The highs and lows of moving abroad with young kids

The initial conversation was about two years ago: Would we want to relocate to Rome, Italy?

I was in the midst of building a set of options for a possible lay-off from my full-time marketing job. My husband had been at the same global company for 7+ years doing dev-ops work that was uninspiring. So, it seemed like a great idea!

But we had two kids under the age of 4, we had a mortgage, and we were surrounded by friends and family.

Were we ready to move abroad with kids—to pack up and rent out our home, look for preschools for the kids, try to learn a new language, find a place to live in a new city, temporarily rehome our pets, and take on new jobs?

Yes, we were. Looking back on it, it seems nutty. But our reaction was essentially: “Pop the prosecco!”

Moving abroad seems like a great idea. It will expose you and your kids to different cultures and a different language. Help them understand that there are many ways of living and remind yourself that you don’t have to adhere to the generally accepted model of success. There are a million ways to live; no single one is inherently better. Maybe it’s more comfortable, but that’s a different story.

And the pizza! And the travel opportunities! The lifestyle! Plus, we would get into new, challenging, exciting jobs in the travel/tourism sector. Fun!

Friends, family, and strangers generally responded, “Wow. I am so jealous. Can we visit?” (Except my mom, who cried over the saag paneer at our local Indian place. I cried, too. That’s a different post.)

We told ourselves, each other, and our world that it was temporary. We would go, we would try, and we would return. The timeline was one year, give or take.

I have written this post for people who are considering moving abroad (especially those of you who would have to work while living abroad and raising kids). Every experience is different, and there are a million reasons to go and sometimes just as many reasons to stay.

The joy of visas!

The global elite is unbounded by issues like visas, as Golden Ticket citizenship and visa programs are for sale around the world. For us working stiffs, more and more “digital nomad” visas crop up each year. The countries of the EU seem to have embraced this trend: Portugal, Ireland, and Spain led the charge. In mid-2024, Italy enacted its own Digital Nomad visa.

This means you might be able to live and work in a different country without a ton of hoop-jumping. Relatively. You’ll need an accountant to help you sort out where you will be earning and, therefore, where you will be paying taxes. Also, will you continue to own a home in the USA? Do you have investments? (If so, where will you pay taxes on those returns and/or rental income?) Where will your official mailing address be? It gets complicated.

The visa process can be even more complex for families moving abroad with kids, especially if an employer is not relocating you. I will not get into it here. Many firms will give you advice at an hourly rate and help you sort out which visa you should apply for, how, and what the expected timeline may be. It will take months at the very least.
Other people go without a visa. But I am a worrier. And we have young kids.

It is expensive to relocate

We were not headed toward jobs that would relocate us, i.e., they were not offering to pay for flights, pay for our apartment, or even put us up in a hotel while we looked for our apartment. So, our experience was similar to what a self-relocating digital nomad might undergo. (By contrast, diplomats and their families have nearly every cost and detail taken care of, including where the kids will go to school.)

Unfortunately, the cost of moving and getting settled in was extremely high. We had to put ourselves up while we looked for an apartment, while we were completely unmoored, while trying to work full time, while not speaking Italian. When moving abroad with kids, even minor delays or unmet promises can snowball into major stress and cost. Our employer had verbally agreed to “help us find an apartment,” but the reality was different once we were on the ground—my advice: if an employer offers something, get it in writing. Of course, there is not much legal enforceability, but at least getting something in writing will help spell out the risks, potential costs, and expectations.

While looking for an apartment to rent, we moved from Airbnb to Vrbo to Bookings.com hotels. It was not pretty. Bye-bye savings. At that point, our home in Seattle had not yet been successfully rented out, either, so we were also paying our mortgage—stress city. The ringing in my ears got louder.

Reality check: Moving abroad might sound like a lovely idea, but it comes with very high upfront costs.

The stomach wants what the stomach wants

Eating is one of the major joys of life, and for our family, eating out was one of the highlights of living abroad. Because the cost of living is generally lower in Italy, eating out is also cheaper.

However, even in the center of Rome, it is tough to find a cheese sandwich for your toddler at 11:30 a.m. (lunch is generally at 12:30 for kids and after 1 p.m. for adults). We relied on “pizza al taglio,” which is essentially pizza by the slice, when we needed to eat at odd hours. We all love pizza. But how many times can you eat pizza in one week? (We set new pizza-eating records.)

And then there’s dinner. Unless you are in the most touristy town, dinner spots generally don’t open until 7:30 p.m. Eating dinner early in Italy is gauche, which I understand and respect. But then there are toddlers. And they respect nothing. Ultimately, we didn’t eat dinner out much in Rome as a family, except at a pan-Asian spot in our neighborhood that opened early to support their impressive delivery business.

And yes, there were food delivery services. We didn’t do that much—instead, we opted for handmade fresh pasta from the shop down the street. It was world-class, and the owners were friendly.

Sick house

We got sick—a lot. I was on antibiotics many times. The boys and I came down with Scarlet Fever, and we were seriously ill many other times.

After speaking to friends who are parents and expats, I learned that getting sick more frequently is a typical reality when moving abroad with kids, especially during that first year. I am not an immunologist (although, as a parent, I sometimes fancy myself one), but it seems like most people chalk up the year of sickness to being immersed in a new germ pool.

Young kids, being young kids, are constantly exposed to illnesses that are going around. But unlike their local peers, kids who have recently moved abroad haven’t developed immunity to whatever nastiness it is. So, they get it. And then you get it. And then you are booking an in-home visit with an English-speaking pediatrician (we met many doctors and finally found a very good one at the end of our stay). In-home visits are costly and out of pocket.

