Our daughter, now 9 years old, was born in Fort Lauderdale and is growing up here. My family lives a 10-hour flight away in France, while my husband’s family is a six-hour flight away in New Mexico.

This means no free babysitting or backup daycare, no matter the situation. We are alone if we want a date night, the same as if one of us falls ill. We quickly realized the importance of creating our own support system and making special efforts to connect her with our families from afar.

Not having family around was harder when my daughter was a baby.

Coming home from the hospital with a newborn and dealing with consecutive sleepless nights without any family members nearby who we could ask to watch her for a few hours was the hardest part. My husband worked long hours and, having recently moved from France, I didn’t have many friends to confide in either.

This situation was mentally and physically exhausting, which influenced my decision to postpone my return to work. As a communications manager, I was used to unpredictable corporate schedules and wasn’t ready to leave my newborn in the care of strangers for long periods of time. We then understood that we needed to build a support system for the well-being of both our daughter and ourselves.

We create our chosen people.

In Florida, we are no exception. Many parents come from different countries or states and raise their children without close family support. It has been easier to connect with other families like ours, whether they are neighbors, acquaintances from the park, or parents from school, who face similar challenges.

Our daughter also joined Cub Scouts, which was one of the most effective ways to build another community. Spending weekends camping with other parents and children is a great way to bond and build trust.

Over time, we have created a great mutual support system with other parents; We look after each other’s children in case of emergency, take children overnight to give parents a break or pick them up from school if necessary.

We spent our holidays as a family and told family stories to our daughter.

For us it is important that, despite the distance, our daughter knows her family and her roots. Every summer I take her to France for a month and then she goes to New Mexico with my husband for two weeks. My husband and I can’t take the entire summer off, so we’re spending this vacation apart.

These trips allow our daughter to bond with both sides of her family, build relationships, and create lasting memories. We think it will be harder to do this when he’s a teenager, so we enjoy it now. For vacations, if we have enough free time, we go to France or New Mexico together and never choose to go anywhere else.

To keep in touch between visits, we have weekly video calls, although they are brief because our daughter doesn’t like to communicate this way. Instead, we share many family stories, especially from our childhood, and often reference relatives in our conversations. This helps you get to know them better and feel closer to them. I also speak French to him as much as I can to avoid language barriers with my family and reinforce his identity.

Our daughter may not have family nearby, but she knows that many people, near and far, care deeply about her.