Moving abroad is stressful, and starting a new life in an unfamiliar country with your children without expat medical insurance is even more so. If local schools aren’t suitable, you will probably send your children to an international school so that their education is not disrupted during your international assignment or new life overseas.
It’s easy to focus on your worries about your child settling in, but have you thought about all the benefits of living overseas in the early years and how the education experience abroad could aid your child in future? Whether they’re a ‘Third Culture Kid’ or temporary expat child, they will excel in areas children who don’t experience other lifestyles cannot. By simultaneously indulging their childlike sense of wonder at new experiences and helping them mature through understanding, expat life can foster well-rounded kids brimming with stories!
A bucket load of sofa’s to sleep on for future jaunts around the world, a better grasp on how cultural stereotypes differ from reality, and a human frame of reference when other mentioned countries are all part of the expat child package.
This will breed an attitude of acceptance and understanding that serves them in later life, as well as in the classroom. Having an increased awareness of how people live around the world by seeing it first-hand is a great benefit of growing up overseas. Being able to respect other people, their beliefs, and their values will take your child far.
English may be a universal business language, but being able to communicate in other languages will never be a bad thing. It opens up more job opportunities and develops linguistic skills, as well as exercises new parts of the brain.
People who are asked where they are from and take a while to explain are infinitely more interesting. They will be attractive to employers because time spent abroad signals good life experience and intellectual stimulation.
Most people aren’t thrown into a new environment full of strangers and forced to carve their way until they leave home for University. By living abroad, your child overcomes these challenges much earlier in life, before other constructs of their reality develop. This puts your child at an advantage and means they will be the one making things easier for others in uncomfortable new situations.
Children who live abroad become Maths whizzes. Between working out currency exchange rates, time differences to skype their friends around the globe and adding up the different countries they’ve visited, expat life breeds number skills. Expat children have also proven to possess better problem-solving skills, perhaps thanks to experiences that force them to evaluate how something can and should be done.
