Moving abroad alone is a lot about adventure. Moving abroad as a family is more of a mix of adventure and adaptation. You may feel tempted to bring "home" with you as it feels familiar and safe. But recreating it in an entirely new setting may require so much effort, money, and personal inconvenience that many expat families find it not to be worth it. Instead, they focus on reinvention and find ways to make the most out of their new environment.
One of the biggest fears for parents relocating with children is that the move will really disrupt their children's lives. This fear is often what first guides them to recreate home routines as closely as possible. And yet, in expat communities, the same surprising realization seems to come up again and again: it is actually the children who adapt to the new environment first.
As one expat shares on Reddit: "I was so worried about my kid handling the transition, that I forgot to take care of myself and remember that I set the tone for him. My son has adapted and is thriving. I am struggling with the isolation, the lack of a support system, the day-to-day friction of relearning things that came naturally to me (grocery shopping, filling out paperwork, etc.) and the cultural differences."
For adults, adaptation is often more complicated. This is understandable, as you have simply physically spent more time in your previous home. You may start comparing everything in your new location to "how things used to be". And our brains are very good at following the infamous path of least resistance: we love to default to familiar habits. But if your child is expressing curiosity about the new country and is eager to try things, this may be a great opportunity to start adjusting old routines and creating space for some exploration.
Traditions don't have to disappear – but they evolve
Another concern for many families with children is that after moving abroad, their kids will lose touch with family traditions. If they are relocating to a culturally different country, they may worry about holidays that will be lost and customs that will be forgotten. For a lot of parents, the fact that their children will speak less or none of their native language is particularly troubling.
And according to many expat families, these concerns are perfectly validated. “I really thought that I would work harder at keeping our celebrations. But we only really kept it up for two years. Holidays here are just more fun. Halloween, 4th of July with the fireworks, Christmas with all the decorations… My daughter loves that, and I didn't want to deny her all the things her friends experience here. I think we just kept one of our traditions; we celebrate New Year in a very Russian way, but the rest, honestly, I just can't imagine handling it all", shares Marina, a Russian expat in the United States.
Some expats take a more structured approach to keeping what they consider important. “We all agreed before the move that we would only speak Spanish at home, and our home would be “our little Mexico”. We keep this promise to this day, five years after we moved. But my children are not Mexican in the same way my husband and I are. They have so much going on outside the house; they have friends, school, so many new ideas. They see the world in a very different way, and I think it's a good thing”, says Sofia, a Mexican expat in China.
Perhaps the best thing about moving your family abroad is that your children's horizon broadens in a very natural way. This new knowledge will inevitably make them different. But for expat families, this shouldn't be something to mourn – but rather something to value. Being able to adapt and accept the new is what makes kids resilient.
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Recreating home is a natural response
As immigrants, we are often encouraged to battle homesickness. It's a feeling that takes us back and prevents us from exploring and moving forward. But while that is generally true, homesickness remains a perfectly natural feeling. You may have noticed that you often feel homesick at times of heightened stress or sadness. Retreating to the familiar is our built-in reaction.
As one expat shares: "After 2,5 years away from home, I've already gotten used to experiencing these feelings of homesickness coming and going in cycles. I think I'm going through another homesick period as of now, and to me it manifests usually as me not wanting to interact with locals as much. I've always had a predisposition to feel like an outsider my whole life, even before moving abroad, and I feel like getting homesick activates that predisposition even more. It's like I want to just stop trying to foster and deepen connections with people, and I enter a more self-isolation mindset."
Others find comfort in recreating detail, as Maria, a Russian expat in Türkiye, tells us: "When I feel sad, I go to the local Russian store; there is one I love a bit far from my house, but I still do. Sometimes we go all together, get some things we like, then I make a meal, just like home. It's a simple thing, but it makes everyone feel better."
An article in The Guardian highlights that recreating home versus embracing the new can easily become a debate within one family. The article describes the difference of opinions within a couple who have recently relocated from the UK to Spain. "I think Dave likes his home comforts too much and doesn't do as much to embrace new things. Whenever we travel, he will pack so many things from Britain that I'll start to wonder: what's the point in coming abroad? He will bring jerk seasoning, Marmite and Mini Cheddars. While I like all those things, I don't feel we need them when we have moved to a country with better produce on offer."
Dave, on the other hand, believed in comfort, the comfort of home: "I think home comforts are important when you're abroad. They make you feel more grounded in your new space."
This suggests that sometimes the difference in approach comes down to personality. Some people may genuinely find more value in the small everyday comforts than others. For them, trying to manufacture these comforts isn't about hiding away, but about creating an environment where they can feel continuously happy.
Home slowly becomes something different – and that's okay
Another interesting thing that long-term expats note is that the very idea of what home is starts to shift. At first, home naturally means the place you left behind. There you had your own traditions, knew every street, went to your favorite restaurant on the weekends…But as more time goes by, the definitions may become less … defined. As the new location sneaks into your identity too, you may find yourself at a point where nowhere is 100% home.
