number of people have had the same experience of emigration as I had. I thought I was the only one not to feel grateful that my parents took me off to the other side of the world for a "better" life.

My parents took us to Australia when I was a child. But unlike a lot of the other posters, they really wanted to cut all ties with family here in the UK yes, I came back They were never the sorts of migrants who still thought of England as "Home" and they took out citizenship for all of us as soon as it was possible.

I was brought up with my parents' negative attitudes towards England, even though I had a terrible time being bullied at school in Australia, and used to fantasise that it was really all not happening, and that people I'd met in Australia who looked like friends back in England would turn back into my school friends.

I passed as Australian (I got beaten up for sounding English and "posh") so I had to pass. But the best thing I ever did in my entire life was leave Australia. Such was the family pressure (and Australians' general anti-Englishness - they're very racist), that it took me till my mid-30s to return. I sacrificed a relationship & the chance of a family of my own, but it's still the best thing I ever did.

If you must go, go. But DON'T pretend to your children that you're not English, that you never lived there, and that your extended family are awful people. Let them keep their ties back to England. Give them choices.

Also, meant to say: a lot of experiences of posters on this thread I'd say were just ex-pats., not actually migrants. They only lived away from England for 10 years or fewer. Think about whether you see it as absolutely permanent.

BTW, Australia is an expensive country with city property prices more like Britain's, and far less of a welfare state. No universal State pension except for the very poorest & its means tested. No NHS. I'm financially far better off in Britain.

St Mary I am also Hijacking this thread to tell you that moving to the Swiss French area is so easy compared to the Swiss German area that I live in. I know because I live in one during the week and have a Ferien (holiday house) in the other at the weekends in Valais. Swiss Germans speak a dialect that is formed with many different words eg Horse =Ross (Swiss German)and Pferd (High German) compared to French Swiss where only some numbers are said differently, (I`ll leave you to google that but it is not a big deal).

Good luck
Ap