Raising Global Kids in Switzerland. What I Wish I'd Known Before We Started
A version of this piece was first shared as part of an interview with Csilla Language Lab, a wonderful multilingual education resource based in Zurich. I'm sharing it here in full, in my own words, because so many of you have asked about our schooling journey.
When people find out I have three kids growing up in Switzerland, all in a multilingual household they often ask me the same thing: How does it work out? What school did you choose? Was it hard?
The honest answer is: it has been a journey. One with a lot of decisions, some doubt, and a few things I'd do differently if I could go back. So I want to share all of it here.
A Little About Our Family
I'm Greek, and my husband is Italian. Before we ever set foot in Switzerland, our home was already a mix of three languages, Greek, English, and Italian. When our children were born in Zurich, German quietly joined the menu. That made four.
Our three kids are now 10, 11, and 12. And while they've grown up under the same roof, each of them experiences their languages and their world in a completely different way. What they do share, though, is a foundation I'm deeply proud of, it came from a bilingual German-English kindergarten near our house that turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made as a family. They picked up German fast, and their English stayed strong. By the time they entered primary school, they were local kids, genuinely, confidently local.
Our First Schooling Decision: Going Local
When it came time to choose schools, we enrolled all three in the Swiss public school. That was a deliberate choice. We didn't want our children growing up in an expat bubble, moving through Switzerland without ever really being from here. We wanted them to have local friends, to feel part of the community, to belong.
