• About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
FREE REPORT
BEST PLACES TO RETIRE
*No spam: We will NEVER give your email address to anyone else.
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
Live and Invest Overseas
  • HOME
  • COUNTRIES
    • Top Destinations
      • Portugal
      • Panama
      • Belize
      • France
      • Colombia
      • Dominican Republic
      • Thailand
      • Mexico
      • Spain
      • Argentina
    • Browse All Countries
    • Best For
      • Retire Overseas Index
      • Health Care
      • Cost of Living
      • Investing in Real Estate
      • Editor’s Picks For Retirement
      • Establishing Residency
      • Starting an Online Business
      • Single Women
      • Playing Golf
  • BUDGETS
    • Super Cheap ($)
      • Cuenca, Ecuador
      • Chiang Mai, Thailand
      • The Philippines
      • Las Tablas, Panama
      • Granada, Nicaragua
    • Cheap ($$)
      • Algarve, Portugal
      • Medellin, Colombia
      • Boquete, Panama
      • Carcassone, France
      • Buenos Aires, Argentina
    • Affordable ($$$)
      • Abruzzo, Italy
      • Barcelona, Spain
      • Las Terrenas, Dominican Republic
      • Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
      • Costa de Oro, Uruguay
    • Luxury On A Budget ($$$$)
      • Ambergris Caye, Belize
      • Paris, France
      • Panama City Beach Area
  • Real Estate
  • ARCHIVES
    • Living & Retiring Overseas
    • Raising A Family Abroad
    • Foreign Residency & Citizenship
    • Offshore Diversification
  • Making Money
    • International Real Estate
    • Banking
    • Employment
    • Investing
  • CONFERENCES
  • BOOKSTORE
No Result
View All Result
Live and Invest Overseas
No Result
View All Result

How Raising Your Kids In Panama Could Be A Big Advantage

Jack’s Story—Growing Up In Panama

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
May 02, 2017
in Lifestyle, Panama
0
a teenage boy wearing a backpack sitting on a stone wall looking down at homes
217
SHARES
3.1k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Six months after we’d moved from the United States to Ireland, I discovered I was pregnant.

New husband (Lief and I were married one month before we made the move together to Waterford), new country, new business, new home… why not a new baby, too?

A few days after I shared the news with my 9-year-old daughter Kaitlin that she was to be a big sister, she came back to me with a book she’d produced titled “Jack’s Story.”

Kaitlin’s drawings showed the three of us—Kaitlin, Lief, and me—at home in Ireland… then me over successive pages with an expanding midsection… followed by Lief and me painting a nursery…

Then a scene with us rushing to the hospital… one in the hospital maternity ward, me holding a tiny bundle wrapped in blue…

Followed by a drawing of us again at home in Ireland, now a family of four.

The final page showed the smiling face of soon-to-be baby Jack surrounded by question marks and Kaitlin’s wish for her brother:

“We can’t wait to see what you’re going to become,” she wrote.

Today, 17-year-old Jack is shopping colleges.

During one campus tour in the States this month, when asked by the admissions counselor to introduce himself, here’s how Jack shorthanded his story to date:

“I was born in Ireland but grew up in Paris and Panama,” he told the group.

Depending on the timing and his mood, Jack might tell you, should you ask, that home is Ireland, Paris, or Panama City.

He’s excited to attend college in the States. For him, it’s a next chance to go abroad.

“I want the full U.S. college experience,” he told me recently. “I want to see what it’s like to be an American.”

Lief and I did not set out to raise our son in Panama. We came to this country, in 2008, to start a business and intended to return to Paris before Jackson was in high school. We thought we’d spend three or four years in Panama City full-time, establish the Live and Invest Overseas operation, then return to Paris to open a satellite office.

Ha, ha, ha.

That is, at the end of four years of effort the LIOS infrastructure was nowhere near developed enough for Lief and me to leave it for extended periods.

By the time the business was strong enough to carry on without Lief and me in full-time residence and we told Jack that we were ready to readjust our home base back to Paris, Jack surprised us by saying he didn’t want to go.

Jack asked if he could stay and finish high school in Panama City.

While we weren’t paying attention, our son had put down Panamanian roots.

