Expats with kids.

Hi All,

My wife and I are seriously considering a move to the Cayo district. We are curently involved in a farming project in Belize. Our biggest issue is concern over educating our (now) three year old daughter. I would like to hear from some of you that have raised children in Belize and what your thoughts are.
Thank You in advance for all your help.

I don't have any chldren myself, but my Belizean boyfriend has a sister in college (which is our version of high school in the States) and nieces and nephews in primary school (grades 1-6). 

Children must wear uniforms to school (they can dress down one day a week). In general there are no books provided to children. Their assignments are all given to them verbally and they must write them down.  Sometimes they are given projects that require them to purchase supplies (for projects and such),which for the poorer Belizean families can be a hardship, in my opinion.

I had one college teacher tell me that for an upcoming vocabulary test, it was more important to know the meaning of the words and not the spelling??? I thought that was very odd.

The schools in Cayo are quite safe, however.  The bathroom facilities, unfortunately, are less than adequate in my opinion.

Hope this helps.  Sharon Hiebing

(moderated: you are completely off topic + note that you are not on a dating website. Thank you)

Hi there,

I see these posts are over a year old, but I'm attempting communication anyway.

We are very interested in the idea of relocating our family to Belize within the next couple of years. I would love to have discussions with others who have done this already and can offer feedback.

Thanks so much!

Hello karijunebugg and welcome to Expat.com!

In order to have more responses, I invite you to start a new thread on the Belize forum with your questions. :)

Thank you,
Aurélie

We moved from ohio over a year ago to belize with our 5 kids, 1 was born here. We love it, it's not perfect but there is no perfect place in this world. As long as there is a man around the house you should have no problems. Once people notice a woman at home alone even with kids they start to take advantage in a nice way or maybe come in the night to see what they can take. Mean dogs and burglar bars are a necessity.  The weather is beautiful all year round and there are barely any laws b/c there isn't enough people to enforce them. To me it's good but of course there's times you have to take matters into your own hands. There are some good schools here, but I chose to homeschool. There are good and bad people wherever you go, it's part of life. People watch you b/c they want what you have, you need to watch them too. Don't ever let anyone in your house unless you want things to come up missing. Over all people are nice and Belizeans realize they need expats for jobs. Make sure you know someone really well before you hire them. Beware, I don't think it's that dangerous they just want to steal not kill. If you are a nature loving family than your kids will love it here.  Be very careful with the rivers too, many people die every year from being swept away and can't swim. I finally have my cook and cleaning lady who works from7 to 4pm for $20 BZ a day/ $10 US, woman make that much a day and men make between $30 to $50 BZ a day depending on what they know and what tools they have. My husband is in the states right now and we got robbed and someone comes into my yard every night, I can hire an armed night watchman for $20 US a night. They don't just rob expats they steal off each other all the time too.