One expat describes this feeling as disorienting: "When I first moved to Munich about 15 years ago, yeah, it was challenging - new language, different systems, cultural adjustments. But there was this clear narrative: I'm adapting to a new place. Made sense. But now when I visit back home (US), it feels weirdly more disorienting. Like I'm supposed to just slip back into being American, but I don't quite fit anymore. Friends and family expect you to be the same person who left, but you're not really. And you're not fully German either, so you're just kind of floating in this weird in-between space. The original move felt like growth and adventure. Going back feels like trying to squeeze into clothes that don't fit right anymore."
This feeling is familiar to a lot of expats, and many weigh in with comments like: "Welcome to the club. You are now officially countryless, like many of us. No known cure yet. If you do find one, please let us know."
Going through this as a family is both easier and more complicated. It is easier because you have your personal support network. Your family is each member's home. And this makes weathering all the challenges that come your way more manageable. Then again, each family member may be experiencing the transition in their own unique way, with some struggling more than others.
Aylin, a Turkish expat in Thailand, shares her experience: "I had a much harder time feeling at home in Phuket with my kids. They loved it all: the beach, the school, the activities. I was the one feeling lost and lonely. If it weren't for them having such a good time, I would have left for sure. But as I was staying for them, I started going places they wanted to go, got involved in their school, met the parents… I started to see it all through their experience and now I am finally starting to feel at home here”.
That's the thing about having family or a close circle with you. You will have someone to share the highs and lows with – and sometimes drawing from what they are seeing can help you fight your own relocation demons.
The trick here, as some expats share, is to offer support when it's needed – but not take over.
“I was the one who moved my family to Hong Kong because of my work. So I felt responsible. And for the first two years I tried to compensate for making them move… I tried to make the change feel as small as possible, tried to push everyone to make friends, signed them up for sports that were “just like home”. Now that we've lived here for seven years, I feel like I took away their own experiences from them. I felt guilty, so I micromanaged everything. And I think because of me they missed out on fishing their own ways into loving it here - because we do all live it here now", relates Gary, a UK expat in Hong Kong.
Going all in
“I think it all depends on what your plan is. For us, we knew that we would be moving for good. So we dove all in. We are learning the language, we are trying to be part of the culture. We don't have children yet, but if we do, they will be born here, and they will be Brazilian. We will always remember where we come from; we all have those parts of our “old” life we want to keep. But I think we are meant to become different as we move, as we see more of life; this is just evolution," shares Miroslav, a Ukrainian expat in Brazil.
Your acceptance of change will probably depend to a large extent on how long you are staying. Tolerating a few inconveniences or joking away culture shock is easier if you are on a short-term assignment or are just exploring a destination. But embracing a different lifestyle, if this is what your new life will look like for the foreseeable future, is a different story.
No place is perfect. And neither is the place you call home. Attempting to recreate every tiny detail of it may ultimately lead to you not seeing the wood for the trees, so to speak.
Linda, an American expat in China, relates: “I spent a whole year cooking at home in China, which now sounds crazy, just because I didn't like the food the first few times I tried it. I decided right then that it wasn't for me, and I convinced my family it wasn't for them either. We spent so much money getting the impossible ingredients for home-like dishes…And then a year later I tried something else, loved it, and even took a local cooking class. I think when you try something new, you should never trust a first impression. If it's not what you expect, you will think that you don't like it. But you should try again and again to know what you actually think”.
When we move to a new place, we often start subconsciously comparing it to where we lived before. In a way, we are not really evaluating the new location objectively - we are trying to figure out how close it is to how things are back home. But different doesn't mean worse.
“I had a pretty big culture shock when I first moved to Algeria… I am used to doing things a certain way, but there I felt confused by all the rules and boundaries. What you can and cannot do as a woman did not match my personality at all. And for the first few months, I felt trapped and miserable. But I had to stay, so I started focusing on the good things. The nature is amazing, the trips we could go on as a family, how friendly the people are, and how kid-friendly every restaurant and hotel is. I was still struggling with some parts of life here, but I chose tunnel vision on purpose for what I liked about being here. And we all had a good time", says Elena, a Russian expat in Algeria.
The idea that keeps reiterating itself in a lot of expat stories is that relocation may not be a choice – but how you allow yourself to experience it often is. It's perfectly okay not to like some aspects of your new home, and it's okay to miss how things used to be. But the more curiosity you have towards the new destination, the more likely you are to find something you may want to hold on to.
And if you are relocating with family, you always have a support network to rely on and extra “players” in your exploration game. Think of it as Pokémon Go, where every Pokémon is a positive experience, something you like and would want to keep. And now you just need to collect them all.
Natallia holds a degree BA (Honours) in English Language and Simultaneous Interpreting and worked as a writer and editor for various publications and media channels in China for ten years.
