The Kids Are Alright -- About Paris

I get a lot of questions about how the kids are taking this Paris news. Because, yes, it's a life-long dream of mine to live in Paris. And this is an amazing career opportunity for Dave. But the kids? What are they getting out of this?

First, you should know that we've been talking about this potential move for years. There are Eiffel Towers and posters of Paris all over the house. Our family trip to Paris two years ago was full of sly "what if we lived here" comments and conversations. So, yeah, this wasn't out of the blue by any means.

Sure, when we broke the news one morning when we were all in bed they may have freaked out a little. Alice was sad to leave her friends. Leah worried about dealing with a new school. But they were both excited about living in an apartment in a city where they can "eat croissants and gelato every day."

Leah was won over by all the European travel. She's keen to see Venice ("there are rivers where streets are supposed to be!") and eat pasta in Italy. They both love the idea of learning a different language and likely becoming more fluent than their parents and having a "secret" language with each other. And they know it's not permanent; we'll return to this house when our time is up and go back to lives and friends.

But mostly, the icing on the cake ... they're both getting mobile phones. It's a big city and we'll want to be able to text/call them if we're late or they're late. It's practical for them to have one. Once the phones were put on the table, they were jumping up and down, and ready to pack their bags. "Can we move tomorrow?" They started picking out phone cases within the week. Seriously, that's all it took.

One of the huge benefits they don't realize yet is the school change. The school we picked uses a much different approach to curriculum and teaching. And since it's private, it's much smaller and more individualized than their current, super-gigantic school district. This exposure to not only international kids but a new way of learning is going to be awesome.

This is a big milestone in their lives (all of ours). Their lives will be defined by this. Stories will be about Paris or "before Paris" and "after Paris." And we're not taking that lightly. We're talking to them often about their concerns and our plans. They're part of this. It's a family move.

We've raised them to value travel and experiencing new places. It's what we love doing as a family. So, yeah, the kids are alright about this Paris adventure. It's all good.



Related posts:
More traveling with kids stories
The chronicles of our last trip to Paris 
Get the full story of my Paris obsession

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