To consider driving kids 120 miles (3 hours) round trip mom-fri for a year?

[Helpmegetajob]

We are hopefully moving to a new place in the next couple of months but year 5 DS really wants to finish primary at his current school. This would mean doing this journey each week day for 9 months until July 24 …So …

yes you are being unreasonable to keep his current schools and commute

no you are not being unreasonable to keep his current school.

any ideas on if the school would object?

I moved to a new area for the start of secondary and knew nobody - it was really hard to make friends. You need to present this as an adventure and move him as soon as possible. Be matter of fact about it and don’t indulge the crying for too long. You might have promised he could finish y6 which was quite a silly thing to do but things change in life and it’ll do wonders for his resilience.

If you've got the house now, I'd move them after Easter. They've got a whole term to get to know new classmates. You can work on establishing new friendships over the Summer holidays. Your eldest will start Y6 at least knowing his classmates and by the end of the year will be able to finish the primary years with friends. He will also go to secondary at least knowing some other students. They can also both join in with activities outside of their new school and get to know other local children that way.

it is so much easier transitioning to secondary school when you have friends, you really can’t do this to yourself, him and your youngest

I did something similar, when a house came up for sale in a different town. My kids were in High School, and the youngest had 3 more years to do. The house was much nearer to my DH work, and I was WFH, but the biggest thing was that it was a house right on the seafront - the kind of which is rarely available. We did go for it, and I kept them in their old High School, and just took the commute on the chin for 3 years (it was a 60 minute round trip, twice a day).

It was a royal pain in the hoop, but it was worth it to get our dream home. This was 10 years ago - the kids are now grown up, and have left home. And in the last 10 years, nothing similar has come on to the market. It wasn't easy though at the time. Had plenty of days stuck in traffic jams and we had to leave really early to get to school on time. Also, it was very hard for the kids to socialise outside of school when they lived in a different town. We just tried our best, but felt like I was always in the bloody car, because I didn't want them to miss things! I spent a fortune on petrol!

With all of that said, re your son, I would have thought that he would be better moving schools now, so that when he moves up to High School he knows a lot of the other kids.

My dd has just moved for y6 and is loving her new school. In some of the holidays we have met old friends from her old school and she has loved those days. She also made some great new friends who she enjoys after school play dates and clubs with and they are going to the same secondary school on the same bus as her. She has the best of both worlds.

You're making far too big a deal of this with him. Moving is always scary but also exciting. Take some weekend trips to scope out the new area, look into scouts for him maybe? And maybe get on the wait list for a club he would enjoy. 120 miles a day in snow/rain/gales/dark is frankly not a risk I would be taking with my children just so they didn't have to make new friends.

Stay strong. It’s really, really hard to see your children sad/distressed. A lot of it will be anxiety at the prospect of change. But he will be okay. It’s very important that as the adult, you make grown-up decisions and then fix it for your child to be as comfortable with and secure within those changes as possible.

Do what’s most right for everyone all round, which is to make a clean break, get settled in your new place, and embrace the future; lead and guide him to feeling strong and being resilient.

I agree with pp - you sound like a fantastic mother. He will be okay.

Lesson for the future: don’t make promises to your children that you cannot possibly know you can keep.

(A good way to avoid a promise is to say ‘I will do everything I can to make sure X, Y or Z happens - or doesn’t happen - but it might not be possible.’ That is the truth.)

No, I wouldn't do it. Mine moved to a new school around the same age (and same distance from old house) and she absolutely loves the new school, settled so easily, etc. It will be such an advantage to him to start to make local friends and go into secondary having some mates, even if it's only 1 or 2 who end up at the same school with him.

No I’d love him

Move..

I did a 140-mile round trip commute for work about 15 months just over a decade ago, coastal West Sussex to Berkshire, mostly A-roads. It was pretty hard on the car - fuel £500+ a month, servicing and tyres needed more often because of the mileage - and that's before taking into account just how exhausting it was spending 3-4 hours a day behind a steering wheel. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

I wouldn't. We moved a few weeks ago and DS wanted to finish the year at his current school. So we have been doing the 50 mile round trip twice a day. It's meant to be 37 minutes each way, but sometimes takes an hour or more in the morning. It's a killer and we have a visit with the local school today because it's just not sustainable.

You'd literally be spending half your day taking them to and from school. I'd think very carefully about what the reality would actually be like.