To move older dc to a rural location after living in the city?

[Wiggy29]

I'll try to be concise.

We currently live in the suburbs yet where we live means we needs to use car/ public transport for: dc school/ swimming baths/ cinema etc. The only things within 30mins walk are very small library, a handful of shops and a couple of small parks. When dc1 is old enough (currently 9) to travel to his friends, it would be a 15min bike ride.

We long for a more rural location and currently, older dc would love it for all the reasons we would (bigger house, huge garden, countryside on doorstep). My concern is that he will resent this when he's a teenager (several people we've spoke to about it have also mentioned the same issues, especially for when dc is 13-18).

The place we would be moving to is very small with only one shop and a pub, but it is only a ten minute bike ride to the two nearest villages who (though still relatively small) offer a Scouts group/ park but also, a bus that runs every ten minutes into the city centre (the journey itself taking about 20mins, which is the same on from where we live now if we go on public transport).

Is it selfish to move, or should we just go for it? Heard such differing views in rw I thought it would be helpful to get a range of thoughts on here.

I think it sounds great. Just make sure they can walk to school on their own and walk from the bus stop for secondary. This is crucial or you will be tied to school runs until the youngest is 18.

We live in a totally isolated spot. I have to take the kids to the bus stop and pick them up again. This afternoon 2DCs have clubs so wont be on the bus. One has to be picked up at 4.30 and one at 6.30. Its a 35 minute round trip. I could do without all the driving and am desperate to move.

BUT I would only move to the village where the primary school is and where their friends live and where the school bus comes to. I would never go back to the city. My friend grew up in the centre of London- she says she spent her teens hanging outside 7eleven as they werent allowed in anywhere.

Let them grow up in a small community and then revel in the big city when they go off to uni.

Yes, I'd be happy with schools and yes bus stop is walking distance (the village only has about 20 streets so everything is walking distance)!

I'm not sure the 'bored kids in the country do drugs' is any different to anywhere else, there will be teenagers everywhere who take drugs (I've taught in inner-city, suburbs and rural schools and there have always been a proportion of kids who will experiment (and in sad cases, be fully consumed) with drugs.

I don't mind idea of being taxi driver, dp and I rarely drink (normally if we go out which is about once every 2 months), plus, it's not as though we'll have 'our lives back' as ds1 is an older teenager as ds2 will only be around 9 and we're hoping for a dc3 so essentially we'd still have two young ones and so be up early/ driving them places etc.

Oh I know that teens everywhere "do drugs", but some people have a rose-tinted view that the teens in the country live in Enid Blyton books and are protected from the modern sins of drugs and sex. As long as you know that doesn't work.

No, I had some friends who grew up in a rural village and they said they basically spent their time getting stoned in fields... which is pretty much what all my friends in the city did (except in parks)!

Check the bus times and routes then double check them. Make sure they go until late in the evening.

I also had the following experiences - magic mushrooms, racing round the woods on mo-peds without helmets at terrifying speeds, lots of drinking/sexual activity in the group at very early ages, and more soberly, two deaths and two serious injuries arising from teenagers on bikes/in first cars tearing round the village lanes showing off. When I was 17 my UCCA choice selections were all deliberately in big cities at least 100 miles away from home, and i spent the next 15 years in big cities. Looking back it was actually a fun way of growing up (although I felt very naive at uni), but I do worry about my own kids (we moved back to the same area when my kids were born to give them the whole extended family experience). I worry less about the taxi service bit (my mates have the same experience in the heart of London) but I am sure that once my kids start driving or being ferried around by other kids I will be losing an awful lot of sleep waiting for them to come home. Only a few weeks ago there was another 17 yo died in a car crash not far from our village, and last week was the anniversary of the death of the 16 yo son of a friend in the village (hit from behind whilst driving carefully on a moped). That for me is the very worst bit of village life.