Would you move across the country against the will of your teenage children?

[Hamnet]

How much say should teenage children have when a family is considering a move?

We live in London. We have done all our childrens’ lives. In fact all our adult lives. But I am from Devon and in lockdown I have both missed the countryside and felt that cities are dangerous from a health point of view and won’t be fun again for many years. I also now have flexibility to continue my career with limited time in the London office so a move is possible. DH feels the same.

My dream home is on the market. I knew this house as a child and used to imagine one day owning it but it seemed an impossible dream. DH and I want to offer on it. Our 14 year old daughter is distraught. She can’t stand the idea of leaving her school and friends (who she hasn’t seen hardly at all this year due to lockdowns). She also points out she is in year 10 and it’s a bad time to move schools due to GCSE coursework. She is finding this stage of life quite hard anyway and I am scared to damage her mental health further.

I think London will be in tiers for years to come and all the things we love about London will struggle to return after the pandemic. I also think further mutations or other pandemics are likely. I am desperate to move. Our other children are slightly younger and more malleable.

How much would you take on board the very strong feelings and risk to the mental health of a 14 year old?

[Misssugarplum12764]

I read your title expecting younger teenagers but Year 10 is a really bad time to move a child from an educational perspective.

[Ihaveoflate]

It completely depends on the child but there's no way I'd do it personally. A move (south to north) when my sister and I were preteen was pretty hard to the point of traumatic. It had lasting consequences and I know my mother regretted the decision.

I know this is me projecting, but I wouldn't consider moving out of the area after my child starts school.

[nuitdesetoiles]

Don't move. You're being selfish. It will be hideous for your DD, a countryside adolescence is shit, speaking from experience. My parents moved from London to a godforsaken village in the countryside when I was 8, I hated it. I moved back to a city as soon as I could, won't move now until the kids have left home. You can't move her mid GCSE... That's cruel!

[peak2021]

I'd be reluctant since it is not enforced by a job. I also think there would be a difference between moving to a town in another part of the country and a rural area. Also between north and south of the country, as I expect for someone who has always lived in London the lower temperature and earlier winter darkness could be difficult to adjust for a child.

Devon has a good climate though.

[PlanDeRaccordement]

No. Not in year 10. You’d be mad to move her. It could derail her university chances. Any chance you can buy to let this Devon house and then move there once the children are at Uni.

[caringcarer]

You need to do some research. Ring schools local to house you wish to buy and find out which exam.boards they study in each of her subjects. Most exam boards will accept a student who transfers across from another board because of a house move and will often accept coursework already marked and graded by a previous school and credit it with equivalent grade. Most schools sit same exam board in Maths anyway. In 3 years time your dd will be moving on to uni and then your other children will be in exam years. You deserve your dreams too. I come from Devon do I understand why you want to go back, with coasts North and South, Dartmoor and great community too. Once your dd has finished uni she can choose to live where she pleases. I would check out schools.

[airbags]

I wouldn't dream of moving my yr10 - way too disruptive in her education and there's no guarantee that she'll get the same subjects or be at the same point in the curriculum.
My parents moved me in yr10 and it affected my education and also my social standing. I was the new girl trying to slot into existing teenage friendship groups and that can be brutal.
Put your move to Devon on hold for a few years and maybe stop being so negative about tiers etc in years to come.

[RealisticSketch]

I think your thread title has attracted a lot of people who have a strong emotional reaction to your idea. There are many on here who, quite fairly, are sharing their own bad experiences, or would never dream of doing anything against their teens will. Contrast with this current thread where the op is doing the same to Dubai...
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/living_overseas/4144143-Dubai-with-kids-following-dh-out
Very different tone of thread. More about practicalities than whether the decision virtually amounts to child abuse.

[Stompythedinosaur]

I wouldn't do this unless I had no choice. Your happiness does not top trump hers. I think eat you're suggesting would be pretty devastating for a 14 year old. Just wait a few years and go when she's 18.

[PlanDeRaccordement]

@RealisticSketch
The child in that thread was in Yr9. Big difference between moving in year 9 and moving after year 10.

[RuggeryBuggery]

No sorry I wouldn’t move with a child at that stage and feeling that way about it

[HaveringWavering]

@AuntieMarys

No I wouldn't. Wait till she's 18 and at university. I love the countryside but what prospects are there for a teenager there as others have said? London is great for young people.

OP has younger children! They will be the wrong age to move when the eldest is at university.

[RuggeryBuggery]

Unless you had to financially or something.

[UnityUnited]

No way. Teenagers are having a terrible time at the moment.

