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?

But she can’t see her London friends at the moment either.

But she can communicate with them and if she is like other 14 year olds they will be bonding over that awful zoom lesson and so and so’s lock down haircut and whether they have notes for an essay and how much revision they have done for the mocks and where they will meet when restrictions are lifted.

It just seems like a no brainier to wait to move until after her exams in 18 months. Assuming you have 3 children in overlapping exam years the wait might be longer, but it won’t be 11 years.

Set against that, you seem to be making up reasons to leave - there is no reason to believe that London will stay in lockdown beyond the time when everyone has been vaccinated, and if it is provincial towns will also have tight restrictions.

@gottakeeponmovin

Can't you buy the house as a holiday home and rent it?

Please don't do this. And I agree that moving now is a terrible idea.

Agree with PPs who have said its very different being a teenager who's grown up in a rural area to moving into one from a city.
I also think you haven't lived there as an adult and might not live up to your expectations.
Is this move fuelled by the pandemic or had you considered it in the past?
I think this situation is temporary whereas you clearly believe changes will be longer lasting.

life in London sounds bloody horrific to someone born and bred in the countryside

Have lived in both and ‘London’ and ‘countryside’ are both broad terms that could mean living next to wide open green spaces/being isolated in a polluted hole, depending on where you live.

nuitdesetoiles Crappy, heroin-riddled, midland town - R?

@Hamnet - whilst I can’t see my friends at the moment, I definitely wouldn’t want to move 3+ hours away from them so that I likely couldn’t see them at all when restrictions started easing a bit, either. You seem to be keen to condemn your dd to a restricted social life in a strange place plus to remove the opportunity of occasional social opportunities with her London friends.

OP I've brought all of my DC up in a small coastal village in Devon and I have to say that none of the eight of them appear to be significantly stunted, either socially, emotionally or educationally, contrary to what some posters on this thread appear to believe.

My youngest is 18yrs old, first year uni, and when she was in Y11 I mooted the idea of moving to Oxford for sixth form as a half way house prior to my moving to Scotland (which wouldn't have worked educationally). She was initially furiously strongly opposed, then slightly interested because the school she was offered a place at had significant attractions and by Easter of Y11 I gave her the choice. She said no, she was completely happy at school and with friends so that was that.

I personally think a move in Y10 - assuming your DD is happy and settled - is a very bad idea but could be something to think about for summer 2022, when she's moving to sixth form.

In the interim perhaps you'd like to offer on my own beautiful but compact house which is now on the market (it has fitted in eight DC however), three miles from one of the top grammars in the country (which has an intake at sixth form too) and is right by the sea. Use it as a holiday house until summer 2022 then move :)

With the way the World is now, I'd move. I love London but you couldn't pay me enough to live there. I don't think it will ever be the same (and I'm an optimist!).
I think wth your circumstances I'd move, she is young enough to make life long friends. I'm not friends with anyone I knew before year 9... all by friends came along in year 10/11/12 and we're still friends to this day. (late 30s).

You are the mother, you have a duty to do what is best for your children. That is ensuring they get a good education right now, that is not moving a 14 year old child half way through her GCSEs, her potentially having to choose different options and her repeating a year? Talk about setting her up for bullying!

You also mention your friends have children the same age, so you want to try and force those into a friendship.

You have plenty of time to do that once your children have finished school. This is really, really not the right tome to move them anyway, they'll already be suffering with everything that's going on without moving to a place where they no nobody.

It would be a difficult decision to make if say, I had a job offer with twice my current salary and I really needed more money. But if it was just because I fancied it and was anxious about the virus and my dream house was available, it would be an easy choice to wait a few more years.

I’ve always lived in Devon and taught 11-19 year olds here for nearly three decades. Something I’ve noticed is when new students join in Y7 or 8, they usually settle easily. Students who join later, especially KS 4, find it harder but most do settle if they’ve already lived in the Westcountry. The ones who really struggle are the Y9 upwards who have come from big cities. The pace of life is so much slower down here, public transport isn’t good and the life that many London teenagers will have been anticipating as they hit 16/18 will have suddenly changed massively. You only need to take a class of Y10s from a rural Devon school to a London theatre to see how less street wise they are than their London peers. Obviously this is a generalisation and some students will settle brilliantly, but thinking about the students I’ve taught who’ve come from big cities as teenagers, I can think of only two who has ‘thrived’.

I would consider waiting until your DC is 18 and can make their own choice.

I would not move with a child that age/stage of education.

I’d fully expect all my children to consider living in a city in their 20s if the pandemic allows for a return to that kind of life.

You really aren’t being rational.

You are assuming that the pandemic somehow remains a problem despite vaccinations, and that there will be no medical advances in 6 years.

