Bilingual kids — local school, international, or a bit of both?

We went local, mainly for the language and so they'd actually make friends in the neighbourhood rather than only within an expat bubble. First few months were rough — a lot of frustrated tears after school — but by the second term they were translating for us at the doctor's. No regrets, but I'd be lying if I said the first term was easy.

In our case it came down to how long we thought we'd stay, not the language question at all. We genuinely didn't know if this was a two-year posting or permanent, so we picked international for continuity in case we had to move again. If we'd been sure we were staying, I think we'd have gone local.

following this, we're going back and forth on the exact same decision right now and it changes every week 😅

Ours is a slightly different version of this. We're in an English-speaking country, so the kids went to the local public school without a language barrier, and the question for us has become the opposite one: how to keep Urdu alive. The eight-year-old already answers us in English. So I'd say to anyone deciding: whatever you choose for school, have a plan for the home language from day one, because the school language wins by default.

Local school in Sweden for us. The first term was rough, the second was better, and by the third they were correcting our pronunciation. No regrets.