To be very concerned that DD2 is now telling lies about me to her form Tutor.

[smokepole]

I know it seems like every week, that DD2 is up to something than she apologizes and says sorry. However, I am very angry with her now , I got a phone call from DDs form tutor telling me that she seen DD2 and friend Julie working round the town 'drinking' beer from a can with some 'undesirable' non 'grammar school' boys (expect to get flamed for that) on Friday night. They were both supposed to have been in the Cinema . The form teacher approached them and asked them what was in the can ( butter would not melt in the mouth) DD said the can was empty and 'would not ever drink alcohol' 'Lovely to see you miss ' . The form tutor was having nothing of it so pulled them both Monday morning , Julie admitted to drinking beer, DD still denied she had drunk any Alcohol. DD then burst in to tears saying I am throwing her out after she has done her GCSEs because I am moving to Cheshire and that she is not allowed to come. DD asked her form teacher ' can I stay with you miss for sixth form'.

I told DD about two weeks ago that we were moving to Trafford in July after her GCSEs and DS school year ends, she fluctuates from being ok to swearing and slamming bedroom doors. The main reason I am going is for DD2 and DS , to give them a better chance, there really is nothing for them on the Kent coast. The thing is I keep 'grounding ' her and taking 10% of her allowance of her , she then returns to being the loving caring daughter I know she is.

The form tutor has given DD and Julie a detention, Julie for drinking, DD one for lying. DDs form teacher is very concerned about DDS behaviour and why she is acting like a year 7 ( incidentally she was so focused in year 7 overcoming her difficulties) she never behaved anything like this. This is the reason why her form tutor is very 'fond' of her. The form tutor told DD that year 11 is 'not the right time' for this behaviour.

I still can't get past this teacher taking an hour to lecture two 16 year olds about "unsuitable" boys..............

I think if I'd passed a pupil who was drunk or being bullied, I'd intervene to protect them. That's when the teacher/good citizen link is necessary.
My siblings and I are all privately educated. There is no visible brand marking that separates the suitable and unsuitable boys, there are good eggs and stinkers at all levels of society.

Absolutely Bala

There's a bit difference between intervening if a pupil is drunk or being bullied and an hour long lecture on not throwing yourself away on unsuitable aka non grammar school boys!

Exactly Hakluyt.
I think the OP isn't able to be honest with herself as to why her daughter is struggling to behave sensibly, and that the situation will continue to deteriorate.

DD has spent plenty of time with her cousins in 'Cheshire' ( I Know where Trafford is)
So why do you keep calling it Cheshire then? Oh and Knutsford is in Cheshire, Bowden isn't, nor Hale and lots of other naice places (its not a judgment just geography).
People prefer to say they are though because it sounds way posher and naicer than saying Manchester to outsiders, who hear Manchester and think rain and crime.

For what its worth I think your daughter is going through a phase of spreading her wings and testing waters with boys who are different to what she's surrounded by, coupled with fear and upset over the move.

No matter how much she may have known about your desire to move for years, she's probably never given it too much thought and now its happening she's deep down worried about it.
Lying to her teacher about you going with out her isn't exactly saying you beat and starve her, stop making it about you and start realising she's using the lie to express what's worrying her.

I understand that you're worried what the school might think of you, but it sounds like the form tutor has a handle on this and understands the real situation.

I do think, as others have said, that you need to focus less on your reputation with the school and more on offering support to deal with your daughter's concerns about moving. To be told 'You have to put up with this for the sake of your brother and sister' at 16 is likely to make her feel pretty insignificant and powerless at a time when she's growing into a young, independent woman. It's quite possible that the 'lie' she told is actually a way of testing out her true wish: to stay where she is and continue to be with her friends. Perhaps at some level she does have a fantasy about her teacher taking her in so that she can stay in Kent.

Does Chorlton count as Manchester?

I think Smoke you are missing a big fundamental fact that when you move to Timperley you will become the "undesirables"

Timperley ain't that great an area.

Unless you are putting all your children into private school then it won't matter which grammar school your children go to you will be lumped into the free education category. It is the most uptight, snooty area I have ever come across and I have lived all over this country.

In answer to the previous poster who talked about museums and theatres, we are talking about a 15/16 year old girl and despite what her mum wants for her, hanging out with undesirable boys and drinking on the street is more attractive to her than wandering around a museum.

Am I not allowed to move where I want to without getting nasty posts as for dismal, try Romney Marsh, Dover, Folkestone, Chatham, Ashford. There really is nothing there.

What you are missing the point is firstly it is not just you moving, as a parent it has to work for all your children. Secondly that the towns you mention might not in your opinion be great but they are in the South East, they have better weather and the sea and I at 15/16 would have traded everything for that. Eventually I traded a 3 bed semi in a better area than Timperley for a grotty studio flat in one of the seediest areas of London and it goes down as one of the best moves I had ever made. I had a dm who tried to warn me that I would be raped, mugged and end up on the streets if I moved. That people would see I was from the north and take all my money off me. How wrong she was.

This move is about all of you and as far as I can see if you force your dd to go with you it could end very badly.

I vaguely know a few of the towns you mentioned having worked around there for an odd day here and there many moons ago and I think you are very wrong to think that the worse Manchester has to offer is better than Ashford etc. Try walking through Moss Side after dark.

