Courtesy of the author
When my wife was offered a relocation package to Sweden in 2021, we felt like we had won the lottery.
Like many US families in COVID-19 lockdown, we grew to idealize Scandinavia. Article after article painted Sweden, in particular, as a utopia with happy people, gorgeous nature, and world-class schools.
We dreamed of a place where children were free to learn at their own pace, financial burdens were rare, and active-shooter drills were nonexistent.
Yet after two years, we quickly found our "grass is greener" perspective shifting as Sweden's famously slower pace left our child feeling adrift.
Our 5-year-old daughter was halfway through online kindergarten when we were invited to move, sight unseen, from Los Angeles to western Sweden's Gothenburg.
Because primary schools start at age 6, we enrolled her in a preschool program to help her integrate. We were warned that, as newcomers, we would be charged the maximum allowable fee: about $100 a month for full-time care, meals included. Having previously paid $1,000 a month in LA, we were elated.
Like its neighbor Denmark, Sweden offers generous subsidies to families. Upon enrolling our kid in primary school, we continued to pay the $100 fee for an after-school program, where she developed her language skills and a taste for Swedish cuisine — she couldn't get behind the fish pudding, though.
We had steady corporate incomes, and the $100 was the highest monthly payment, but Swedish childcare subsidies can zero out costs for other income brackets altogether, ensuring that all families have the support they need.
Paired with a monthly government-issued parental stipend of about $110 and a system that ensures parents can stay home with sick kids without losing wages, Sweden's government goes a long way in helping parents remain stable.
Because we intended to integrate as citizens, we enrolled in a suburban public school, rather than a private international one. We figured there would be some repetition in math and science but reasoned that because she was also learning a language, revisiting these subjects would help her develop her Swedish.
Sweden is famous for taking things slow, public education included. This surprised us, which could be attributed to going from a private preschool in LA to a public one in Sweden. We soon learned that in the early years of school, teachers mostly prioritized socialization and play in a way that felt like a combination of traditional Waldorf and Montessori learning.
We worried that our daughter would regress and forget the core math and science she had excelled with but assumed things would progress in year two. They didn't.
The kids learned about government policies in social studies and single-digit addition. They sang songs and learned to identify plants. Little attention was paid to science or more advanced math.
Unexpectedly, our daughter began complaining about a lack of challenges.
All along, we noticed a collision of progressive adaptability and rigidity to tradition.
Classes would pause advancement to ensure everybody was on the same page, which might explain the class' lack of advancement beyond basic mathematics.
That approach is admirably progressive, but Sweden and its schools also adhere strictly to traditions that can be extremely jarring to outsiders. Our school took regular "heritage" trips to local churches despite Sweden's relative secularism.
At 8, our daughter had memorized dozens of Swedish pop songs in class and could identify local birds by sight. She could recite the seven-day creationism story and dance to "Old Town Road" thanks to hours spent in an after-school program watching Just Dance YouTube videos.
But she couldn't do simple division and once asked us what science was. When addressing our concerns with teachers, we were met with a cold: "This is how we do things here."
Eventually, we had to decide whether to trust the Swedish system or move back to the US. We chose the latter to avoid letting her get too far behind.
Sweden goes to great lengths to help families thrive, and for that experience, we're grateful. But those benefits come with the expectation that you'll go with the grain and not raise concerns.
For many, this system works. For us, we decided that the grass wasn't necessarily greener and that the system we had left behind, while flawed, offered greater opportunities for our family.
