Moving to Bali with toddlers — the year before school
Parents of school-age children spend the first call asking about schools. Parents of toddlers spend it asking whether the whole idea is mad. It is not. The years before school are, in many ways, the easiest years to take abroad — and often the ones a family is most glad, later, to have spent somewhere like this.
There is a quiet assumption that a year abroad is something you do once the children are in school — that before then, the logistics are too fragile and the children too young to benefit. The opposite is closer to the truth. A two-year-old has no curriculum to interrupt, no exam years to protect, and no friendships that a year away will strain. The under-fives are often the most portable a family ever gets.
Why the years before school travel best
A toddler’s world is small and movable: a parent, a routine, a handful of familiar objects, somewhere to nap. Recreate those four things anywhere and a small child can, within a few weeks, settle as though simply at home. They do not grieve a left-behind life the way an eight-year-old does, because the life that matters to them came with them.
What they gain is harder to measure but real. Children who spend their early years around a second language absorb its sounds in a way that is much harder to acquire later. Children who spend them outdoors, barefoot, around animals and water and other people’s grandparents, arrive at school steadier and more curious. None of it is on a report card. All of it lasts.
“A two-year-old has no curriculum to interrupt and no friendships a year away will strain. The under-fives are usually the most portable a family ever gets.”
Daycare and early years on the island
Bali has a deeper bench of early-years care than most families expect, concentrated in the south and around Ubud. The options run from small in-home playgroups to established preschools with their own grounds, gardens and play-based curricula. Several of the international schools take children from around three, and a number of standalone early-years settings — Montessori, Waldorf-influenced, nature-based — take them younger.
For the youngest, much of the care is in the home, and this is where a year in Bali looks quite unlike a year at home. A trusted, qualified nanny — full days, warm, long-term — is within reach of most families here in a way it simply is not in London, Sydney or Singapore. Many families build the early-years week around a combination: a few mornings at a playgroup for the social rhythm, and the rest of the week held gently at home. A note on careThe right arrangement depends entirely on the child and the family. We don’t place children into a fixed model; we find the people and settings that fit the toddler in front of us, and we know the difference between a setting that markets itself well and one that is genuinely good.
Which region suits little children
The region that suits a family with toddlers is rarely the one that suits a family with teenagers. Where older children need the social density and surf of Canggu, smaller children need calm, shade, safe water and short drives.
Sanur and the south-east are the gentlest landing for a family with very young children — a calm, shallow, reef-protected coast, a flat seafront path made for prams and first bicycles, and an older, quieter community. Ubud suits families who want green over ocean: cooler, slower, nature-immersed, with a strong cluster of early-years settings. The Cemagi and Seseh side of the south-west gives families some of Canggu’s convenience without the traffic that makes a toddler’s day hard. We have written a fuller guide to where to live in Bali, but for the under-fives the question is mostly: where is the day calm.
Health and the practical worries
The real worries with small children are the ordinary ones — tummy upsets, the heat, mosquitoes, the pool — rather than anything exotic. They are all manageable with habits that become second nature within a month: filtered water and sensible food, shade and timing around the midday heat, screens on the villa and repellent at dusk, and a fenced or supervised pool without exception. Private paediatric care is available on the island for the everyday, with Singapore a short flight away should qualified clinicians and the insurer recommend specialist care.
The thing nobody warns parents about is how much easier daily life with a toddler is here than at home. A household that takes on the cooking and the washing, a garden instead of a fourth-floor flat, a climate that lets a child be outside every day of the year — the load that grinds down early parenthood at home is, for a season, lifted. Many parents say the year gave them their child’s toddlerhood back.
What we do
We arrange years and seasons in Bali for families with the youngest children — the villa chosen for a toddler’s day rather than a photograph, the right early-years settings shortlisted and visited, a trusted nanny found and vetted, the healthcare and the visa in place before arrival. If school is on the near horizon, we help families think a year or two ahead, towards choosing a school when the time comes. A year in Bali with little ones begins, like everything we do, with a conversation.
Author: The Annum · Published: May 2026 · Last updated: June 2026
— The Annum