We sold our house and nearly everything we owned to move our kids to Malta. Parenting is different here.

In the autumn of 2024, our local school district in Delaware moved the mandatory ALICE drills to commencement in kindergarten, my daughter's twelvemonth at the time. These are serious quarterly drills anywhere the academy simulates a shooting, training children to conceal in case of an energetic shooting.

My spouse and I had talked concerning world schooling before this, and had a lot of discussions concerning what would activity for our family. We decided it was period for our family to leave.

We moved to Malta

In April, 2025, following four months of serious paperwork, my son and I arrived in Malta as part of the digital nomad endorsement process. We had never set ft on the islands and honestly knew extremely small concerning the nation we'd chosen according to net research. We were there to safe a rental and finalize the paperwork. And two months later, my complete family of four had sold nearly all possession, including our home and car. We boarded a plane, alongside fair suitcases in hand.

Life in Malta is extremely different. And by extension, parenting current is distinct too. Malta is a small archipelago between Sicily and Tunisia. The bulk of the population, including us, lives on the isle of Malta, which is a densely populated extend that feels akin a city-state. The country's community is lone a bit complete 500,000, but 5 myriad tourists continue through annually, mostly in the summer.

To some, Malta is a cruise stop. To others, a gathering destination. It is a nation that is remarkably young: having fair celebrated its 50^th commemoration of independence from Britain. And it is a district that is deeply, deeply old. The second-oldest individual freestanding structures are Neolithic temples current on the island. History and modernity merge in all direction.

Parenting in Malta feels different

As a parent, the most apparent difference comes in a emotion of safety. I never concern whenever my kids are at school. Everywhere we've been on the island, whether at a local festa, a beach, or a historic site, we've established many another children, and my kids have made many friends.

And for a small island, there's a notable amount to do. Every week seems to presenter another distinctive event. There is a fantastic children's museum, many playgrounds, and of way the sea is everywhere. The Mediterranean itself is not the identical sea we knew in the mid-Atlantic. It is stunningly teal and nearly continually heated to float in.

Parenting in a new mainland meant adapting on the go to an entirely new way of life. Everything's close, but traffic is heavy. We lived car-free entirely for seven months. We quickly adapted to no dryer for our apparel (not too bad alongside nearly nonstop sun) and recognized several things we took for granted in the US merely don't be current (Amazon deliveries and Pumpkin Spice Lattes). Life is slower, alongside a academy twelvemonth that lone starts in October, and summer activity is meant to be half-serious, fractional at the beach.

We have explored and learned so much

On the way rear from a prehistoric cave (Ghar Dhalam) filled alongside pigmy hippo bones, my son turned to me and said: "Dad, I awareness so grateful to see the earth as we do."

We have taken family trips to Neolithic temples, walked the kids through the gilded halls of the Baroque masterpiece St John's Co-Cathedral, anywhere 450 of the Knights of Malta lay entombed, and affection the children's museum Esplora, which is built in what used to be a hospital during the Knights' Era and WW2. There are shrapnel holes from the war, and it overlooks the walls of Valletta, which we additionally ignore from our house.

We can stroll to Paceville, the gathering area that feels akin mini-Manhattan. We can stroll to the sea. And of course, whenever the kids are good, caller gelato arrives by delivery. Not ice cream, intellect you.

The kids don't continually value it. We returned from the Alps alongside the kids "bored of mountains" and not caring concerning returning to the sea they "always see". But we value that this is the existence they live.

Malta is a distinct earth from the one we left. I don't cognize how lengthy we'll be here, or what another parts of the earth await us on our adventure, but I am grateful to be current now, parenting the kids in a way I never imagined.