To think that parents who uproot their child from all friends for new life are selfish.

[Loveweekends10]

Build a new life in the country...but not at the expense of your 5 year old child having to live in a caravan over winter with no friends whilst you try to completely renovate a house on £14 grand and your wife lives in cloud cuckoo land spending £3 grand on an aga.

Another Forces child here. Our last move was six months before my A levels, to a school which didn't offer one of my subjects, in a small town where there was no flute teacher for me or ballet for my gifted sister. At that age it mattered but it didn't at 5 or 7 or 9.

My mum very bravely decided not to move from a place she hated for fear of uprooting our friendships. A few years later we had outgrown those friendships and had lost interest in the place, and she was suffering from depression, but the chance of another job elsewhere had gone. Yet another few years and we grew up and left, but she was stuck in the place she hated until retirement. It wasn't really good for any of us.

I think I suffered more from her unselfishness than I would have done from a selfish decision on her part- and my mother is not one of those deliberate martyrs who keep reminding you of her sacrifices: it was just that it was so obvious that she was not doing well.

The lesson I learned for my own future life was that everybody in a family matters as much as everybody else, so you need to find the solution that does the least amount of damage. A solution that leaves one person with longterm depression isn't going to be a good solution for anyone- and it doesn't matter who that person is.

Bullshit. I spent my childhood travelling the world with my parents as my Dad moved jobs. Amazing experiences that I treasure. As long as you have your family you'll be fine. 5 year olds have pretty transitory friendships tbh.

Um, some people live in caravans year-round.

And many others move around for work.

We're considering moving next year and our children are 7 and 4. Needs must, there are NO jobs round here. We have to feed them.

YABU.

Kids forget/get over things. I can't remember being 12 really vividly never mind 5!

Currently considering uprooting my 5 yr old and 10m to go and live in an entire other country.

The job opportunity in question:
will enable us to keep our house and actually pay for it.
Our standard of living will be considerably better
my children will hopefully become bilingual
we may actually be able to put something away for the future.

all of the above seems worth it

so yes YABU

rhonda i have sympathy for your perspective because it sounds like you didn't have a bit of this, you had a childhood full of it - not great. not reasonable. but as others have said - some children flourish whilst footloose. others don't. i'm probably in the 'don't' category too.

but to do this once, if you do it as well as you can, more reasonable?

You don't always have the luxury of staying put - change is sometimes necessary.

Edgar to move once or even twice, for the good of everyone, to accommodation which is suitable for a family - fine.

To move repeatedly, or to take your child to live in unsuitable accommodation while you attempt to create some dream home is NOT done with the good of the child in mind.

I'm pretty sure the people saying they moved a lot as a child didn't also have their parents pour all their time energy and money into restoration projects as they did so.

Sorry moved a lot and it was a positive thing

SherbetVodka has a point though - some parents justify a move saying its "for the kids" when actually its for them, and manage to hang a life long sense of guilt over the kids for it and give the kids a worse child-hood than if they'd stayed put where they were settled and happy, rather than move to the country because that's where the parents like to imagine themselves bringing up a model family... If parents have to move for work then obviously everybody has to make the best of it, but when its a matter of choice some adults simply write off the feelings and interests of the children as individual human beings with an airy "Children are flexible/ they'll be happy because we are happy/ its better for them in the long run"... if its a matter of choice it should be thought long and hard about, if its's a matter of necessity then it's clearly different.

My parents moved us to the country when I was 7 - I remember where I lived before very well indeed, and my friends, and the wrench, and the not knowing anyone in the new village when I'd had tonnes of friends I could call for on our previous suburban street, and the fact I'd been led to expect the new life would be all ponies and puppies and playing in fields with friends, when in fact it was being told "you aren't from 'round here are you?" and having to be driven to school miles away because my parents thought the local one wasn't good enough, and always feeling like the outsider in the village even though I was happy at school...

I have 3 siblings - of the 4, 2 loved the new life and today think my parents made absolutely the right decision, 2 still think we would have had a happier childhood had they not made the precise move they did.

So the OP has a point, though not a universal one; sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't... YANBtotallyU at all IMO

Two of the most popular and academically successful children at my school have lived in a cerevan for the lst 4 years while their parents built a house. THe older one is currently having interviews for Oxford. I have never heard them made fun of for the caravan (infact, I only found out about it in the last couple of weeks). Living in a carvan isn;t always impractical or social death.
I moved when my DD was 5, away from her dad and her friends. SHe is 16 now and we have talked about the decision. SHE thinks I did the right thing. SHe has also kept good contact with her dad.

My parents moved me and my brother 250 miles down south when I was 13 and my brother was 14. I was happy to move for all of 6 weeks, until I started school in the middle of the school year, no friends, different accent, got bullied quite badly, and we left my eldest sibling back up north.

This was all to give us better employment opportunities, and to give my father a better chance at finding better paid work.

My brother changed his accent and tried hard to fit in, and as a result, he made some friends and says he was not bothered about the move.

Interestingly, neither my brother nor me have ever managed to get a good job, and have both remained in minimum wage jobs. (Our education was disrupted due to moving at that age imo).
My parents divorced within 4 years of the move, my father had no relatives down south, yet he now earns £7K a week, and my mother only ever found minimum wage work, and is now miles away from her siblings and has no family support apart from me and my brother.

