We moved from the US to a Greek island. Here are 5 execs and cons of elevating a child overseas. | Invesloan.com

While West lived in Houston, she hardly knew her neighbors and rarely spoke with them. And while she had friends, making plans was difficult, especially given the amount of time and effort it took to get something on the calendar.

In Syros, West said, she’s finally been able to build a community.

“I would say one of the biggest pros, at least for us, is the community that we have here, from other digital nomad and expat families to the local families,” she said. “The community is something that my daughter gets to grow up with. It’s so special and everything I could have hoped for.”

In Syros, the island’s small size makes it easier for her to see friends regularly. On a typical day, she often runs into someone she knows while walking around town.

“We bump into each other in the streets, you know, and may go, ‘oh, let’s go play tomorrow, or let’s meet up for coffee,'” West said. “It’s much easier to make plans and for us to be in community with people.”

West and her husband want their daughter to grow up feeling connected to Greek culture rather than like “an outsider,” and they see learning the language as an important part of that.

They’ve been helping her develop her Greek skills by encouraging her to speak with locals, watch Greek shows, and read Greek books.

“At first, she saw it as a negative thing that she was learning Greek,” West said. “Now, she’s a lot more receptive and gets really excited every time she makes a local friend who speaks Greek.”

This year, her daughter will start at a private school where teachers will primarily speak Greek, though they will translate for English-speaking students.

“I worry that as she gets settled into school, speaking Greek will be really difficult for her, but at the same time, I’m grateful that we’re starting it at such a young age because I do think that she’ll adapt way faster,” West said.

As her daughter learns Greek, West said she’ll also be keeping an eye on her English skills. It’s a concern many other English-speaking moms on the island share.

“It’s so interesting because we’ve been really focused on our kids feeling comfortable and confident speaking Greek, but now we’re like, ‘Maybe they’re forgetting English,'” she said.

One reason the family decided to relocate to Europe was the ease of traveling to other countries. This month alone, they visited Lisbon, Venice, and Paris.

“She’s only four, and we just got done visiting her 20th country,” West said. “She’s being exposed to customs, cultures, foods, and experiences before she even reads about them in a textbook.”

From hearing the Call to Prayer in Turkey to seeing the northern lights in Iceland, West’s young daughter has already experienced more of the world than many people do in a lifetime.

West said these experiences have helped her daughter understand early on that people live, eat, worship, and move through the world in different ways.

“It’s always the things that you don’t think are going to stick with her,” she added. “I love that she is seeing so many different ways of doing things.”

For West, living abroad also means raising her daughter far from family. It’s a major concern for her, especially because her daughter is an only child.

“I worry sometimes that she is missing out on things happening back in the states with my husband’s and my family, and that she may not be as close to certain family members like her cousins back home,” she said.

To help maintain those bonds and keep up with milestones in everyone’s lives, West makes sure they regularly FaceTime with family.

“We just make sure that’s a regular cadence for her, so she doesn’t feel that disconnect when she sees them in person,” she said. “And we also try at least once a year to get back to the States as well.”

West’s daughter was about 3 months old in 2022 when the Uvalde school shooting happened. At the time, West and her husband were living in Houston, roughly four hours away. The tragedy pushed her to think more seriously about where her daughter would go to school — and how safe she would be.

“That, honestly, for me, was the biggest catalyst,” West said. ” I was like, okay, we really do need to look into what it would be like to live abroad, especially somewhere where gun laws are much more restrictive.”

Greece has very strict gun laws, with firearm possession generally prohibited unless a permit is issued by authorities. In Syros, West said, life on the island feels “incredibly safe.”