[Emmie12345]

No I wouldn’t

We moved London to Cornwall when my eldest was due to start y7 and that was hard even at that age

[Teakind]

No I wouldn’t do this to my DC. If my parents had done it to me I would have been devastated. 14 is such a fragile age with exams, friendships, hormones etc.

I think your kids should come before you in this situation.

[megletthesecond]

No.

[dottiedodah]

I would probably not move TBH .In year 10 she is coming to a crucial point in her GCSES now.We live in Dorset ,and the rates in our town are worse than London ATM! No one knows what will happen and I dont think LD in London will be worse than anywhere else ,as the Govt will want the heart of Business up and running ASAP!

[thecatfromjapan]

To get away from the mad 'Lindon-centric' thing ...

So, I'm convinced this move is about your anxiety. You're finding coronavirus stuff hard, the future uncertain, and being an adult bloody difficult. You're finding it hard to deal with the pressures of being a parent to an anxious child.

You dream - fondly - of your teenage years, when you were the one being parented and you had lots of fun. In a non-pandemic idyll.

Now, my mother in law went through something similar.

She was living in a gorgeous city - not London, folks!

Old age, in her case, came knocking.

Her mother died, her partner developed some of the infirmities of old age. So did she, to be honest.

And how did she deal with this sudden intrusion of difficult reality?

She started dreaming of the rural idyll of her youth.

And moved to somewhere very close to her childhood home.

Her closest friends warned her of the difficulties. She stopped speaking to them!

With hindsight, it's easy to see why - they were forcing reality to intrude on what was a fantasy-based solution to deep, in acknowledged fears about threatening changes to her life. Of course she found their well-meaning observations unbearable.

Roll forward five years and it's been an ongoing disaster.

Because the whole thing was conducted at the level of fantasy solutions to problems she refused to consciously acknowledge or deal with.

It could have been different. Acknowledging what she really wanted to move away from would have resulted in a quite different move , and would almost certainly have been life-enhancing and successful.

She might even have been able to put things in place to make her actual move successful.

But it was all done from avoidance and denial. And it's a train-wreck.

And she didn't even have to factor in the wishes/well-being of anyone other than herself and her partner.

[Hamnet]

OK. We are off our on our one allowed local walk. Which means trumping around a city park with 1000s of other Londoners who can’t access any other outdoor space locally and can’t say 2m apart on a walk because there are so many of us. What we all wouldn’t give to be off to Dartmoor or the South West coast path or somewhere right space right now! I’d also love to go to the Tate and have lunch in China town but those delights are much due to we off being possible than countryside walks.

Thanks for all the input into the thread. I am considering all the points and am not blind to the fact that 95% of you say do not do this.

[JohnMiddleNameRedactedSwanson]

@Hamnet

Those saying teen life in Devon would be miserable. I spent my teen years in the town we are considering. It was great. Most of my friends in walking distance, lots of house parties etc. In London non of DDs close friends are in walking distance, all a tube ride away and I’m much less likely to let her ride a tube at night than walk down a local high street.

It was great from your perspective of never having been a teen in London!

We made a move out of London and it was the best thing we could have done so I'm not slavishly London-centric. However, you are proposing one of the most dramatic changes that it's possible to make on a move within England. The landscape of training and employment is very different for a teen in Devon compared to a teen in London.

You had an idyllic adolescence there but you didn't move back when you were beginning your own adult life. Think about why that was.

[dairydairy]

@Hamnet

Those saying teen life in Devon would be miserable. I spent my teen years in the town we are considering. It was great. Most of my friends in walking distance, lots of house parties etc. In London non of DDs close friends are in walking distance, all a tube ride away and I’m much less likely to let her ride a tube at night than walk down a local high street.

Who are you trying to convince ?

[Kingfisher5]

My parents did a similar move just before my gcses (so admittedly a bit different). I really wasn't keen and remember being upset but I made friends relatively easily and enjoyed living in a smaller area. We were also promised a dog which helped!

[Walkaround]

I think it would be horrid to move your anxious year 10 dd 3 hours’ train ride plus various tube journeys away from her frinds at a time when she has no chance of meeting and making new friends in a place she doesn’t want to move to and when she is in year 10.

[HeelsHandbagPerfumeCoffee]

You really Catastrophizing, it’s not a dystopian forever it’s a time limited lockdown
No I’d not force her to move at such a critical stage. If move at primary and non important exams
A cautionary note, Devon is not always rural idyll for Londoners fleeing the city. Plenty go and regret it