AccountForDoingWORK

I’m Scottish-American, dad from Scotland and mum from the U.S. but I spent a good chunk of my childhood in England (but now live in Scotland). For my purposes it feels more accurate to say “British” rather than “Scottish”, but when I’m abroad I am always very careful to distinguish that I am from Scotland, not England/the U.K. (which is just generally understood to be “England” by the rest of the world”. People noticeably become friendlier when they hear we are Scots specifically. Again…I’ve lived in both countries and I think the culture is more similar than Scots would like to admit, but on a global stage, there’s more goodwill for Scotland than England, so it’s a survival strategy for me. (And of course I would never say I was English or British in Scotland, just because I am not a unionist and it carries that sort of connotation.)

I can attest to this. Used one at a river source away from livestock and all of us who drank with it became profoundly ill with a vomiting bug.

Lots of countries have people who are loud. It’s super fun to shit on Americans all the time for this but here’s the thing, you would never notice how many Americans don’t fit the stereotype (obviously). I’ve lived by tourist attractions most of my life and I can tell you that it’s a certain ‘type’ of American that’s loud, just as it’s certain ‘types’ of Brits, there’s loud Italians, etc. It’s just trendy to shit on Americans (for obvious reasons), so that’s what the lazy thinkers among us tend to do instead of looking at the larger picture. If the Americans aren’t the only ones making noise on a train (and in this instance, my kids were making as much noise as the French teens/kids nearby), it makes it a little more obvious that it’s just someone who doesn’t like Americans who hones in on ever hearing them in public spaces, full stop.

Lots of countries have people who are loud. It’s super fun to shit on Americans all the time for this but here’s the thing, you would never notice how many Americans don’t fit the stereotype (obviously). I’ve lived by tourist attractions most of my life and I can tell you that it’s a certain ‘type’ of American that’s loud, just as it’s certain ‘types’ of Brits, there’s loud Italians, etc. It’s just trendy to shit on Americans (for obvious reasons), so that’s what the lazy thinkers among us tend to do instead of looking at the larger picture. If the Americans aren’t the only ones making noise on a train (and in this instance, my kids were making as much noise as the French teens/kids nearby), it makes it a little more obvious that it’s just someone who doesn’t like Americans who hones in on ever hearing them in public spaces, full stop.

I go to France every year and a guy didn’t like my kids cooing over a puppy on the train so he started complaining about how loud Americans are (maybe, but like…so were the French kids/teens/adults on the trains we were on), and that we basically needed to get out of ‘his’ country. (Bonus: my kids have been raised mostly in Scotland and don’t even really remember the US at this point.)

I understand why I’m being asked, but it’s always a complicated response. I’m not a citizen of the country I was born in, my accent doesn’t match my nationality, and I grew up on three continents so I never know how much people actually want to hear vs making polite conversation. I usually give a very, very abbreviated version and if people want to ask more questions, I don’t usually mind unless I feel there’s a judgemental element to them.

I don’t have any tools to do that, the car’s been towed already and the dealership has it if that’s what they need to do :/

For real, I’m experiencing this exact problem right now. I’m 1300 miles from home (on my own with three younger kids), in a foreign country, and can’t charge my car anymore, and all signs point to it being a software glitch (it keeps saying my charge has completed, which apparently is not an uncommon issue). I’ve been in a small hotel room since yesterday and have no idea when I’ll be able to keep driving home 🙃

🤷 Can’t speak to your experiences, only my own.

For real. I hear English people talk often about their ‘Scottish roots’ yet the way Reddit talks you’d really think it was just Americans.

I have 2 original countries, returned to the U.K. several years ago and it was necessary (other country was the US lol) but not what I would have chosen for myself if it was just me. I no longer have an accent from here so occasionally get anti American comments which always feels rich because the type of people that make them are never impressive specimens themselves.

It’s absolutely the accent. I am about B2 now but in France when I was more A2/B1 I found that people weren’t immediately switching all the time, but I spent some time in France as a teenager and I’ve been told I have a near-native accent, it’s just the vocab and grammar doesn’t match in quite the same way.