I too am going against the trend here. I was moved from one country to another at 13. Didn't really want to but I was OK. I even did it as an adult and it was OK . And as a teenager, I would have protested loudly as I just didn't want change without being able to really rationalise it.
Dont understand why one individual needs outweighs every body else . I think actually it is a perfect time, while things are so different anyway .
While friends are important, these also change . And she will have to have a new group anyway if she goes to uni.
Guess you will have to check out exam situations first, but with everything bring remote anyway, there may be all sorts of possibilities.

She will be old enough to drive soon . There are so many outdoor activities she can get involved in . And it helps that you already know the area.

I would go for it. It is Devon , still in the UK , not exactly a crap deal is it ?

And people wonder why MN has a reputation for being London Centric!!!

As a born and bred Londoner who has lived and raised a family for the last 20 years in the "Arse end of nowhere " it didn't take long for all the prejudices to arrive did it-

The schools must be worse than London
The teenagers are all on drugs or dealing in county lines
Everyone is racist and right wing
There's nothing to do but walk in muddy fields
You won't be welcome because of your accent

And people wonder why those who live in the "Arse end of Nowhere" get huffy!!

FWIW I don't think uprooting a Yr10 child is something that I would do either but all of you who have made these comments are quite frankly showing your ignorance and small mindedness far more than any residents of SW counties.

This is difficult. As a Londoner and having raised my kids here (and don't have the desire to move) I can only imagine how distraught my kids would be to be moved out of London. It's still quite disruptive to do it when they are primary school age (which actually we did do briefly) but not quite as bad.
But on the other hand, the adults in the house do get a say as well. I don't think it's reasonable for OP to put her whole life plans on hold for 11 years just for this reason, and someone is going to find it difficult whenever it happens. In fact, even when the DC turn 18, they are not going to be necessarily ready to leave home, so they might still find a big move very difficult. So I would say if you really must move, it might be better to do it now, rather than later.

Moving her in year 10 is a bad idea.

We moved to Devon when kids were between 5 and 7. I wish we hadn't, like you did most kids move away. Of my kids friends from school one still lives down here. In the last year I've hardly seen mine as they are moving on with their careers in big cities.

I am trying to persuade DH to move back to a city where we would be nearer to shops, have good public transport and access to other facilities.

At least if you are locally born you are likely to be accepted. I long to live somewhere where people don't consider you an outsider if you were born more than 10 miles away.

You cannot change a Y10 child's school for something as insubstantial as a "dream" house. There will be other houses. If you must move then fgs do so after GCSEs and before A levels.

My Dad gave up a promotion because my sister and I didn't want to move from Bracknell to Salisbury when we were teenagers in the early 70s. Looking back I think I would have been better off moving away from my, then, boyfriend although it would have been in my O level year which wouldn't have been so good. It turned out years later that my sister was being horrendously bullied at school and it definitely would have been better for her.

We relocated across the country when I was 14 and it was hard, but all worked out in the end. I had a difficult first year at school but all was well by the time of my GCSEs.

Not at that age. This situation is tough on all of us but it's particularly hard on kids. Uprooting her from what she has at this crucial time would be terrible.
I'm sorry. I get it.

The timing isn’t ideal for her schooling and you would need to research her needs in a new school very carefully. Rural kids have much greater need of driving lessons and a car when they hit 17, have you got plans to provide that?

All that said, if it’s the best thing for the rest of the family I wouldn’t let a distraught teen obstruct it.

@Yuddiesorno

And people wonder why MN has a reputation for being London Centric!!!

As a born and bred Londoner who has lived and raised a family for the last 20 years in the "Arse end of nowhere " it didn't take long for all the prejudices to arrive did it-

The schools must be worse than London
The teenagers are all on drugs or dealing in county lines
Everyone is racist and right wing
There's nothing to do but walk in muddy fields
You won't be welcome because of your accent

And people wonder why those who live in the "Arse end of Nowhere" get huffy!!

FWIW I don't think uprooting a Yr10 child is something that I would do either but all of you who have made these comments are quite frankly showing your ignorance and small mindedness far more than any residents of SW counties.

I don't get huffy. I agree with some of what you said, my kids went to a good school and didn't do drugs although some of their friends in that school did end up in trouble with drugs including time on a psych ward.

Having read all your posts i'd actually agree that this might be a good thing for your family. The opportunity for your Dd to start yr 10 again may be helpful with her anxiety /being a late summer born. Do have in mind that some schools have something written in to their admissions policies about this practice...it may be an academy schools thing but I do remember Dd school which suddenly became v popular disappointed a few people locally when they introduced some kind of age clause. Just worth checking in to if you get that far.

Sorry I pressed send by accident.

I didn't want to move and that aspect of it was really hard and it had a lasting impact on my relationship with my mum for a long time...had I been bullied at school, or not settled in, or not achieved my academic potential I can imagine blaming my mum for it all.