If you think living abroad is not easy, try losing your kid to gun violence. This might sound harsh, but gun violence at school is entirely predictable at this point. You can’t claim you didn’t know this could happen. All the mental gymnastics you are doing to convince yourself that it’s not that bad could be put into finding a way to move abroad. Safety is the norm abroad. Bad things happen at statistically lower rates, giving your child a much better chance of surviving un-traumatized. There will be lots of ways I screw my kids up as a parent, but my decision to take them overseas will never be a mistake. Your kids deserve to be kids. Stop raising them in the hard environment of the United States. 🆘🇺🇸 #creatorsearchinsights

When you think about moving abroad, I know you're thinking about all the problems that could occur, and it's true, living abroad is not easy, but if you're a parent, living in the United States is much harder than living abroad. Let me share with you some stories about what has happened in my kids' lives since living abroad, and you just reflect on if these are situations that could occur where you live. One night I was cooking dinner and I was out of flour, so I asked my youngest daughter to go to the grocery store with the empty bag of flour so that she could compare it to what's on the shelf and purchase something while my hands were covered in chicken. And she went next door to the grocery store, which is just on our corner, and there was a customer walking in at the same time that saw her holding this empty bag of flour, and the customer in full on Portuguese took her over to the shelf that the flour was on. It was too high for my daughter to reach anyways, and this woman got the flour down, handed it to her, and my daughter was able to check out at the store because a stranger willingly offered the help just realizing what that child was doing at the grocery store. During one part of our travels, we were considering living in Thailand, so we were spending some time there to see if it was a good fit. And we don't speak Thai, but my daughter does speak Japanese, so we were at an indoor trampoline park just plain for the day because they weren't in school, and she heard some kids speaking Japanese, and she was able to speak to them, and they immediately brought the her into the fold and played with her for hours and hours. Well, the moms just hung out on the sidelines, getting foot massages, because that's what you do while your kids play at an indoor play park in Thailand. One day I was getting my hair done, and my daughter wanted to spend time in a neighboring area called Hadajuku in order to get some face masks from that district. And so I said, okay, no problem, center on her way, and she took the train over there by herself from my hair appointment. At some point, she bought a bunch of face masks and went to a public bathroom in that area, and she left the bag on the counter in the public bathroom, and then proceeded to go on about her day, shopping and moving around. And she called me, frantic, saying, she left all this merchandise in a bathroom, and she didn't know where it was, and so I just calmly told her to retrace her steps, and she was freaking out because she thought the items would be gone. I said, absolutely not, we're in Tokyo, those items will absolutely be there. So she retraced her steps, found the bathroom that she had used, and sure enough the items were there. And then in order to calm her nerves, she hopped in a taxi, told the taxi driver where to take her instead of taking public transit back to meet me, and it was an easy process for her to get back to me, all in another language. That's the kind of independence kids can have in another country, because it's so safe to be out on their own and figuring things out. My older daughter was in school with this Italian girl, and they became the best of friends. They share the same birthday, so fast forward, and we both moved away from Tokyo. That girl moved back to Italy, and we moved to Portugal. For their birthdays, that mother and I organized a trip to meet the girls in Paris so they could spend multiple days at Disney Paris together. We had a fabulous three day trip where the girls got to celebrate their 13th birthday in style in Paris, because we have international friends and have international meetups with people that we have connected with on this move abroad journey. As a mother, I'm telling you these stories to help you reflect on the idea that you're telling yourself that it is hard to move abroad. When, in fact, I think that it's hard for you to send your kids to school in America knowing they could be affected by gun violence. If you move abroad, their childhood becomes extraordinarily simple, because it is safe. They can go out, learn independence, and gain skills that they just cannot gain in the United States, unless you're taking a huge risk by letting them venture out to all of the public spaces that you know have gun violence. You know that there are shootings at malls and concerts and church even, the places that you want to go send your kid to be safe are not safe in the United States. While it is hard to move abroad, I definitely think it's easier than living in the United States with kids.