At the time, I thought their reasons for moving so far away weren't enough to warrant a move that far, and the loss of the support of family and friends.

I haven't changed my stance on that, and as a consequence have only moved once in 21 years. I could not move my DC away from their school/friends/family while they were at school unless it was a case of being unable to survive where we were.
My parents were able to survive where we were, and never did end up better off, it was all a dream, which unfortunately turned sour.
If I had to choose between feeding my DC and moving, as opposed to staying put and struggling to pay essential bills, I would move, but if, as in the case of my parents, it was to move up the housing ladder, and to be better off financially, I would wait.

I do believe my parents made their decision based on what they thought would be best for us all at the time, but it's nigh on impossible to know what living so far away will be like before you have actually moved imo.

I'll stay on the safe side for as long as possible.

some parents justify a move saying its "for the kids" when actually its for them, and manage to hang a life long sense of guilt over the kids for it and give the kids a worse child-hood than if they'd stayed put where they were settled and happy, rather than move to the country because that's where the parents like to imagine themselves bringing up a model family... If parents have to move for work then obviously everybody has to make the best of it, but when its a matter of choice some adults simply write off the feelings and interests of the children as individual human beings with an airy "Children are flexible/ they'll be happy because we are happy/ its better for them in the long run"... if its a matter of choice it should be thought long and hard about, if its's a matter of necessity then it's clearly different.

My parents moved us to the country when I was 7 - I remember where I lived before very well indeed, and my friends, and the wrench, and the not knowing anyone in the new village when I'd had tonnes of friends I could call for on our previous suburban street, and the fact I'd been led to expect the new life would be all ponies and puppies and playing in fields with friends, when in fact it was being told "you aren't from 'round here are you?" and having to be driven to school miles away because my parents thought the local one wasn't good enough, and always feeling like the outsider in the village even though I was happy at school...

I have 3 siblings - of the 4, 2 loved the new life and today think my parents made absolutely the right decision, 2 still think we would have had a happier childhood had they not made the precise move they did.

^^ agree with this.

Expats right

Some of us just don't have the choice

Ds3 is 3 and he's already lived in 3 houses. Jobs and education and landlords sometimes mean that needs must.
I would dearly love my own home that we could make out own an live in until the children have flown but its not an option.
Unless dear op you would like to buy us one and guarantee work for us.

mother splits up with husband
moves 3000 miles away from her parents, siblings and childs father
sets up home in a city where she has NO family or friends
nearest family are cousins 300 miles away
this is the late 1960's - before direct international phone calls
child sees family for a few weeks each summer

I was the child

life goes on

I was an army brat and moved every two / three years throughout my whole childhood. I went to 7 different schools and lived in 7 different countries... how can you tell me that was anything other than totally brilliant?

I got a great education (Army schools are fab), made loads of interesting friends, got my degree, had an incredible career and have a great love of travel. It hasn't harmed me one little bit.

It depends what you want to teach your kids really - stay put your whole life where it's nice and safe and don't bother exploring the world, or get out there, take some chances and live life to the full... Horses for courses.

DS is just about to turn three and has lived in three different houses in two different countries and we'll move him again of course. There's no rule that you have to live and die wherever it is you happened to be born OP.

special it is of course possible to travel without moving house...

As somebody with no particular sense of attachment to place who's had more addresses than I can immediately recall, I'd say the value of roots can be easily overlooked...

As I said in a previous post, having to move and choosing to are utterly different, if you have no choice then that is that, make the best of it as sensitively as you can to your children's needs. If its choice then think about it hard from the children's POV - trotting out the old "children are flexible" line can be an excuse for not considering what is best for the children concerned as real individuals, rather than baggage or idealised versions of what would fit in best with parental lifestyle aspirations...

If you're doing it for yourself and the kids just have to lump it, have the grace to admit it!

Just to add that I lived the same house from birth til 16. Same schools, same friends, I even as next to the same person for 10 years in most lessons.

At 16, I couldn't wait to get out of there, Refusing a place in 6th form just to leave.
I have never live anywhered more than a 3 years, and we have lived in 3 different countries in the last 5 years, same company, moves for promotions fr dh. I have no contact with people from school, and have lots of friends from all over. The dc are small enough to find it exciting. The advent of fb and email has made it easier to keep in touch, but not to the extent of revolving my life around the life of another who have different needs and priorities.

My parents moved us 1000 miles (from Ohio to Minnesota) when I was almost 8 and my brother was 11.

I barely remember anything about Ohio. I love Minnesota and so does my brother. The only thing that is sad is that I haven't really kept in touch with my relatives on my mother's side...I have a few cousins close to my age and I know nothing about them, and my mother rarely talks to or sees her siblings.

We moved halfway down the country this year; DS1 was 3, DS2 5 months. We are now living what was a dream this time last year.

As a child, my mum was a bit of a property genius; buying, doing up and selling on at exactly the right times. This did however mean we moved on average once every 2 years & lived on a lot of building sites. At one point we had to live in a caravan for six weeks while some major work was done. Kids being the delightful beings that they are I was dubbed Trailer Trash & known as this for the rest of my teenage life. After I went to Uni, uprooting myself to the tune of 600 miles, a friend came to stay and used my NN in front of my Uni friends which of course proved hysterical & so it continued.

Six sodding weeks.