warwick3

I have lurked on this forum for a while, and appreciate all the advice I've used to get me to this point.

My family & I are now about 4 weeks from coming across to the US, with my husband's company. Visa's are on track & we can stay in corporate housing for a few weeks until our things arrive & we are ready to move to a home we have found; advice on here tells me to look at rentals ahead of purchasing, & I have already narrowed the search to one or two school districts which we'll explore more once there. I know we are v lucky to have help/things organised by the company.

So I wondered what everyone's views were on these early weeks, with a family of three children but obviously a husband focused on a new job and the demands that entails - do I treat it like an extended holiday and show the kids lots of city/touristy things (before we are restrained by school holidays & schedules), or do I concentrate on finding a rental to get the paperwork for them to start school straightaway (moving to WA). As I have some education experience, the children started homeschooling (pending the move) complemented by an online US curriculum, which I can carry on after the move; it's not state specific but means I know they are fairly on track before anyone worries they are not being educated at all

I look forward to hearing people's thoughts, with hindsight, having made the move.

Glasgow Girl

I lived in foreign countries when I was a child, and also moved to the USA 20 years ago. My advice is to get them into school right away. You will have plenty of time to do touristy stuff in the holidays. Making friends and assimilating into their new life as soon as possible will make the transition so much easier.

kodokan

Depends on the age of the children. I moved over with 7 and 11 year olds; we were also homeschooling for some months prior to the move as we were at the time living in Switzerland and the kids had been doing their schooling in French. Our timings were also similar, as we arrived in mid-October.

We did... um, five, maybe six weeks or so in temporary accommodation - we used AirBnB-type furnished holiday villas rather than the corporate housing, and moved to an villa every 1-2 weeks to try out a new area of the city to live. During this time, I carried on homeschooling them, and we settled into our new country. We didn't try and do anything ambitiously touristy - a couple of local museums, but not flying off to another city - but we had lots of fun 'being American': eating out a lot more, BBQs by our backyard pool, etc. It was very relaxing for us all, and I look back on the time very fondly.

Once we had a rental address, we signed them up for school and I drive them over from our holiday rental about 30 mins away, until we moved into our actual rental a week or so later, and they could excitingly catch the bus.

Going into an elementary school about 3-4 weeks before Christmas break is PERFECT. It's long enough for them to get into the routine so everything feels familiar when they make a fresh semester start in January, but short enough not to be overwhelming and exhausting. The last couple of weeks are very fun, with crafts, class parties, etc, and not much in the way of real work, so it makes it really easy for the kids to have a very positive first experience of US schooling.

If they're teens, then scrap all above, and get them into classes as soon as possible so they're not angsting about their social lives or getting behind on grades!

durham_lad

Our children were aged 5 and 6 when we moved to the USA and we had temporary accommodation for the first month in a corporate apartment in the month of October. We had intended to let the children have a holiday before starting school but after a few days they were so fractious that my wife immediately enrolled them in school and they then settled very quickly indeed.

kins

I'm not sure there's a 'right' answer but this is what I did. I moved with kids age 6, 4 and 2. We moved June 30, so we had all of July and August before school started.

I enrolled the 6yo in some camps, but mostly we explored the area and did fun things. It was really lovely actually, and it gave us time to meet people and think hard about which schools we wanted, as well as find a house in the district (which wasn't easy).

warwick3

Thanks for all your replies. Appreciate your time to write them. A lot to think about.

lizzyq

I would say start your children in school as soon as you can. You will have lots of stuff to do getting settled into your new home and I am sure it will be easier without them underfoot. I wasn't here in the US full time for the first year, but even the things I was sorting out later on were easier knowing I had a chunk of time each day to make progress on my own. A school routine for them will help them settle in to the new reality faster.

hungryhorace

My hindsight? Wish I'd never moved. British society is so much more civilised than here in MA, oh and the drivers are awful. If I'd done it again, we'd have married in the UK and my wife would have moved over to join me.

MsElui

id say dont have fixed stereotypes in your head. Just go and see/try for yourself and see what you like or dont like.

I had never even been to the USA when my husband got a work transfer. wE Went to Ohio and i LOVED it and was very happy, despite all the warnings about how dull Ohio was. I had in my head some fixed ideas about other parts of the country and i had a reminder come up on my Facebook this week that said something along the links of 'thank god i dont live in Texas' with some odd link that no longer worked.

The funny part is - we moved for another job and have been happily living in Texas for almost 3 years now!

md95065

I would say that you should treat the task of finding a suitable rental etc as your full time job, but that doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't take days off from that "job" to do things (both "touristy" and otherwise) with you family.

HumphreyC

Wait - don't you live in Sudbury or one of the 'Ws'? That's pretty damn civilized. You should try living with the savages out here in Worcester County.

hungryhorace

I do live in one of the W's, though bought our mattress in Sudbury heh. However, whilst I feel content where I live, I don't remotely like American 'culture', nor having to drive amongst people utterly unable to drive everyday. Was back in England for a few weeks recently and had a lovely time on the roads. Sooner I can get USC and then sell up and leave this country, the better.

Re Worcester, yes, been there a couple of times. It's ****ing awful.

Jerseygirl

I'm with you on this...both hubby and I feel the same but for different reasons.

MarylandNed

You know, I sometimes feel the same way but the fact is that I would have made the move somewhere sometime - simply because I had wanderlust and wouldn't have been able to settle into life in the UK without that itch being scratched. And I don't mean wanderlust in terms of vacations - I mean in terms of living and working in another country. So it's easy in hindsight to say you wish you hadn't moved - you're saying that with the move already done and with everything you subsequently experienced in your memory bank. You made the move for a reason and it's likely that reason would have made you move somewhere at some point regardless. Maybe a move to somewhere else would have worked out better?

Even when I wish I was still living in the UK, I think back to the many great experiences we've had as a family living in other countries (in our case Canada and now the US). The kids have acquired Canadian and US citizenships to go along with their Irish and British citizenships. It's hard to put a price on something like that. Who knows what doors that might open for them in the future.

Also, we actually did move back to the UK for a couple of years between being in Canada and moving to the US. That's something we felt we had to do. We felt we would either (a) settle back into UK life or (b) get it out of our system and make another move. We made another move.

I wouldn't rule out moving back to the UK again. Or maybe even somewhere else. Never say never. Life is so fluid and circumstances change with time.

hungryhorace

Yes, you are _completely_ right on this point.

It's absolutely only with the benefit of hindsight that I feel strongly about the way I do. Originally I couldn't wait to move out here, and yes, life is easy and we have a good income etc, but that doesn't make up for the fact all our family is 3.5k miles away, and my frustration at the (huge) difference in culture.