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- Only the American parents stayed to watch their kids during swimming lessons.
- At age 4, my son was expected to ride his bike everywhere, as Dutch kids usually do.
- Returning to the US has been a culture shock for my kids, who are used to a more direct way of life.
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I'm an American who lived in Holland for three years with my husband and two young sons. Parenting abroad, we experienced jarring differences in everyday life, from transportation to education to healthcare.
When we moved to the Netherlands, we often got questions about why our younger son wasn't riding his own bicycle yet. He was 4. But the Dutch are practically born on bikes. They learn almost as soon as they can walk, and their incredible infrastructure of bike paths makes it safe and easy to get around.
With the bike culture and excellent public transportation, there aren't school buses in the Netherlands. It's a big change from our iconic yellow buses, a fixture of American life. In the Netherlands, students often bike, alone or with friends, to school and activities.
I used to cycle with my kids to swimming and gymnastics, and then I'd stay to watch. I was often the only parent there. If there were others, they were likely American, too.
American parents are much more involved in their kids' lives
In the US, we often have parent-teacher conferences, open houses, emails and reminders from teachers, newsletters from the principal, and every single grade posted online in real time.
In the Netherlands, we had none of that. Once, my son told me about a teasing incident on the playground. When I asked his teachers about it, they seemed annoyed. The message was clear: They handled it at school, and if they needed my involvement, they would have told me.
But the Dutch schools had twice as much recess time - almost always outdoors, regardless of the weather. They also had restaurant-quality food, including fresh bread and pastries.
Healthcare was another big culture shock
Our Dutch family doctor was determined by our ZIP code. There was no consideration of insurance compatibility or asking around for recommendations. Our primary-care physician was just up the street in a converted row house, and it always surprised me when the other patients in the waiting room greeted us with a hearty "good morning." The kids also had routine health exams at school every few years.
A postcard informed us that our children needed meningitis vaccines and assigned us a date and time at our nearest location, an athletic center. It was nothing like the childhood vaccines they'd had in the US.
When we arrived, dozens of children were lined up with their arms ready - no privacy curtains or little cubicles. They didn't even sit down. Talk about an efficient, no-frills approach to healthcare. They even had a savvy ice-cream seller positioned just outside the gym doors.
The differences in healthcare were also clear at our first pediatric appointment after we moved back to the United States. My boys were 7 and 10, and the American nurse asked them to strip down to their underwear and handed them each a robe to change into before the doctor arrived. They looked at her in disbelief and turned to me to see if she might be joking.
My boys grew up in Holland changing for gym class and swimming lessons with other kids, boys and girls. Naturally, they didn't think anything of standing in their underwear in a private exam room. The idea of needing a robe for their own doctor's appointment was as foreign to them as a 4-year-old riding a bicycle had been to us.
Sometimes we miss the direct, efficient way of life in the Netherlands. We're American and this is our home, but we sure learned a lot from the Dutch.