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Moving Overseas with kids – Considerations & Top Tips
People and families consider moving abroad or immigrating for various reasons and some of the more common reasons are;
- to get a better job
- have a bigger house and land/garden
- provide a better education and environment for your kids
- have a better work/life balance
Perhaps its for all of the above reasons and that’s fine too! Whatever your reason is – it needs to be applicable to YOU…not your neighbour or your best friend as everyone’s situation is different and yes I’m going to say it – try not to judge why no-one else is immigrating too! It’s a huge step moving house let alone moving country and maybe even continent and made even more complicated (sometimes) when children are involved.
So if I could give just one piece of advice to those considering a complete life overhaul then it would be this:
“Whatever your WHY for moving is – keep that WHY close to your heart and don’t lose sight of your reason and your goal”
Our two Why’s We made the decision a long time ago for some of the above reasons and many more and we have been questioned many times over them by people from home and abroad. Many of those times we have come across bewildered looks and raised eyebrows and the inevitable question of “But what about your family?! They must be devastated!” and that can be a difficult question for some but I promise over time you realise the bewildered looks are just fear of the unknown, the raised eyebrows are probably a mix of curiosity and jealously and the question on family is there to throw doubt on your WHY – which is why I say it must be important to You.
Now our main WHY hasn’t changed but some of our plans around how we achieve it with our move have evolved since our initial decision made years ago – that’s normal, goalposts sometimes move but your main WHY for moving should still remain.
We wanted more quality family time Things to Consider & Tips for Moving Abroad with Kids
- What age will the child/ren be when you plan to move/immigrate – can you move prior to them starting school or in between a natural break i.e. between finishing primary and starting secondary schools. Remember these may be different abroad so do your homework on the local education system.
- Vaccinations & health check ups – you may not get the some vaccinations in the country you are immigrating to so worth checking if you want your child/ren to have their BCG etc. before you leave.
- Missing friends and family is inevitable but having a time and day that you call them on and keeping this consistent will help with setting a routine for you and the kids. It will also make people at home know that you are considering them too.
- The change of routine and setting can be difficult enough for us adults and even more daunting for kids hitting that emotional and physical roller-coaster of puberty or little ones still getting to grips with their mother tongue only to then have a new language and culture to compute! If you can plan to maintain some key routines like mealtimes and bedtime this can help as well as packing something familiar like that favourite teddy or book.
Once you have made the decision
For us it became much easier to compute and almost a relief when we picked a date as then we finally had a countdown to start planning things against. Here are our top tips to planning the move:
- Pick a date and try your best to stick to it! Easiest way is to just book your flights!
- Start thinking about what you want to take with you – will you be taking everything but the kitchen sink or selling everything and backpacking? If its the former then start collating your itinerary and get at least 3 shipping quotes. If its the latter (go you by the way) then go hell for leather and sell, sell, sell!!
- Visa’s/work permits/residence permits – check the local government websites for information and send your applications asap, as although you may not need one, your kids and husband might (this was our scenario)
- Tell your loved ones so they do not feel like they are being kept in the dark and keep bringing it up as it gets closer (some people will want to ignore the fact you are leaving and pretend it’s not happening so talking about it regularly will often help)
- Close unnecessary services/bank accounts and check your bank accounts for fees when spending abroad (some credit cards don’t charge fees for overseas spending)
So I hope that has given you or someone you know some food for thought when considering moving abroad/immigrating with children – we know its a big decision but if it’s right for you then it will be epic!
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Shanghai Layover – Our day in Disney!
See our latest video log showing you how and why we decided to take a 19 hour layover in Shanghai! It was so worth it!!
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What a family adventure and where do I begin!
We have been on the road now for 97 days…gosh that seems like a long time! We have taken 7 flights and traveled to 5 continents, had 4 hire cars, 2 caravans and 1 wheel blowout. I’d love to say our sanity is still intact but that would be a big fat lie! Mostly its been a blast and we wouldn’t change anything but there is too much to share in this post alone so I’ll share the places we have been to on the New Zealand destination page! If you are thinking of visiting New Zealand then all I can say is “just do it!”, you really won’t regret it and perhaps you won’t want to go home…(and that’s OK too!).