Oh and Bowden and Hale are in Cheshire

I have been watching a young friend of mine (aged about 25) move to Manchester. You would honestly think from the reaction that he was moving to Mogadishu. He has even posted to his Mum about hearing 'gunfire' (probably a car backfiring, to be honest). It is a good source of Facebook amusement on a daily basis.

I don't live there, but I have spent quite a lot of time in Manchester and it's a lovely city with a lot of exciting stuff going on. The Northern Quarter on a sunny day looks like New York. It's relatively cheap to live - I have friends who have beautiful, characterful houses in Levenshulme, Trafford etc. and they have a lovely lifestyle with money left over to allow them to work less and pursue creative projects. Of course there are poorer areas - it's a northern city, and thus plagued by inequality which needs sorting out - but it's a fantastic place on the whole.

Sorry for derailing the thread.

I sympathise with you to a degree, OP, regarding the move.

You want to move to what you think is a better area with more opportunities for your children. There's nothing wrong with that. I can understand that it is easier to move to an area where you will have the support of your family.

You are getting flamed for basically writing off the whole of Kent. It has its crappy bits. It has its wonderful bits, too. You could move to a different area of Kent and stay within the really excellent grammar system here and not disrupt your DDs education/good friendships. You don't have to, of course, but it was an equally valid option for you.

What opportunities do they gain from the move, exactly? There's more employment in the south east. Kent has fantastic links into London. In any case they'll be off to uni and may never live anywhere near you again; they'll make their own choices. It doesn't matter what the opportunities are, or are not, local to their parents.

The other thing was the 'non grammar school boys' bit. OK, we get that these are not the boys you want your daughter hanging round with and if we are honest they are probably not the boys any of us would want our daughters hanging round with. But the 'non grammar school' comment is irrelevant to that, and very offensive to the majority who don't go to grammar. You did say that as the only reason for their unsuitability in your initial post. How very snobby. Get people's backs up and they won't be very nice to you.

I love Manchester, it my favourite city.

The Northern Quarter on a sunny day looks like New York

A sunny day!!! I lived for 19 years in the place and could count the sunny days on one hand.

I knew I would never return when I realised I could go out without taking a cardigan in the summer.
Sorry you are getting very negative feedback about the place you have set your heart on moving to but we are the ones that have lived there and know what it is really like. I have met other fellow Mancunians/ Hale, Sale, Knutsford etc born people who now live in the places you are hopefully leaving and as one guy put it, "I would rather stick pins in my eyes than go back" and his parents lived in one of the posh houses on a super posh road in Hale.

Whilst you are looking down your nose at non Grammar school boys, up there the differential is between fee paying and non fee paying schools. Your children will be the ones other parents do not want their off spring to mix with.

Your posts are quite err, unusual in style and content. I'm confused why you'd think open snobbery and a skewed kind of class based view of two areas in the UK would be something to admit openly on a forum like this. it's almost like you want people to get sidetracked with this instead of focusing on your poor dd.

I don't get the name dropping of random towns in the north west, I grew up in Cheshire in a village just outside one of the 'desirable' towns you mention. It was a stultifying and limiting place to grow up, with nothing for teens to do except hang out with 'undesirables' and get drunk in fields or local pubs. It's all very quaint in the daytime but has nothing to recommend itself above pretty much any other region.

It's not this utopia of respectability and good breeding, it's equally so not a den of iniquity but I think you should be honest with yourself and your daughter about why you want to move there.

And then talk to her as a thinking, feeling, sensitive human being about it, as from what you've written here, you seem to be damaging your relationship with her by the way you're handling this move.

All this hysteria over non- private school associations is a bit odd. Smacks of either your own insecurities around class or perhaps you scrabbling around for reasons to persuade yourself your dd needs removing without discussion to the haven of respectability that is Cheshire ...

Cheshire, where oiks and 'undesirables' are shot on sight, and riff raff are transported to, errr, long ridge and macclesfield where the hoi polloi fear to tread :)

(well, young farmers have to find something to occupy their time right?! And as fox hunting is banned, why not hunt the great unwashed instead... )

Snorts.

Like most city centres they are fine after dark, but no one lives exactly in the city centre, it is the other bits that you have to worry about. One of my relatives, a single parent, had to hire a minder to meet her 2 sons off the bus and accompany them back to their front door as it was too dangerous for her to go out to collect them.

Another Uni friend had his door kicked in and robbed whilst he was in the house.

Met someone who went to Manchester uni. She rode a bike for 2 years through the wind rain and snow and looked forward to riding her bike in the summer weather. By her 3rd year she realised there was never going to be any summer weather.

I do agree with pp who said that actually the prospective job market for someone in the SE far outweighed the jobs available around Manchester.

I knew I would never return when I realised I could go out without taking a cardigan in the summer
Maybe that is why I love Manchester so much, I hate hot weather and summer

For me it was a horrible trick of birth. I truly believe I was destined to be born in Malibu not Manchester. I grew up feeling like someone had played a cruel trick on me.

I grew up in Cheshire in a village just outside one of the 'desirable' towns you mention. It was a stultifying and limiting place to grow up, with nothing for teens to do except hang out with 'undesirables' and get drunk in fields or local pubs

Yes yes this sums it up perfectly. Except now you have more drugs about than when I was younger. Op you could be looking back and wishing for the day when all she was partaking in was a can of beer.

Op are you the one whis dd stalkers you all over the internet reading what youve written about her?

If so id stop it for now and start listening to your dd, she is obviously unhappy