Aibu? To be embarrassed by my modest home...

[btfly2]

I admit that. I'm embarrassed about where I live and I'm too embarrassed to invite people around.
Small and very affluent village, mostly middle class families at the local school.
Fear of my kids's friends parents and now I've become reclusive and I feel sad for my children integrate well.
Sorry but cannot help to feel this way and I don't know how to overcome this sad situation. Have you ever been in a similar situation..?

@DamsonOnThisDress same here 😂 After both my sons mixing with the big house crowd I pinned all my hopes on dd mixing with normal sized house people. She half got it right, has friends who live in a house our size but still managed to befriend the mansion people too 😜

Op I can kind of relate, we are currently renting, hoping to buy next year, fingers crossed. My son goes to childcare in a house in the same town, the house his childminder lives in is rented, but most of the other kids are in homes their parents own(mortgaged) or the parents are building houses. I feel so guilty sometimes that we are still renting, BUT I know my son is loved, happy, healthy and completely adored. He had everything he needs and once he has a home he's absolutely fine. Please don't feel bad that your house isn't massive, most people in adobe houses are massively stretched. You are just as good as everyone else

Life is too short to worry about what the neighbours think!

I live in a larger house and we host play dates but rarely get return invites which makes us sad. Please don’t isolate yourself. Your child’s friends would just be pleased to be invited.

Apparently it is common to feel unhappy about your financial situation if you feel poor relative to the people around you.

So a person living in a £100k house is likely to feel content if most of their neighbours and friends live in similar properties,

Whereas a person living in another £100k house will feel inadequate if most of their neighbours live in £300k houses.

It’s our position relative to others that counts

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3315638/Relative-wealth-makes-you-happier.html

I live in a rubbish house compared to all my friends and family but honestly I don’t care. It’s big enough and in a decent enough area. It’s my one little piece of the planet that is mine and my family’s sanctuary. It’s only a house, I’ve never got the obsession and haven’t been willing to subject myself to crippling mortgages to pay for a bigger or better one.

Welcome the lovely people, keep the sneery assholes at arm's length.

I grew up in a decrepit house in a working class area. Many of my school mates live in multimillion dollar mansions. Literally mansions not just expensive houses. Their parents never judged. They knew my parents had moved from a communist country with no English and we doing the best they could. There was never any assumption that they were lazy or stupid but rather an acknowledgement of how much harder they had worked just to get out in the first place and then to learn English in their middle age while raising a child with little by way of a support network. I am comfortably well off. I never make assumptions about people based on where they live. All that matters to me is that they are decent people.

Doremi what a lovely post - the perfect illustration of the phrase ‘happiness isn’t getting what you want, it’s wanting what you have’. You sound very happy. Damson your post makes the excellent point that no matter how much you have there is always someone who has more which makes adopting Doremi’s position even more beneficial.

I'm in the opposite position, I have a big house which I love but I cannot keep on top of it clean and tidy wise and I hate having people over without notice which irritates the kids as I won't have their friends over on a whim - that is getting easier though as they get older and kids tend to be without parents. (It's also good for teaching my daughter to keep her room tidy as I don't let her have friends over if her room isn't tidy.) I feel I'll be judged for not having it clean & tidy. I won't get a cleaner not because I can't afford it but because it doesn't feel true to my own roots (single parent upbringing in a rough estate where good people worked hard to keep their home and closes tidy).

My daughter has a very close friend who lives in a small flat, sharing her room with her sister and my daughter when she was younger (about 4/5) would, thankfully discreetly, say to me sometimes that their house was very small. But she loves loves loves going there. The mum was amazing, did loads of crafts with them with black bin liners (I got a witch home one night!), facepaint, made crazy videos on their phone, made cheerleading pom poms from cut up paper and tin foil.
I brought my daughter up with the mantra - it doesn't matter how big somene's house it, what matters is how much love and laughter there is in it.

(I even try to remind myself sometimes that it's about the love & laughter not the dust and toys on the floor)

Through various circumstances, I am very lucky to live in a large detached house in a lovely location. (And yes, keeping it clean is time- intensive, but that’s very much a first world problem!)

Most of our friends live in more modest accommodation, and some of our kids’ friends live in very small homes, some with much larger families than ours.

If we or the children are invited to someone’s home, we’re going there to visit the people who live there, that we like. We just feel very pleased to be invited. I’m not interested in judging people by their living spaces, and I hope they don’t judge me on mine.

I would sincerely hope that anyone who is lucky enough to be invited to your home would be considerate and polite and would not comment on any perceived shortcomings.

