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?

@Frodont - pre covid my DC did all those things. Only difference being you need a bus timetable to check the times of the less frequent buses, and sometimes you know, as a parent you have to pick them up or drop them off.

Again, everyone seems to think that the SW is only populated by wild people living alone on moorland. Of course the public transport is nowhere near that of big cities but believe it or not people do leave their homes and sometimes teenagers are able to socialise with their friends. Who would have thought it?

That means if you want to see friends parents have to take you and pick you up.

My parents had to do this particularly if I had a sporting activity or during Winter. As a 14 yo I wouldn't have travelled home at 9pm by myself. Even at 16 & doing underage clubbing we would get taxis or stay with friends.

You could do what my parents did. Consult me - I cried and said please don't move - then move anyway. They moved from Australia to Europe, when I was 13. I survived, but it still pisses me off that they bothered to ask.

I would consider it.

But I moved in my teen years and it was fine.

But..... there are things to consider like when we lift restrictions are they snake to join clubs like they did in London. What syllabus is the school doing for exams? Is it a move across or a restart of new coursework? What is available at school? Is there still same opportunities?

I just think past 11yo moving never becomes a "good time" but that doesn't mean it has to be a disaster. I just think you get more and more reasons why you have to stay out and risk never making the dream move.

When London schools are good, they are very, very good. When they are bad they are dangerous.

Agree my secondary school was about 6 miles away in another part of Z3, all my friends were spread out.

Personally I wouldn't move from London with a dc that age. You're likely not to get the same level of education and being year 10 is at a critical stage. London is different as you already live in it, it's not dead and never will be as it's a different world. Life will open up. My brother lives on a seaside town on the south and despite being in tier 2 just before national lockdown, it was a ghost town already whereas us in London in tier 4 was still lively.

My parents did this. Kids not even told about the plan. It was educationally ruinous.

As a teacher, there's no way I would move a year 10 unless absolutely necessary. Other than anything else, different schools will have different subjects, different exam boards and have covered different parts of the syllabus. Moving would almost certainly disrupt her education, whereas I think your fears that London would stay in restrictions significantly longer than anywhere else are unlikely.

My parents moved me in year 10 and my education never recovered. It damaged me socially and psychologically and I didn’t ‘fit’ where I moved to either. Your daughter will not fit in Devon from London. Trading your daughters happiness and mental health for your dream home? Not a deal you should do.

No, I think is very selfish to do that to a teenager.

I was forced to move out of London to the countryside as a teenager, but unlike with you, it didn’t turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It wasn’t terrible and I was happy enough, but my own children are adults now and I still haven’t really forgiven my parent for taking me away from my friends and family and all those opportunities. My mum would never acknowledge that her choice was detrimental to me though, she only ever saw what she thought were the benefits because they’re what tied in with what she wanted.

What syllabus is the school doing for exams?

Schools do different boards for different subjects and they don’t teach all the topics in the same order.

There are only 3.5 proper teaching terms left between now and exams (half of spring, summer, autumn and spring) and at least some of that will be with restrictions.

Teachers will be finding it challenging to keep everyone on track for exams as it is. Expecting real help for a new student from a different school who has studied a different syllabus would be a stretch.

My parents were of their time and never consulted us about anything. It wouldn't have occurred to them to do so.

However, they did delay a move to allow me and my siblings to get past our A and O levels. That was the only concession.

My father moved ahead of us and came back for a weekend every two or three weeks. About 5-6 hours each way.

Incidentally, I was never bored living in the countryside. There is plenty to do, or there was before children were wrapped in cotton wool until their 18th birthday.

I know the pandemic feels endless at the moment but I think it's very pessimistic to say you think London will be in levels of lockdown for "years to come". Nobody knows that and nobody has said it. If all goes well with the vaccine then we could be looking at starting to return to normal this autumn/ winter. So I think it's wrong of you to use that as a reason when actually the real reason is that you want to go back to your childhood home.

Whether it's OK to ask your 14 year old daughter to move is a very personal matter and depends on her individual circumstances - it sounds like she'd really rather not and might resent you for it. But, it could be that it turns out to be a good thing for her mental health and really it would only be 3 or 4 years before she could think about moving back there and going to uni perhaps.

There's lots to consider but I just don't think you should use "London will be rubbish for years" as a reason, because you don't know that.

Many families seem to be moving from London to rural parts of Devon and other rural areas now that many City businesses are looking at a permanent WFH model. It will be interesting to see how they adapt, I'm sure many will and others won't.

I am sure with these changes in how businesses run and the changes in the High Street etc will impact what lives in London and other large cities will be like too.

