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Forum -> Inquiries & Offers -> Israel related Inquiries & Aliyah Questions
Aliyah with older and school age children?



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amother
OP


 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 11:01 am
My husband and I want to make aliyah within the next 5 years, maybe even less. We will have kids that have graduated HS, and also those in 2nd - 9th grade. Has anyone done this? Will we be setting our kids, and ourselves, up for failure? We want to leave our country so badly and don't want to wait until retirement age. Advice please?
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EM




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 11:29 am
amother [ OP ] wrote:
My husband and I want to make aliyah within the next 5 years, maybe even less. We will have kids that have graduated HS, and also those in 2nd - 9th grade. Has anyone done this? Will we be setting our kids, and ourselves, up for failure? We want to leave our country so badly and don't want to wait until retirement age. Advice please?


Feel free to contact me and I will give you my fathers info. He is a rav of an anglo shul in RBS and has a ton of experience with this. My parents moved to Israel with kids age 7 and up but that was 17 years ago and times have really changed.
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avrahamama




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 11:32 am
Id love to know this too. My oldest is 10 and dreams if Israel everytime he hears us speaking of the possibility.
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amother
Ivory


 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 12:02 pm
It's really impossible to say. What might happen is that some members of your family (you and your husband, the younger kids, possibly) may do very well, but the older ones may not. Sometimes families with older kids find that the HS age ones do better staying back in the US to finish school.
From what I've seen, it makes a big difference if everyone is invested and enthusiastic, has some knowledge of the country/culture, and has decent Hebrew language skills.
I think you'll have to take the feelings of everyone in the family into account, and perhaps do a nice long pilot trip, like over the summer, to the community you'd like.
It's not ideal, but I think you get that. However, success is not completely out of the question.
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shabbatiscoming




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 4:04 pm
Each family that does this will have different outcomes. I know a family who came with kids ranging from 1st grade trough army age. They left after a year. I know other families who had kids in high school who stayed and all the kids are happy and settled. I know another family where they made aliyah with kids from the age of 12 and younger and some are way off the derech and others are settled into families of their own.
Its going to be so individual for each family.
If each family member wants to come on aliyah, thats already a good start. But its just so individual. Hugs and hope your dreams of aliyah are able to come true.
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DrMom




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 5:21 pm
Start learning conversational Hebrew.
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FranticFrummie




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Feb 24 2020, 5:41 pm
DrMom wrote:
Start learning conversational Hebrew.


Came here to say THIS!!!

If I could change only one thing, I would have started learning Hebrew with DD for at least a year before we came. It would have been a game changer.

DD never did catch on to the language, and she had horrible teachers. She felt lonely and isolated, didn't understand a single word of schoolwork, and just sat and doodled in her notebook for over a year and a half. Eventually she got so depressed and so far behind that I had to send her back to America to live with relatives, so she could finish high school. B'H she's happy and thriving, but I miss her terribly. She never wants to move back here, ever.

I have other friends who spoke Hebrew at home, and when they made Aliyah with kids 12 through 1, they did very well. The 12 and 10 year old girls struggled a bit with social issues, but now they are just fine. The oldest got married last year! (I can't believe I used to babysit her.)

Even if you can't make Aliyah this year, or the next year, by teaching your kids conversational Hebrew, they can feel like every day they are one step closer to being Israelis.
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