As his mother, I have to admit I was not only gratified but also a little relieved to find out how happy Jack seems to be with his Panama life.

Panama City isn’t Paris. All these years in Panama I’ve wondered if we weren’t letting Jack down by basing him, during his most formative years, in the Hub of the Americas after he’d had a taste of the City of Light.

When I decided I wanted to start the Live and Invest Overseas business, Lief and I knew that meant leaving France.

“But where to?” I asked Lief that afternoon in Paris when I first told him I wanted to go into business for myself.

“Panama” was his immediate response.

I agreed, but, before we committed to Panama, we confirmed something we’d heard some years before—that Panama City is home to a French school.

I don’t mean a school where French is taught… or where classes are in French… but a school administered by the French Ministry of Education.

France exports its education system. It’s a unique model that includes more than 480 primary and secondary schools in 130 countries. These schools could all be in France. They follow the same curriculum and calendar as French schools and are staffed 100% by French teachers, who rotate from France to Panama for a year up to six or seven years at a time.

Textbooks, exams, field trips, extracurricular options, and grading are all, likewise, just the same as in France.

For Lief and me, it was important that Jack retain his French fluency and that he be educated as part of a global program.

In addition, again, when we came to Panama, our plan was to be here full-time three or four years. By attending a French school in Panama City, we figured, Jack’s transition back to Paris for high school would be transparent.

Our plan didn’t work out as originally conceived. Still, we are happy today with our school choice. Jack will graduate this year with a French Bac from a French lycée that just happens to be located in Panama.

In addition to the Paul Gauguin Lycée Français, Panama City is home to 13 international schools. A parent moving to this city today has many good choices for where and how to educate his (or her) child.

Educational options are the priority starting point when considering relocating to a new country with school-aged children. The next question for us was to do with lifestyle. What would Jack’s life be like in Panama City, Lief and I wondered a decade ago when we first considered the idea.

Back then we imagined that the answer to that question would have a lot to do with beach escapes and jungle adventures, and, these past nine years, Jackson has enjoyed both. He has zip-lined through the Panamanian jungle canopy, seen alligators up close, journeyed through the Panama Canal on a friend’s family’s private boat, learned to surf, fished for marlin, and camped among the indigenous Kuna on the white sand of San Blas Islands.

However, Jack’s life in Panama has evolved to become more cosmopolitan than outdoorsman. As Jack has grown up these past nine years, so has Panama City. Always the only real city in Central America, Panama City today is more of a real city than ever. Our day-to-day life here with 17-year-old Jack looks a lot like our day-to-day life might look with 17-year-old Jack living in a comparably sized city anywhere.

Jack and I are up by 6 a.m. each morning. He walks his dog while I make his lunch. He showers, packs his backpack, and heads down to the lobby of our apartment building to wait for his bus… along with dozens of other kids in our building doing likewise.

Used to be the bus returned Jack to our place by 4 p.m. each afternoon. However, this year the parents of Jack’s best friend Valerian bought their son a car. Now, at least three or four afternoons a week, Jack accompanies Valerian to Valerian’s house after school so the two can study together.

At least that’s their story.

Jack is home in time for dinner with his dad and me followed by an hour or so of video games before bed.

Weekends he goes to parties, movies, dinner dates…

Most recently, Jack has taken fencing lessons. Over the past nine years, he has also taken martial arts, swimming, surfing, horse riding, tennis, guitar, and piano classes. He has played in a basketball league and, when he was younger, Pokémon tournaments.

My point is that a kid in Panama City can engage in any of the activities a kid might want to engage in anywhere in the world.

One thing a child reared in Panama City could be said to miss out on is culture of the kind you find in a city like, say, Paris. We have tried to compensate for this by filling Jack’s summers with do-it-ourselves Grand Tour family holidays in Europe.

And we try to round it all out by making sure Jack visits our family in the States as often as possible.

In fact, we were able to visit with my family in Baltimore while in the States for our recent college visits. We spent time with my sister, who has three children, two in college and the third a sophomore in high school. As we were about to take off for our college tour with Jackson, higher education was a primary topic of conversation.

