Advice needed from people who relocated when their children were teenagers (especially if those teenagers are now adults)

[ChargingMyPhone]

I am facing a crossroads moment in my life. I have 2 choices.

1 is to stay in our hometown where my life is very miserable with not much chance for improvement surrounded by several toxic family members, but where my 12 year old child is settled and happy. If we stay this will be permanent as circumstances mean that we won’t be able to move later on.

Or 2. To put myself first and to move to the other side of the UK to a place where I feel happy but with worry that I don’t know what school my child will be placed in or whether they could settle somewhere else.

I worry staying here is going to destroy me, but I’m worried moving away will destroy our relationship with our child as I know they do not want to move.

I would love some advice, especially from people who now have adult children who did a big move when their children were teenagers. Did it effect your relationship with your children? Did it work out positively or negatively? Or if you chose not to move away when they were teenagers, did you regret not taking the chance?

I went through the same thing when I had to relocate with my 16 year old DS. It was awful but the situation I was in was not sustainable. We moved back to where he’d grown up as a small boy up to the age of 12 - me and his dad prepared him for 18 months for the change and involved him in choices post school - he opted for college and it seems to have worked as everyone was starting from scratch. He still misses his school friends but we make an effort to visit and vice versa - all of them are off to Uni next year and even though we moved to the other side of the country a lot of his school pals wished they’d left school at the same time as sixth form just wasn’t the same without the old characters. It was such a difficult decision but I was in a v toxic situation and wanted to get us out of it as smoothly as possible. I often lie in bed with feelings of regret that we ever left to relocate 4 years ago but I did and he had the best school years and is now enjoying college. As a parent you always worry but had we stayed in where we were we would have been stuck now until he finished college and he would have been well and truly rooted - at least now he has 2 more years (on top of the first year) to hopefully build many more friendships that will last the test of time x

We moved a lot as children, I attended 3 different secondary’s and 2 colleges! It was ok, but tough socially (probably easier now with mobile phones and social media!)

It did make me adamant though that unless we had no choice, we wouldn’t move whilst the children were in education