anolan

We are in the early stages of planning our jump across the pond. I've done it once already, I'm a New Brunswicker misplaced in England. I moved here with my husband 9 years ago, premarriage and prechildren. Somehow 9 years have slipped away, and although my time in England has been mostly enjoyable, I've decided its time for us to all go 'home'! My main worry is the children, we've got 4, aged 7, nearly 5, 3, and 8 months. I know the younger ones aren't a problem but I worry about how my eldest will settle in... Has anyone emigrated with elementary school kids? How did it work with settling them into the NB or NS school system. I should know all of this being Canadian... but I've been away far too long!

I'm about to send all of our forms off for a family class immigration, which should take about 6 months... kind of scarily fast if you ask me! I'd love for us to end up back in NB, but my other half works in IT (development) and we just aren't sure what the job market will be like in NB, so NS is also possible. Ideally I'd like to become self employed and set up some holiday lets with the money from the sale of our UK house, but we'll see!

Anyway, I'm rambling on, sorry for a long first post. I look forward to reading more and getting to know all of you.... and who knows, maybe seeing a few Brits on the other side of the pond in a few months!

Amy

Coffeepot

Hi and welcome to BE we are about to do the same so can't help you there, i am sure they will all settle well ours is nearly 7 and i am not worried, if you are happy they tend to settle as well, good luck

anolan

I agree, we haven't actually spoken to the children about it yet, we are waiting until things are a bit more concrete. I worry about them leaving their friends behind, more than schooling, but they are young and adaptable at the moment so its now or never!

Good luck with your move, where are you looking at moving to?

Amy

cov-canuck

Don't wait too long to talk to the kids. My parents told us we were moving on Christmas day, and we were on the plane in the first week in April. WAAAAYYY too fast to come to terms with the idea. (we were 11, 10, and 8)

edinburgh

we have three boys 17, 15,12

the oldest boy is really up for the move , middle one will go with the flow ,youngest dose not want to move due to a new girlfriend !! , and a wife who changes her mind every other week

my thinking is go for it , if it was a really bad experience then we come back but to not have the experience at all would be a shame
good luck

gordon

Cookie

I would think that when moving anywhere, the younger the better even though our experience of moving with our boys aged 16 and 12 was just fine.

Our boys had known for a couple of years that we were going to be emigrating and had also visited Ontario twice. We moved to NS. Two of us came over for Mr Y-C-D interview - boys had never set foot here until the day we moved permenantly. Both boys settled in brilliantly though with no problems (as did mum and dad).

Keep your kids informed. I presume that you have family members living in NB. Show the kids photos of their relatives and pictures of NB from the internet and tell them stories about mum growing up in Canada. You will all be just fine

cneldred

We moved to Ontario in October when ours were 7 and 2, they have both had a birthday since. Our daughter has known about the move for the last 18 months but i don't think she really understood what was going on until last Easter when we started house hunting over here. They were involved in all aspects of the move, someone i used to work with was already in Ontario with his wife and kids so we visited them and got all the kids playing together. The other family are about an hour away from us, but it showed her she could make friends easily. And then finally we held a big leaving party for Lauren (the eldest) all her classmates and other friends were invited, she had a leaving book they all wrote messages and their email addresses in. There was a Canadian theme to the party, we got loads of Canadian sweets and drinks from the shop in Covent Garden, plus pens, keyrings and badges as gifts. Lauren was involved in arranging the party aswell.

She started school 4 days after we landed in Grade 3, had her birthday 2 weeks later, we invited some of the girls from her class round for a tea party. In her schools Christmas performance she was one of the main characters. She has joined Brownies aswell. All in all we think she has settled in really well, she rarely mentions the Uk anymore apart from family, they are both developing accents already.

They other thing we did was set up a website, the address is in my signature, all our friends and family in the UK have this address. We update this every couple of days and Lauren plays a part in helping with the update, she is quite proud that her old school friends can see all the things we are up to. We also taught her to email and use messenger, obviously we monitor that very carefully though.

Feel free to browse our website, i can recommend getting a Mac, they make websites so easy to set up. Hope that helps.


Chris

scrubbedexpat074

My daughter was four when we moved, but suffered badly during the first six months - she had a very big social circle in England due to being at nursery since she was 11 months old. In one go, we removed her school, friends, activities (gym and swimming) and routine. We thought that as neither of us were working we could spend plenty of time as family having fun (and we did!), but it wasn't enough to replace what she had at the time. Now she's nearly 7 and loves it here, but I would say she suffered a few months of depression when we arrived.

Distant memories now. Younger the better IMO.

