Relocating Family to Argentina

[JBahr]

My Wife and I have been talking about temporarily relocating to Argentina. We have a 5 year old girl and 2 year old boy and we are looking to slow time down a bit and really enjoy the time they are young and give them a unique life experience. I spent some time down there out of college and really enjoyed it, specifically Patagonia. The idea is 2-3 years until about middle school age for my daughter.

Wife works in the online world, and I work in the industrial one. She has really been pushing me to hang it all up and do something I love. I am researching outfits I could volunteer/work for in the fly fishing and stag hunting realm. Cost of living down there is such that my income likely will not be needed. We have good savings and investments.

I am looking for people who have spent time down there. Vacationing, hunting, fishing or just living. Curious about your experiences, what was great, things to avoid.

Also very interested in people who have experience with non traditional education for children, i.e. homeschool or world school.... still coming around to this idea for the kids.

Broad net, I know... Just thought I would try some like minded individuals in the Rokslide community. Appreciate it!

 

[schmalzy]

My Wife and I have been talking about temporarily relocating to Argentina. We have a 5 year old girl and 2 year old boy and we are looking to slow time down a bit and really enjoy the time they are young and give them a unique life experience. I spent some time down there out of college and really enjoyed it, specifically Patagonia. The idea is 2-3 years until about middle school age for my daughter.

Wife works in the online world, and I work in the industrial one. She has really been pushing me to hang it all up and do something I love. I am researching outfits I could volunteer/work for in the fly fishing and stag hunting realm. Cost of living down there is such that my income likely will not be needed. We have good savings and investments.

I am looking for people who have spent time down there. Vacationing, hunting, fishing or just living. Curious about your experiences, what was great, things to avoid.

Also very interested in people who have experience with non traditional education for children, i.e. homeschool or world school.... still coming around to this idea for the kids.

Broad net, I know... Just thought I would try some like minded individuals in the Rokslide community. Appreciate it!

Nothing of value to add in your search for information but think it’s an awesome idea. Good luck in your search and I really hope it works out for you guys.


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[TaperPin]

My first wife and half her family were homeschooled. Her experience after high school graduation is very close to that of every other person we met that also grew up home schooled. Home schooling sounds like a good idea, but every single person who came out of it was way behind everyone else. It’s a lot of work to teach kids and once the fun wears off home school turns into no school, or barely half ass school. Other folks may have a totally different experience, we just never met anyone that wasn’t also playing catch-up well into their 20’s to actually learn the things they should have in heir teens.

Over the years a number of coworkers home schooled their high school age kids, and it was a lazy way of not having to deal with their problems in school and very little was expected of them.

Our oldest wants to home school his kids - neither his nor his wife have the interest, energy, or personality to teach kids - they like hanging out with them and doing stuff with them, but that’s not an education. He tries to get me in on it because I like to train smart motivated adults how to do woodworking and I remind him that I’m not interested in teaching kids all day or I’d be a grade school teacher - it’s real work.

 

[butcherboy]

Hope it works out for you but there is no way in hell I would
Move my family out of the U.S. I always say going out of country is a nice place to visit but not live. If your daughter is 5 now and you stay till she is middle school age that’s 13. You are looking at 7-8 years not 2-3. It would certainly be a life experience but I think your kids are a little young to actually appreciate it and get the most out of the experience.

 

[Beendare]

We are headed to Patagonia after Christmas for a couple weeks.....

 

[el_jefe_pescado]

Where are you moving from OP? Sounds like a cool idea.


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[Geewhiz]

Homeschooling your kids is exactly what you make it. My 4 siblings and I were all homeschooled, and we all scored very well on our SAT and ACT exams, and we all have at least a bachelors degree in post secondary education and professional careers. My mother was a hard ass when it came to our educations, and her and dad both are very smart and well educated people.

Personally I think there are huge advantages to be had by homeschooling your children, but it is a significant responsibility and a commitment that should not be taken lightly.

I know a good number of people that were homeschooled for the wrong reason, and it shows.

 

[jimh406]

I'm not sure how homeschooling could do a worse job that what most public schools have been doing for the past few decades. There are tons of online tools available now. There's frankly a lot of wasted time in a public school day even if you don't count the time to go to school and get home.

I'd strongly consider homeschooling if I had any school age kids. Homeschooling vs public schools are frankly close to opposites. Completely individualized lessons vs being part of a class with kids of many different abilities and behavior issues.

 

[P Carter]

My two cents: Argentina is beautiful, Nd great to visit, but economically underperforming, unstable, and corrupt. The education system is poor. There are few opportunities for young people, and the opportunities for outsiders are few and far between. It’s orders of magnitude less economically dynamic than the US. Would be fun to go there for a few years if you were going to be part of the upper crust. Not a place to go to seek opportunities. But if you have modest economic goals, or enough money to buy your way into the elite echelons of society down there, it might be cool.

 

[Ucsdryder]

Homeschooling your kids is exactly what you make it. My 4 siblings and I were all homeschooled, and we all scored very well on our SAT and ACT exams, and we all have at least a bachelors degree in post secondary education and professional careers. My mother was a hard ass when it came to our educations, and her and dad both are very smart and well educated people.

Personally I think there are huge advantages to be had by homeschooling your children, but it is a significant responsibility and a commitment that should not be taken lightly.

I know a good number of people that were homeschooled for the wrong reason, and it shows.

Now it’s starting to make sense.

 

[RockAndSage]

Would be fun to go there for a few years if you were going to be part of the upper crust. Not a place to go to seek opportunities.

^^^ This is important. As long as you think of it as "a couple of years of lifestyle vacation", you're fine. And as long as you have an emergency reserve of cash that will cover evacuation, along with actual evacuation insurance.

My wife and I currently homeschool. And as someone else said, it is what you make it - but it is not the stereotype of old. In the early years of it, homeschoolers were often socially awkward. Subsequent generations learned from that and went to great lengths to have better socialization opportunities for their kids, like scouting, sports, FFA, 4H, etc. I personally spoke with the admissions head at the US Air Force Academy and asked about homeschoolers. He made an explicit point of that for me, and shared that there had been a complete shift in that population - at that time (2004ish) the top cadet was homeschooled, and as a group they were some of the absolute highest performing all-around (academic, athletic, military affairs). And they were some of the most socially competent.

In the modern era, there are tremendous opportunities for homeschooling - they tend to fall in very distinct curricula groups. Generally speaking, you've got religious types; libertarian-ish and non-ideological types; and hippies that do "unschooling", which unless very carefully guided usually ends up creating feral and uneducated children. But there are plenty of very rigorous non-ideological curricula out there, and especially with Covid, the general explosion of online and remote learning has been excellent. Homeschoolers are at all the Ivies, and are welcomed at the service academies. It is what you make it.

I've also spent a lot of my adult life living and working overseas, almost none of it in the first world. With what you described in Argentina, it could be a good time, but it will have its limitations. As noted, it's not a place of opportunity. Regarding your kids, unless you're in the capital and can have your children socializing with kids of local and international elites (business, diplomats, etc), the only real opportunity you're providing them from the experience is language and cross-cultural skills, if you choose to make points of that. Remember the principle of Birds of a Feather principle - they will program to the values of the kids they hang out with. The further your kids are from the capital and those social opportunities, the more limited the social and educational opportunities will be for your kids.