That’s our issue too. I don’t want us to get too settled and have the kids locked into a situation that’s bad for them in the long-term, and that’s what I’m afraid of the longer we stay in the U.K.

lol you sound like me, I’m British and moved back to the U.K. after 15 years in the U.S. I won’t move back to the U.S. but I am very very done being in the UK.

Where in Canada were you? That’s where we’re trying to get to (from Scotland)

I’m in the U.K. (my third time living here lol) and I’m done. We moved to escape the US and the parts I love I *really* love, but the parts I don’t like are enough to make me start looking into other countries. I feel like I’ve given it a go as a child, a teenager, and as an adult, and it’s just not working out.

Higher quality medical care. Cultural diversity. More reliable/predictable weather. Variety and quality of dining options.

Another dual U.S./UK here, recently moved back to the U.K. after 15 years in the U.S (albeit to Scotland). Honestly, your husband’s complaints about the U.K. aren’t wrong. We moved here to get away from the US political culture and to have access to affordable medical care, but the medical care in the U.K. isn’t as advanced as what you get in the U.S. if you have the kind of money your husband is making and it does not do great with complex health needs. England’s disability system also seems like it’s on par with the US in terms of being difficult (and frankly borderline traumatising) to apply for. We’re an autistic family as well and while London might be better than the rest of the U.K. for a lot of that, the U.K. in general does not handle differences well, and it’s harder being autistic here IMO. Home education just became a lot more restrictive in England too, in case you find that’s what you need to do (as we did, without planning on it). The travel to Europe is the best part but I’ll be honest, I spend all year planning on the times I get to get *out* of the UK. I don’t regret coming here because it was better than staying in the US with everything going on, but it’s absolutely not what I would have chosen for my family if we had more options. I was not particularly happy growing up in England (Cambridge area) and as an autistic adult back in the U.K., not much has changed.

This is a poor example because it was only a month, but I live in Northern Scotland and spent a month in the south of France last year and I was able to go a month without having an attack of any of my health issues. (I have metal installed in my spine and esophagus and also have other health issues like vertigo and migraines, etc). I’d say it was because it was I was on ‘holiday’ but I was also solo-parenting my three young kids in a foreign country for that month so there was not very much true ‘relaxation’, lol. I do notice I feel sicker with weather changes at home but the stable weather down south seemed to mitigate that.

People definitely told me I was overreacting when we moved away 6 years ago specifically because we knew stuff like this was going to happen.

I moved (for the third time) back to the UK in 2020 and TBH I'm done with it. I don't feel that we can move back to the US (being female, trans, or disabled - plus the other reasons we did not feel safe there, including the guns in schools). But we are actively trying to get to Canada at the moment, so I completely get you on wanting to give up on it. For some things it's so much better here (social security nets, natural environment, access to the rest of Europe obviously, we live in a much nicer place than we could afford where we used to live), but culturally it feels stagnant and it's just been a struggle to be happy here.

I’m the complete opposite. I refuse to take/accept phone calls in English because (among other reasons) I have auditory processing disorder and I have to pretend like what people are saying has registered, all while missing the important information. In French, it’s pretty clear pretty quick it’s not my first language so there’s much more grace, slowing down, repetition, etc. My comprehension is pretty good, but I have the same delays as I do in English, and so I don’t mind people assuming I’m just not a particularly fluent French speaker rather than just ‘dumb’.

Quebec is apparently not as bad as you might expect for distant records: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/comments/1s905sl/your\_closest\_canadian\_ancestor\_may\_not\_be\_your/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadiancitizenship/comments/1s905sl/your_closest_canadian_ancestor_may_not_be_your/)

Lol yeah definitely. We left the US to head to the UK in 2020 because it was the most realistic available option for us to get out of the States (kids and I are citizens, not geographically isolated, etc). Now all of a sudden my spouse and kids are Canadians and we're now trying to figure out how to get over there. If Canada had been an option from the beginning we would have just done that. The UK was definitely not the best fit for us (I grew up here off and on and frankly it's pretty much just as I remembered).

How cool was it that it ended up being released as a CD??

I went to Bonnaroo in the U.S. years ago and right before it was time to see his set I got “Roo Flu” and ended up going home. So mad about it to this day!