I won’t try to sugarcoat our adventures as we want to share the good and the bad days. But even on the not so great days I still like to think we are only going a little bit crazy with a dash of silliness and some cheerful ignorance – definitely the only way to be when traveling with little ones and basically winging it!
The kids have adapted beautifully to all the change and along with growing lots they now have another level of sibling play which mostly involves trying to beat each other until one squeals – yep. At the moment my mornings consist of playing referee and trying not to wake up the entire campsite at 7am (however if its nearer 8am then its fair game!). They have made some lovely friendships along the way too and are really starting to blossom as outgoing and friendly kids (*high five!*) although several people have also mentioned with a horrified look on their face to me how “Olivea is fearless!” which I shrug off as her wanting to not be outdone by her older brother so always gets involved even if shes told shes too small (go girl!).
Ahh butter wouldn’t melt! How have we as a couple adjusted to life on the road? Well, Brad is a lot browner than he used to be and it suits him and I now have freckly knees (which is not a great look). We live in flip flops or jandals as the Kiwis call them and our already previously infrequent date nights are now replaced by looking at the stars whilst the babies sleep and with the soft buzz of mosquito’s eating us alive in the background! Has it made us stronger being in each others company all day everyday? Ummm… its made us have some fairly heated discussions on many things (including how terrible I am at helping Brad park the caravan – haha – I blame it on us being 2 strong-minded people!) but we have found our routine and our own responsibilities and being Engineers we always needed some order in the dis-order of travelling family life so its worked out well! We know we made the right decision in what we are doing and its been really nice trusting each other to take action and make things happen – its not an easy thing to do and at times you wonder what on earth you are doing but for us its been well worth the risk!
Its been 36 days so far in New Zealand and what an amazing place – it really does seem to have it all. The landscape is breathtaking and I don’t think we have had an ugly or boring drive since we’ve arrived. The geothermal activity is really fascinating and although we have done some tourist attractions we have made a point of trying to do things that cost nothing and soak up the beautiful outdoors. The weather has also been immense with temperatures averaging 25 degrees but often feeling a lot hotter. We have also learnt to respect the sun here – its incredibly strong and I find myself re-applying SF50+ cream every few hours unlike in Europe.
The bubbling waters around Kuirau Park made us feel like we were on the set of something Jurassic! Then there’s the people – WOW – just WOW. Perhaps we have grown up believing manners, common courtesy and good will are from a distant past and I guess they do say that New Zealand is many years behind the UK in many aspects but its clearly behind in all the good ways! We have been blown away by the customer service and helpfulness of almost every Kiwi we have met and that includes expats too! We have been given some great advice on where to go and what to see and ways to get things cheaper (loving this!) and that’s from almost everyone we meet – even the guys in the tire shop spent 20 minutes sharing their favorite places to go, must see’s and pulled up a map showing us what routes were the best to take! It really has been a refreshing introduction to the country and Kiwis in general.
Here are just some of our favorite things so far on our travels:
- Relaxing in a geothermal waterfall called Kerosene Creek. Cost = FREE
- Watching the kids explore the many beautiful beaches and hold a baby crab in amazement. Cost = FREE
- Going for a dip and an impromptu picnic at Lake Taupo with a lovely family we met. Cost = a few bags of curly fries and toasted sarnies
- Taking in the lovely view and beach from our FREE campsite in the Ngatitoa Domain. Cost = FREE
- Eating amazing fresh fruit ice creams (and you are never far away from ice cream!). Cost = $4
The view from our freedom camping site was pretty epic! I will update and release the New Zealand page shortly with a full breakdown on our travels and we are also going to start a weekly video log on youtube (very excited!) so check in again with us next week for some more travel gossip! Hope you’ve enjoyed reading and sorry about the mind-dump – catch-up soon!
A friendly family go to guide to all things travel inspired!