My sister has had all three of her kids playing lacrosse since the age of 6. She’s taken it seriously. Lief and I have joked that she’s been nearly obsessed with making sure her three offspring become superstar lacrosse players.

Now we understand why. It was part of a long-term plan… my sister’s strategy for helping her kids get into good colleges.

Today it isn’t enough, it seems, to get straight A’s and top SAT scores. To get into a decent U.S. university today, you need an advantage beyond good grades. For my sister, that advantage has been sports. Lacrosse has been the reason her two sons have gotten into the schools they’ve gotten into… and now my niece, her high school sophomore daughter, is being courted by college lacrosse coaches, as well.

Over dinner one night, my sister looked across the table at Jack, who was lamenting his lack of a sports resume, to say, “But Jack, you’ve got a thing. Your whole life experience is your thing… living in three countries, speaking three languages… that’s how you stand out.”

So much of Jack’s story has yet to be written, but this chapter in Panama has positioned him well for whatever great things lie ahead.

Kathleen Peddicord

Comments

Tags: 'Raising Children Overseas'French school panamainternational schools panamaliving panamaMoving Overseas With Childrenraising children in panama
Share87Tweet54
Previous Post

19 Travel Tips I’ve Learned After Visiting 60+ Countries

Next Post

How Panama’s Corredor Sur Is Paving A Road To The Future

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

Related Posts

Refreshing Cocktail at beach in Belize.
Belize

10 Reasons To Reinvent Your Life In Beautiful Belize And 9 Challenges

by Kathleen Peddicord
January 17, 2021
0

We’ve been giving Belize a lot of virtual ink lately. We continue to shine a light on this quirky little...

Read more
Perfect tropical paradise beach with palm trees and hammock 350x250

Most Frequently Asked (And Not So Crazy) Questions About Retiring Overseas

January 10, 2021
The colorful urban skyline of Panama City, Panama.

The Current Events In Panama–How The Little Isthmus Shines

January 8, 2021
Keel-billed Toucan, shot in Panama.

The 10 Best Places To Discover Wildlife In Panama

January 7, 2021
Avenida Balboa at Dusk in Panama City, Panama.

The Panama Golden Visa: Residency And A Second Home For The Price Of One

January 6, 2021
Family watching sunrise on beach.

Moving Overseas Will Affect Your Family But It Can Be For The Better

January 5, 2021
Santa Catalina, Veraguas, Panama.

Starting A School In Panama Near Los Islotes

January 3, 2021
Next Post
silhouetted cars driving down a toll road towards the center of Panama city

How Panama’s Corredor Sur Is Paving A Road To The Future

A world full of fun, adventure, and profit awaits! Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we'll send you a FREE report on the 10 Best Places To Retire In Style Overseas Today.

Start Your New Life Today, Overseas

Get Your Free Panama Report Today!

​​Simply enter your email address below and we'll send you our FREE REPORT - 101 Things You'll Wish Someone Had Told You About Panama.
 

how to retire overseas

LIOS Resources


  • New To LIOS
  • Ask An Expert
  • Media Center
  • Contact Us
  • FAQs

Quick Links


  • Best Places To Live
  • Best Places To Retire
  • Finding A Job Overseas
  • Real Estate

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and get your FREE report: The 10 Best Places To Retire Overseas In 2021

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Unsubscribe

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Countries
  • Budgets
  • Archives
  • News
  • Events
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • About Us
  • Members Area
  • Contact Us

© 2008-2021 - Live and Invest Overseas - All Rights Reserved.

WANT TO RETIRE OVERSEAS?

Sign up for our free daily e-letter, Overseas Opportunity Letter, and we’ll immediately send you a free report on the 10 BEST PLACES TO RETIRE in style overseas. Each day you’ll learn about the best opportunities for international living, retiring overseas, offshore diversification and asset protection, and investing in real estate around the world.

Get Your Free Panama Report Today!
 

​​Learn more about ​​​PANAMA and other countries in our free, daily Overseas Opportunity Letter​​, as well as our ​In Focus: ​Panama ​newsletter​​​​​​. Simply enter your email address below and we’ll send you our FREE REPORT – ​​​101 Things You'll Wish Someone Had Told You About Panama.
 

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.