As all parents know, being sick frequently takes a lot of the fun out of daily life. If you are considering relocating with young kids, be aware that you and they may be ill a lot more than usual for the first year or so.

Getting away from it all? Kind of

Leaving the USA might look better every day, but here are a things to keep in mind:

• Bureaucracy in other countries is slower-moving than in the United States, and fewer things are online. There is more waiting and less certainty. We went on many, multi-hour wild goose chases only to be turned away from this building or that one. This is normal in most other places in the world. So, in this regard, the United States is an exception. Best to reset those expectations now. We had visas which were supposed to convert into permesso di sigurno after one year, in September. When we left in December, we still had not received them.
• Things you expect to function with some reliability, such as public transit, the post office, the internet, etc., do not always function. The post office, for example, is where utility and other public bills can be paid, money can be sent, etc. Try to mail a package from an Italian post office, I dare you. Or the metro is on strike, so you cannot get to your job or get the kids to school. This is BAU /expected. What did the locals do? They would chill out, have an espresso, and sort out how to work from home, hop on a scooter, or make it work some other way.
• You cannot escape politics; you can just ignore it. For us, moving abroad didn’t mean not voting, it just meant being more removed from the news cycle. This was a nice break, but it did not remove our agency from the current failings of the United States. We were still paying taxes in the USA. Also! Wherever you move, there will be political issues. Italy is not perfect. Google the current state of gay couples who have adopted children. It’s not good. Just because you don’t speak the language as well as you speak English, and therefore cannot scan the headlines, you will be supporting whatever is going on in your new hometown, just with ignorance as a palliative.
• One of the biggest emotional lifts when moving abroad with kids is building a community from scratch — it takes time and effort. We got a leg up in this department as we were exposed to a group of parents through our kids’ school and had some English-speaking colleagues. However, when looking for friends, you are not casting for just warm bodies; you’re looking for people you connect with. Don’t expect to be surrounded by throngs of like-minded people who want to spend time getting to know you unless you are going abroad with a diplomatic posting.
• The cost of living was slightly lower in Rome than in Seattle. (Seattle is an expensive place to live.)
• The grocery store food tasted fresher and was much cheaper. But! When eating out, it was tougher to find a good variety of international foods. We had to go across the city to find ramen, Vietnamese food, or Ethiopian food. (Thai? Forgetaboutit.)
• Fewer people speak English than you might expect. We were surprised by how few people spoke English in Rome.
• Health care is technically “free” if you get into the healthcare system, which takes months, AND/OR if you go to the emergency room. But if you or your kids need a doctor’s exam to get a prescription or to assuage a concern, you will pay out of pocket. Each visit will be between 100 and 200 euros. Even the Italians with means don’t always use the free system – if something serious comes up and they either don’t want to or cannot wait 8 months for the next available appointment, they pay out of pocket.
• Going to awesome places by train is generally easy. But it ain’t cheap. Flying budget airlines is often more affordable than taking a train. But the experience of going by train is usually less stressful and takes a similar amount of time if you are traveling within Italy or somewhere nearby. We always packed the standard books, games, coloring stuff, but the folding toilet seat for the small bums was also essential. You’ll thank me when you’re trying to hold a 3-year-old above a dirty toilet seat on a train thundering through Tuscany.
• Workplace culture is different! I thought that there would be more similarities than differences between Italy and the Pacific Northwest of the USA. I was wrong. The workplace culture seemed much more tolerant of taking time away, either a few hours or a day, because a kid is sick. And everyone uses their vacation time—all of it. Italians have a “right to a job” written into their constitution. The “right to a job” contributes to the approach to work.
• Generally, Italians do not subscribe to the “time is money” adage that plagues Americans. They seem to believe that time is life. This was a refreshing change, and it took me a while to fully embrace it.

English? Anyone?

You may have traveled to Europe and been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who spoke some English. But your experience as a tourist does not mirror reality.

It is true that people in Italy who are in the tourism industry speak English. But for the general populace, speaking English is the exception to the rule. You might expect Rome to be full of fluent English speakers (it is a global city, after all). But that is not the case. And if someone does speak English, it tends to be Netflix English – not so bad – but that also tends to be younger people. I am not complaining. I am just letting you know that encountering fluent English speakers outside of the touristy center is the exception, not the rule.

The upside was that our older son became conversational in Italian within a year and a half. He was fully immersed in Italian at his “bilingual” (not really) preschool. The younger son’s language development stalled, but since returning to the USA, he is back on track.

Personally, I love being immersed in a different language. I love the challenge and the constant novelty. But it is also exhausting. I would rehearse my phrases for the pharmacist: “Do you have liquid for the ears? For kids? For swimming? Pain?” But inevitably, I would stumble and fall back on Google Translate.

We did a lot of Duolingo. But after a year and a half, I only spoke “grocery store and restaurant Italian” with limited confidence. I am sure that, had I been expected to speak Italian at work, I would have picked up much more of it. Most non-Italians I made friends with, who were in Rome for the duration, were taking Italian language courses. If we had stayed longer, we would have done the same.

Allora!

Overall, I am glad we took the leap into moving abroad with kids and lived in Italy. We made some friendships that I hope last a lifetime. We imbued our kids with an appreciation of European and Italian culture, and our older son spoke fluent Italian by the time we left.

I loved the work of creating a marketing team at a growing company.

We loved traveling around Italy with our kids.

Would we do it again? Well, I guess that’s life’s joy and sorrow: no do-overs. That’s why we went. And that’s why we’re glad to be back in Seattle, surrounded by friends and family.