Mark

mkmurrays

We told our daughter, then around 9 years old when we were over on a reccie. Well, she sort of guessed, which wasn't ideal, but fortunately she took it very well.
She's settled far better than I could've hoped, and although she's always worried about missing her friends and grandparents, she's been a star. She's a naturally positive child, so for her she could see all the great benefits of growing up in the Okanagan. Once she knew we answered all her questions and reassured her as best we could.

Now she's here she loves school, has three 'BFF's' and is regularly going for sleepovers, afterschool skiing, sledding, to the mall (she's 12 now), movies, skating etc. Instead of an hour's bus journey each way to school, she's there in ten mins max now......She has more freedom than she's ever had, and happily trots off to walk the dog and meet her friends in the park. Yes, she still keeps in touch with her English friends and family by email/MSN/phone, but increasingly her life is here.

I think she's adjusted to her new world better than either my OH, or me.
If your kids are old enough I suggest that you see if they can contact other kids who've been through the same thing, or are going through it now? That certainly helped my daughter (thanks Gay (Burtonbunch) and co.)

pretz

we made the move to calgary 4ish yrs ago. Kids were young (elementary school). We bought a house 18-mos in advance and rented it before we got there (fortunately it wasn't trashed). We constantly talked about "Canada" house, looking a pictures of it on our computer before went. We talked about the outdoor activites we would do together as a family constantly before we left. We were lucky then, rode the UK property wave and calgary house prices were half of what they are now.

Was relatively smooth, a few tears here and there but we joined the local leisure centre (gym thing with pool, wave pool etc), went cycling, ice skating (badly), something virtually every day. I took 6-mos off work to settle them in, bearing in mind with commuting etc in SE UK I woudln't really see them mon-fri.

The locals were disarming friendly. Within about 3 mos they were running around with the neighbourhood kids saying "awesome" "dood" etc.

mkmurrays

Yep, don't they lose their accents quickly? Mine is already saying 'eh', 'right', 'jeez' etc. She helped out in the school office so I phoned her so she could answer the phone. I didn't recognise the Canadian kid on the other end.....

ladymoose

pretz - we did a similar thing to you with our 5 year old - made sure we talked about the move lots before we went (though we only had a few weeks to do this as it all happened so quickly).

Although we were clear to him that he may be homesick at first and that that was a totally understandable emotion to have, we also ensured that he heard/saw us being excited, happy and positive about the move. Kids tend to watch their parents example in all things - especially mood - if you are unsure or scared or worried, they will see this and feel the same.

We also made sure that for the first couple of weeks after we arrived, we did fun things as well as the boring, mundane ones. So if we applied for our sin numbers in the morning, or took our driving test, or looked at a new house etc - in the afternoon, we'd go to the mall to buy him a new toy, or go on the rides, or go to the lake etc. If a kids spends the first week or so, forever in line-ups or watching parents having stressy conversations, they may start to feel bored and upset themselves.

At elementary school age, kids are very adaptable, if you are positive - they will be too in my experience.

Coffeepot

What a great idea, we are leaving kids behind to finish Uni so will do that

burton bunch

Hi and another welcome to BE - may you end up as insane as the rest of us

I finally arrived Aug 07 (after being left in the UK for an extra 7 months when hubby had to come out here to work). We had two kids a 13 year old girl and a boy nearly 12 and have to say it has been the best thing we have ever done for them. Both of them have changed for the better in my honest opinion and dont think that either of them would be able to settle if we went back to the Uk even after this short time.

They do tend to miss family just as you or I would do but they seem very able to cope with the readjustment.

Think mine are the older of the kids of members on here as most people seem to have kids under 10 when they do this

Good luck with everything

Gaynor

x

anolan

wow, Thank you all so much for your advice, I'm loving this forum already! Part of me can't quite believe that we are actually going to do it... its something we've talked about for years, but have never had the courage to go ahead with.

One thing that I am wondering about is the kids school classes. DD is 7 and in year 3, and DS1 is 4 and in reception. Would they go into grade 3 and grade 1 respectively, or would DD be put into grade 2 and DS1 into kindergarden? Did your children's schools do some assessments to see where best to place them?

We are going to talk to the kids about it soon. I am sure they will be excited. They all know my family well, they've been to NB a few times, and my family visit us in England often. I am worried about taking them away from friends and activities. They are really active kids with a large social circle, so I'm going to have to find a way to replace that quickly. Fortunately brownies, swimming, tae kwon do and things like that are things that we can get them involved in over there!

Its funny what you've said about accents! I've lost my Canadian accent almost completely and I cannot imagine my kids with Canadian accents. It will be really strange to hear them... especially my DD who loves nothing better than making fun of mum's 'weird' way of saying things

Amy