I can really relate to that @KC225 .

My parents bought a big house that i realise now was beyond their means.

I was always cold, the heating was never on, the hot water was never on. The once a week bath was only allowed to be a few inches deep. When I started working as a teenager I bought a heater. I slept in full on outfits. My bed sheets were so cold they were damp.

We didn't do holidays or any days out ever. My school shoes were falling apart and my mum would cry about credit card bills.

I now live in a tiny house and have the heating on all day long if I like. I just remember feeling so uncomfortable there.

I am seeing judgement the other way on this thread, sadly. People in big houses are not always up to their eyes in debt or twats. Inverse snobbery is as horrid as any kind .

Crossed posts with lazyleo- very similar experiences!

I desperately hope my children have never commented on their friends’ homes being small. I don’t think they would. We have often had discussions about how fortunate we are to live where we do, and that not everyone has the same luck. What is important is the people inside the house.

We have had children visit here who say: ‘your house is massive!’ To which I always say: ‘It is a big house, yes, and we’re very lucky to live here’. (It isn’t massive, but to them it is). One child even said: ‘You must be very rich!’ and that was harder to respond to. 😕 I think I probably said something like: ‘We are very fortunate and we know it’.

We live in a largish house and my DS had a best friend in primary school who used to come over to us on a number of playdates.

DS never, never got invited back to his best friend's house.

For the record, DS was a noticeably well behaved and polite kid who other parents (the ones who did invite him on playdates) would praise to the skies.

To this day I don't know why. Now I wonder whether it was because their house was very small and in a cheaper area. But I can't believe anyone would allow that to be a factor.

In the end - after about 5 years - I actually asked whether DS could go round there on a playdate. We had dropped something round at their house and DS had been so excited just to see the outside of his best friend's house, which he had never seen before, and his best friend looking out of the window (we weren't asked in). So a few weeks later I gritted my teeth and asked as politely as possible whether DS could go round there.

So they did eventually get a playdate there! My son was overjoyed. He and his best friend had a brilliant time.

But that was the first and last time, although the best friend still came over to our house.

They go to different schools now and have lost touch. But it still makes me sad that they were close for so many years and DS spent so much time longing to visit his friend. It would have been such a simple thing.

Please, please have your kids' friends round for playdates. It means so much to them and to their friends.

We bought a smaller house so we could be in a better area but i love it.
We had to get rid of a lot of clutter and now instead of cupboards full of stuff we barely use we have everything we need to hand. Our mortgage is only a fifth of our income so we've got money for holidays and days out. We have decorated so this house is totally our taste and is so cosy and homely. I know my kids friends live in bigger houses but if they're gonna judge us I'm happy if they decide we're not good enough!
Life is short, don't waste it worrying about other people's opinions of you! Make your house warm, cosy and welcoming and people will like to visit no matter how many bedrooms you've got.

Waterlego....seriously, could you be more smug?

seriously, could you be more smug?
this comment is the perfect illustration of reverse snobbery.

If anyone judges you on the size of your house, they're not worth knowing. Real friends/nice people won't care.

Nope. I've got a big fuck off house. Bit I don't tell kids how fortunate we are . It's smug. Patronising. We've got a big house for many reasons , luck being just one. It's patronising to tell kids that's the only reason.

It's not the size of your home, it's the size of your welcome which is important :)

I've recently moved (downsized). I have a one bed bungalow. It's really small, small to the point I had to get rid of loads of stuff that simply wouldn't have fitted in. I absolutely love it. There is plenty of room for just me, it's cosy, easy to keep clean and tidy, maintenance is low, utility bills (via smart meter) are going to be very low. What's not to love?

Remember, there's good stuff in small packages.

I used to be then I decided the children didn’t care and I invited some round. All asked if they could come back so I figure it wasn’t a complete failure. If the parents judge that is their problem. Very few that I have met actually care.

Gosh, if I was in a small home and a visiting kid commented on the size I wouldn't agree by saying 'yes but it's big enough for me' as it's just reinforcing a) that it is small (which to be fair seems odd if it's big enough to live in, when lots of people are homeless) or whatever PP have suggested and b) that it's acceptable to say that to somebody/not rude.

I'd much rather respond with a quizzical 'do you think?' which reinforces what an odd statement that is to make!

Bit I don't tell kids how fortunate we are . It's smug. Patronising

how is that smug. I am not fortunate to have my house, I am paying for the damn thing, but my kids are. Our work is what gives them their home and their lifestyle, they are fortunate, and I fail to see how it's patronising to point out that they need to work equally hard if they want to keep the same lifestyle when they move out.