My first concert ever was the Red Hot Chilli Peppers at Hyde Park in 2003 or 2004, but I lived in Suffolk and had a curfew so I missed the actual Peppers because James Brown spent so much time showboating during the opening act. I moved to the U.S. not long after that and saw Radiohead in North Carolina which was by far the best live show I’ve ever been to. Though I also really liked seeing Frightened Rabbit in Arizona and then Mogwai came to the radio station I was working at so I got to see a more intimate performance with them which was cool.

So jealous about Bon Iver!

I moved over from the U.S. a few years ago literally 3 months after a spinal surgery. If I stayed in the U.S. they were going to do things like follow ups with MRI to make sure everything was settled properly but when I arrived and got my new GP, they were surprised when I asked for a specialist for follow-up care after major spinal surgery. I would be shocked if they covered your rehab, but maybe it’s different in England to Scotland.

I live in a small city in the U.K. and there are 3 of us (American families) that I’m aware of who moved here since 2019 (and another one an hour away from us). Escaping what was going on in the US was absolutely the impetus for us. I’m sure there are more people like us in larger areas, and I’m sure there are probably a few other families I’m not aware of.

I’m trying to build mine back up but I worked in an outdoor gear shop for like 10 years and I’ll never be able to get the kind of discounts I got there 🥲

Everyone kept saying how much smaller British homes are than Americans and since I left the U.K. when I was 16 I didn’t remember too well, so I took them at their word and we offloaded most of our furniture, kayaks, etc. We’ve lived in two houses in Scotland and both were large enough for our stuff. Selling my kayaks before coming over has haunted me for years. We had *plenty* of room in our shipping container, and certainly in our houses.

ChatGPT/LLMs can’t be relied on for *anything* and it’s shocking how much faith people seem to be blindly placed in it. Gemini recently generated a list of recycling centres near me when I was doing a quick search and when I clicked the source link it was claiming to pull its information was, the actual was saying that those sites had all been closed. Yet people are constantly using these chats/searches to evidence something without giving it a second thought. It’s surreal.

I accidentally did this while looking at a new area we were thinking of moving to - spent a weekend out there during the worst rain in years and I could see how the local roads and infrastructure handled massive flooding (which was good to know given how much more often it’ll be happening coming up…). Going forward I will try to only see an area/house on its worst days.

I moved from the US to Scotland in 2020 with three young kids and it makes me so mad how much stuff we got rid of thinking it wouldn’t fit in our house. I left the U.K. when I was a teenager and as an adult I kept hearing about how much smaller houses were here, etc, only to end up in houses that were bigger than our townhouse in the US. We got one of those pick up/drop off crate deals (think 40ft?) and I wish I had kept more furniture (the stuff I liked anyway), as I haven’t been able to replace with the same quality.

Ok but you’re answering “as a Canadian” in a thread that was asking how Americans did it. Not everyone wants to work in healthcare and go through the expense of training and credentials so they can get a visa. Which brings us back to the claim by other poster that anyone who can’t just leave is a ‘loser’. The examples you list are for a limited number of professions that require specialised training that is not freely accessible to all.

I’d be surprised if you got an answer, especially not a complete one. I’d want to know: A) when this happened, as laws re borders change, B) what country/countries they moved to (and how they were able to do so legally) C) does “have nothing” meaning they had no family to support, no belongings to bring over? Because leaving is definitely more doable when it’s just you showing up with a backpack and nothing/no one else The people leaping to call others things like “losers” for not doing what they do are basically always the ones who had things line up in the most fortunate way for them and just don’t want to admit it, and yes, that includes moving to a country back before there were restrictions on being able to properly work (eg, things that would not fly today).

I moved (back) to the UK with a 2, 4, and 5 year old. It was an overnight flight and when we got to our new place we all took a nap in a pile on the floor and then went about like nothing had changed. Now looking at moving our kids again (8, 10 and 11) and they are mixed excited and anxious, but when they were younger it was shocking how little of it registered.

I go to Germany on average once a year to get my kids vaccinated against COVID because the U.K. won’t vaccinate kids here for it 🙃

The only family I still have contact with are in Australia. I think NZ would have been a better choice but it wasn’t strictly my call.

I’m tri (UK-US-Aussie) and we moved to Europe in 2020 after ruling out Aus/NZ due to the geographic remoteness. I’m not sure if we made the right choice or not, but being able to train between countries again (we moved from the U.S.) has been awesome.