I wouldn't move a Y10 child if I could help it, although doesn't sound as if the school they are currently at suits them though

We moved when I was 13 from London to a small rural town. I was never accepted at school (I was the 'new girl') til I left - getting around anywhere was a nightmare so my chance to make friends and do stuff was severely limited. The school I went to was pretty good (better than the London one) but it was really clear that the family had moved because of what my parents wanted and no one had bothered to think about what it would be like for me. Left town the day after I finished school, and had a lot of time when my parents and I did not speak. If your kids were younger you may get away with it, but this is a horrible time for your daughter.

I live in the SW and love it. My dds are at excellent schools and doing fantastically - but they are at private school. There are some amazing comps and the odd grammar down here though. They've lived here all their lives. They would hate to live in London, although they love to visit. But theyve not lived anywhere else.

I'm presuming my year 10 will have some sort of teacher predictions for her gcses next year so idefinitely wouldnt move her!

If you’re going to do it I would move her at the end of her GCSEs to start sixth form in Devon.

Given her age she could repeat her first GCSE year but you would need her full agreement. Repeating a year can be beneficial - she’s young for her year and it might give her more academic confidence if she’s anxious about work. She well not want to though and that’s fair enough.

I don’t think your Covid fears are valid. However there are considerations to being a teenager in London - there’s more social, academic, consumerist/materialist pressure here than in country towns. Drugs, alcohol, clubs - while available everywhere - are much easier to get hold of in London.

I wouldn’t move a 14 year old unless I absolutely had to (a new job after being unemployed etc). It doesn’t actually matter if the move is to Devon to the other side of London, the point is that your child feels that you are uprooting her. You have made her feel very upset and unsettled. She might be ok if you force her to move or she might not. Why take the risk to her education and mental health for no good reason?

My other point is that you are assuming that your younger children will settle easily into a new school. Not all younger ones cope easily. One of my relatives moved their primary aged children to a new location and the youngest child became severely unwell with the stress of the change. They ended up moving back after a year.

If this is genuinely your dream home, then you need to go for it. Make it work somehow. But I agree that you can’t move your DD in the middle of year 10. A new sixth form is a very different kettle of fish; kids do move around and form new friendships. So I’d be working on how to bridge that gap. Can you buy the house and let it for a year while you rent somewhere in London, for example? Or can you get some sort of bridging loan? There never is a perfect time to move when there are kids in school - but you need to avoid disastrous timing like mid GCSE. Equally, if that’s “the” house, you can be sure it’s likely to be your only opportunity, so you need to go for it. You just need to do some serious thinking about how to sort out the practicalities.

I absolutely fucking HATED living in the countryside as a teenager, no where near decent public transport, stuck far away from everyone and everything, can't go visit people in the evening as the public transport times ended at like 6pm, it was horrible. Boring, shit, and just horrible.

I wouldn't because she's part way through GCSEs - it will also mean changing exam boards or getting special dispensation

DH moved at that point and said it really affected his grades at GCSE

I know I moved a lot as a child but my parents had always said either my dad left the forces before I started GCSEs or I'd have gone to boarding school for those years so I wouldnt have them disrupted

I would not move a child in years 10 and 11, or 12 and 13, unless it was absolutely the only solution to a situation, death, dv...

Why don't you and dh look to move when she has left home? Or in between school and 6th form?

You can’t move a yr10 without seriously impacting their gcses. Options she stays with a family member to see out yr11. Or you buy but stay in London for now renting Devon out for a year. Or maybe look into private and her starting yr10 again in Devon. Exam courses are 2 years and not all syllabus/exam boards are the same. My daughter is year 10 and would be devastated.

@MonsterKidz

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

I suspect that posters who say go for it don't have children at that stage in their eduation.

I lurk on many education threads, and it is very difficult to move schools during the middle of the GCSE syllabus. Many schools won't accept new pupils into year 11, but the main difficulty is schools use different exam boards and they will cover topics in a different order, so there is a danger that if the OP's daughter starts a new school in September for year 11 she might only learn half a syllabus.

Not living in London is not the end of the world. Like some posters on here, we live rurally so, until leaving for university, DD knew of no other way of living. Job opportunities round here aren't great for non drivers round here though, and I envisage that she will stay in the university city after she has graduated (she isn't currently learning to drive for medical reasons).

I am sure with these changes in how businesses run and the changes in the High Street etc will impact what lives in London and other large cities will be like too.

I think so, an awful lot of people have left London & Brexit will also discourage some. Pre covid I would never consider further out than z3 & the idea of a long commute is not fo me however we will move further out in the next few yrs. I feel the high prices for the lack of space are not so justifiable anymore.