Podcast: moving abroad with children – new beginnings, fears and solidarity

SWI swissinfo.ch

Moving abroad with children poses challenges for families. How do kids react to an abrupt change of school, language and environment? What can parents do to make this transition easier? We explore these questions in the second episode of our podcast “Ade merci, Schweiz” (Goodbye, thanks Switzerland, available in Swiss German and French).

“It’s not something very easy to take as a mother when your child accuses you of destroying their life,” says Rahel Brügger. It has been three years since she left Switzerland with her husband and their three children, aged eight, 11 and 14. They moved first to the United States, then to Denmark in summer 2024.

Listen to the second episode of the new podcast “Ade merci, Schweiz” (Goodbye, thanks Switzerland, available in Swiss German and French), with Swiss national Rahel Brügger and intercultural mediator Claudia Schweizer as guests.

Ade merci, Schweiz

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Brügger and her husband took the decision to initially move to the US for a year at very short notice. “We started thinking about it in March/April and moved out at the end of July,” she says. There wasn’t much time to prepare for the change. “The eldest wasn’t happy at all. She didn’t even want to move within our village. The two younger ones, on the other hand, saw the whole thing as an adventure,” she says.

According to Claudia Schweizer, the fact that children don’t want to move is a healthy and completely normal reaction.

“You leave the familiar for something unknown,” she says. In such cases, it is important to communicate and ask questions: What don’t you want? What do you imagine? What scares you? Schweizer has experience of moving abroad with children. She lived with her family in Mozambique for four years, where she worked at the international school. As parents, you must manage the children’s feelings. “That’s a huge challenge,” she says.

Goodbye, thanks Switzerland

The audio and video podcast “Ade merci, Schweiz” (Goodbye, thanks Switzerland, available in German and French) gives you insights into the lives and experiences of Swiss nationals living abroad. Together with experts, we give you practical advice on moving and living abroad, from emigrating with children to arriving in a new language and culture.

The podcast is also available in French, “Adieu, merci la Suisse”.

Enduring instead of glossing over

“When your child comes home from school and tells you it’s your fault that you ruined my life, I always offer a hug. That’s it. Listen, hug, be there and don’t justify it,” says Brügger. 

Schweizer has a similar view: “The child’s perspective should be allowed to have its place at that moment. Nothing needs to be glossed over or justified.” In Mozambique she accompanied many parents who lived there as expats. If the positive is emphasised too strongly, in the sense of “be happy, the sun always shines here, there’s a sea here, you can go to the pool every day”, this can give the child the feeling that they shouldn’t be sad at all and should only see the beautiful things. “It’s not ‘either or’, it’s both,” Schweizer says.

Giving space to emotions also helped the Brügger family. “During the second move, we gave the eldest the choice of whether she wanted to return to Switzerland alone or move on with her family – she decided in favour of the latter.”

Not everything is like social media

Looking back, the experience living abroad brought them closer together as a family, Brügger says. However, as the above example shows, not everything was rosy. Feelings of guilt arose, as well as self-blame and moments of loneliness.

“Sure, you can share on social media, but everything sounded so positive and nice there. Everyone was enjoying the dream of a lifetime,” she says. “I didn’t feel that reality. It’s nice, but also exhausting and difficult.”

She wanted a place for honest exchange and so, together with her sister, created a project that addresses this issue: a programme that supports parents in accompanying their children during this tricky phase.

A fresh start in the classroom

Emotions are not the only big issue when moving abroad with children; schooling and the different school systems can also raise questions. What is right for my child? Local or international school? The Brügger family opted for local schools on both occasions.

“We involved the children in the decision, and they wanted to fully immerse themselves in the respective culture at local schools,” she says. The change from the Swiss village school to the American high school was a big one, and then the change to the Danish school. “But the children listened and observed, and after seven to eight weeks they could speak the language.”

At the same time, the three children attended a Swiss correspondence school for French and German in the first year in case they wanted to return to their home country.

Returning to Switzerland also played an important role for Claudia Schweizer when her family moved to Mozambique for four years. “We had to make sure that the connection to Switzerland was guaranteed afterwards, which is why we decided in favour of the international school,” she says.

The podcast “Ade merci, Schweiz” (Goodbye, thanks Switzerland, available in Swiss German and French) is also available as a video. Watch the latest episode here:

What songs do you associate with Switzerland? We asked our guests and created a Spotify playlist with their «Homesick songsExternal link» .

Edited by Balz Rigendinger. Adapted from German by DeepL/sb