I feel the U.K. is very emotionally/ideologically stagnant so when I travel to more progressive areas I definitely feel more like myself, but it also depends on the country. Germany is a nice place to visit and I always enjoy my time there, but I do not feel like I can relax the same way I do in France. In other countries that I feel less connected to, there’s the element of being so removed from your own cultural expectations as well as those of the culture you’re in that being ‘different’ feels less threatening. But I don’t know that I would call those instances where I feel more ‘like myself’.

NHS in England may be good at consolidating records, but Scotland operates very differently in this respect. Records don’t even transfer within our own health board, let alone throughout the whole NHS system up here.

Agree with this wholeheartedly. We are awful with preventative medicine here and not having regular visits with a paediatrician means a lot of stuff gets missed. I live in an area that apparently only really has one main paediatrician (who I encountered twice as my kids were developing issues following their COVID infection) and it was an awful experience as the attitude was essentially “well, kids don’t usually get sick and it seems like you’re just anxious” (as my 4 year old was too fatigued to get out of bed and couldn’t feel her face/leg/arm). Realising how truly alone we were with regards to care for our kids in comparison to the excellent paediatric care we had access to in the US has been terribly sobering.

I couldn’t agree with this more. I moved from the U.S. back to the U.K. a few years ago and it was a massive step down in quality of care. I’m glad my kid’s broken arm wasn’t £1000 but I’m also terrified of needing any sort of complex care here because what I’ve experienced of it is frighteningly poor in comparison to what I’m used to.

I moved from the U.S. to Scotland when my kids were 2/4/5. I moved 3 months after a spinal surgery and literally right at the start of COVID (which meant my husband couldn’t join for a few months since his visa wasn’t being processed), so all of that sucked tremendously. That said, at that age, it was basically nothing to move them. We woke up in the UK and life just continued. They didn’t get wistful for the US at all, just rolled with it and kept going. We are now looking at moving from one part of Scotland to another and THAT seems to be much more emotional and stressful for them than our trip abroad. They are struggling to get used to the idea and are looking forward to parts, but also have an attachment to their house and lives here that they are reluctant to abandon. My oldest (who turned 6 not long after we arrived) doesn’t seem to have any feelings toward their place of birth at all, but they do love this house now after several years here and moving is way more of a ‘thing’ now. It will only get harder. If you’re going to leave, go now!

Definitely guessed autism by paragraph 4. I’m autistic too and I have a very high IQ but have a lot of the same struggles you do - like your (very astute - I’m impressed with Norwegian mental healthcare!) doctors told you, you were just not being well supported. I have felt dumb for so much of my life when the reality is that autistic people are constantly being set up to fail. We live in a world build for neurotypical brains, and it can be so hard to thrive - even with so many other advantages.

I did a bike race last year and got so many comments about how it was like “cheating”, yet I came in the bottom 3rd of all participants….people really don’t understand that there are different kinds of eBikes/how they work.

My kids are varying nationality agnostic, I think. They are Scottish nationals and have lived most of their life here, but are home ed with mostly American tutors so have American accents. We don’t do holidays so Thanksgiving and Bonfire Night are something they understand, but don’t have strong meaning for them. They know we are distantly French and seem to be a bit connected to that (due to us going to France every year), but it’s not something they would claim. It’s interesting because my kids are dual citizenships with a parent from each country, and I’m multi-national with two parents from three countries, and my oldest even moved to the U.K. at the same age I did, yet despite these similarities I think about nationality more than they do - but I also attended school and was always bullied for my accent in whatever country I was in, so it became something I was forced to think about a lot. That said, due to Canadian law changing recently, my kids are now technically Canadian as well and seem to be much more excited about that 😂

I have one parent from the U.S. and a parent from the U.K., and I grew up moving in between both countries. I remember my mum always felt really uncomfortable living in the U.K. because she felt it was too judgey here, and living here again as an adult it really does feel like nothing has changed. We’re stuck here because the US is not a safe place for people like me/my kids, but I certainly (even as a Brit with British kids) don’t feel generally welcome here. I’m well aware that we are just different enough that it will always be a problem for other people, and frankly it’s exhausting.