Raising Kids in Costa Rica: An Expat Family Story

I remember when I was young, sometime around second grade, I was in the laundry room with my dad, and I had asked him about something that had happened to him and mom in the past. He answered whatever the question was and added “That’s before you were even a thought in our heads.”

That was the first time that it occurred to me that my parents were people, with lives, even before I was born. I had never considered it before, and I found it difficult to picture them running around in the world without me and my sister to look after. It makes me wonder what my two boys are going to think when they realize that much of their lives were determined by a choice that their parents made well before they were even thoughts in our heads.

In our late twenties we were supposed to move to Costa Rica for a year. That’s what we told everybody. Then that year stretched into another, and then we stopped thinking about going back. A couple of years in, I remember us both laughing at the thought of having kids in Costa Rica. How would you do that? Where are the best hospitals? Could we have a baby in a country all by ourselves? Fast forward a few years and the couple that wanted a yearlong adventure in paradise had become a family of four.

As a young dude living in the US, I didn’t give much thought to the method of parenting I was going to subscribe to in the future. I had a nice childhood. I think the plan was to do something similar. Now, I’m raising two boys in a different country and just a few things are a little different from my own upbringing.

Bilingual International School

The public schools I attended in the US were perfectly adequate. They were brick boxes where you sat at your desk next to a bunch of other students that were more or less like you and if the weather allowed, you could go outside for thirty or so minutes once a day. My kids’ school couldn’t be more different. They are outside at least a third of the day either playing, swimming, or wrangling chickens, they spend half the day speaking Spanish, and their classmates are kids from different backgrounds from Costa Rica in addition to countries all over the world.

Jaded by the Beach

It was a big deal to spend the day or a weekend at the beach when I was a kid. I remember looking forward to the trip days in advance. I remember smelling the ocean before you could even see it the day you arrived. I remember staying on the beach all day long to fully take advantage of the adventure. My kids get to go to a much better beach whenever they want. Instead of once or twice a year, they get to go once or twice a week. They have fun once we get there, but half the time we have to drag their disinterested, bathing suit-clad bodies into the car to go. I try telling them how lucky they are, but it’s impossible for them to appreciate.

Family Visits of a Different Color

Extended family was a constant when I was young. When I was very young and lived in New Jersey, where the entire extended family lived, we would see relatives every other day. We moved a state over to Pennsylvania when I was a bit older, but we still saw relatives frequently. The little guys I’m raising are a plane ride away from family rather than a car ride away, which cuts out all of the little get-togethers completely. Instead, they get shorter, more intense visits when a relative comes to stay for a week or so and they stay at their rental house, or in the case of the grandmas, sharing a bed with them for a week at our house, whether they like it or not.

When my wife and I decided to change up our lives and move to Costa Rica, we didn’t realize it at the time, but we also decided to change up our kids’ lives. We try to mix in the things we enjoyed while growing up in the states while also embracing the opportunities that they have by growing up in Costa Rica. How will it all turn out? Stay tuned for an article coming out in 2035 entitled, My Parents Raised Me in Costa Rica – This is What Happened.