House Move Panic!!

[Mummykims]

Hi everyone, first time poster here and looking for some reassurance!

Currently selling our home which is located on the suburb of a large city. We have a 6 year old daughter who loves to play with the neighbours kids out in the street and are constantly ‘house hoping’.

Due to changes in our jobs (redundancy ) we’re having to cut back in a lot of our finances and this unfortunately includes our home. The mortgage payments are wiping us out each month.

We have found a lovely little cottage on the edge of a village around 15 miles from where we currently stay.

I’m getting super anxious at the thought of the move, not for me, but for our daughter. She wouldn’t be attending the local school initially so I’m afraid she’ll be lonely.

Have any of you made a similar move? How did your kids react? What can I do to make sure she has a healthy social life, like she does just now?

[Kool4katz]

It's a valid point to consider.
We moved to a very rural home when DS was 5. He's 9 now. I have to make a huge effort to arrange play dates and it's a pain as we have 10 week summer holidays here. His nearest pal lives over 2 miles away and I have to drive him to every activity except school, which is in walking distance. Bizarrely the school was built over a mile away from the small village (1 shop and 1 pub) but it serves children from outlying villages so it's actually quite busy. No-one else lives in walking distance of school. They either catch a school bus or parents drop them off by car.

I love the peace and quiet and lack of pollution where we live now compared to Bristol where we lived before, but it is hard when your child is an only. All his friends have siblings so it's not such an issue for them and many of them live on farms where there's plenty of work to get on with. DS spends hours staring at a screen but I can't tell him to get out and ride his bike for instance, as the road is narrow and twisty with no pavements (plus DS can't ride a bike).

It's a very different childhood to mine but not necessarily worse. I grew up playing out on the street but in a very rough area as did DH in a different city.