Last year, our family of five moved interstate. We’d been living in Bright in country Victoria, Australia, for four years, and I wanted to move closer to my parents on the Gold Coast in Queensland.
The Gold Coast is Australia’s sixth-largest city, home to more than 680,000 residents. Bright, on the other hand, is a small town of less than 3,000 people, so the move was a massive leap.
As we packed up our lives in Bright, I had a perpetual bubble of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Although I was excited for the move, I was also extremely nervous about how our three kids would cope.
One of my biggest worries was how my two oldest children would adjust as they transitioned between wildly different school environments.
My oldest kids handled moving to a much bigger school surprisingly well
In regional Victoria, my two oldest attended a country school of roughly 100 kids. It was a wonderful little school with nurturing teachers, strong academics, and friendly families — the kind of place where every teacher knows each child’s name and interests by heart.
Suddenly, though, our very sheltered kids were starting grade five and two in an enormous city school with more than 700 new faces, teachers, routines, and ways of learning.
When the big day finally arrived, I braced myself for tears, phone calls, and a rocky transition.
However, something unexpected happened: There were dry eyes all around. No fuss. No clinging to mummy and daddy or asking to return to their familiar old school. In fact, the kids seemed genuinely excited.
When they came out of school that afternoon, my husband and I tentatively asked how their day had gone.
“It was great — we played footy at lunch, and I really liked my new teacher,” our son said. “A nice girl helped me learn what to do in class,” our daughter added. I felt so relieved, and we all celebrated with ice cream that afternoon.
It’s been a month now, and our kids are killing it. They’ve settled in beautifully and have made some lovely new friends. Our daughter even came home with a principal’s award in her first week.
All of us have learned from this transition
The experience of going from a small country school to a big city school helped us realize a few things along the way.
For one, I hadn’t realized how much we’d missed out on by not being part of a more diverse community.
Living in a more rural part of Victoria, our kids’ school was fairly homogeneous with very little cultural diversity.
Now, in the bigger city, my kids are hanging out with children from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. They also learn alongside kids who speak several languages, hold different religious beliefs, and come from households with family dynamics dissimilar from ours.
I want our kids to grow up understanding and celebrating differences in race, culture, abilities, and perspectives. Now, they’ll have more opportunities to do so.
Fortunately, we’ve also felt warmly embraced by the other parents and our new neighbors.
Living in the country, we met the most beautiful families through the school community. The mums would drop off soup if I was unwell, babysit our kids if we were stuck at work, and look out for them like they were their own.
I thought we’d really struggle to find that same sense of community in a big city. However, I’ve realized that there are good people wherever you go.
In the last few weeks, we’ve had so many kind parents invite us to playdates and parties because we’re new, and I am so grateful for their friendship.
Above all, this transition reminded me that kids are resilient
A friend told me that growth only happens when we step outside our comfort zone, and she was absolutely right. Since we took the plunge and moved, our kids have flourished.
They’ve been forced to make new friends, learn new routines, and try new activities — and they are thriving as a result. Children have a tremendous capacity to adapt and cope under pressure, and I realize now that I should have given our kids more credit.
In the end, the move from a country school to a city one has been better than we could have imagined. My husband and I couldn’t be prouder of the way our children have embraced such a big change, and we’re excited for what the next chapter holds.
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