To feel a bit sad my Dc isn’t having a British childhood

[Remembervoguingatschool]

Just looking at the Instagram pics of friends in the U.K. from their holidays, from places like Wales & Cornwall. Just remembering the caravan stays of my childhood, the windy, rainy beach walks, finding little coves with fishing nets, having chippy for tea most might, arcades etc etc.
We live overseas and my dd has a wonderful life, but it’s very different to the one I had, she’ll have very different memories. Is it weird to feel sad she don’t experience the same things we did? (Dh is from the same area and had a similar childhood)

Both really. Some things are definitely worse - it’s much more expensive and busier than it used to be and I horribly fear getting ill in case we can’t see a Dr.
Equally having lived in Aus I can see that somethings are just objectively better and easier. Mainly I think just from having a smaller population in a bigger space but there’s also much more of a feeling of friendliness and people wanting to do a good job.

I find it so hard to put into words but I felt my own life overseas (not speaking for everyone ofc) felt very one dimensional. I enjoyed everything about it - it was a place with beautiful beaches and warm weather most of the year.

We had an amazing quality of life. Literally a dream, cycling by the sea every day, swimming after supper, minimum working hours and not a care in the world.

Nothing felt real, I wasn’t ‘invested’ in where I lived, the local politics etc was a mystery to me, I felt I had no say or right to say how things could be improved. I always felt very low level like an outsider, it was unsaid, but I guess it was there, despite speaking fluently and having many local friends and being settled for 8 years.

I felt different to my local friends and women, like they always expected me to go home one day. Our traditions were different, our outlooks, our history and culture. We muddled through with both.

My expat friends were fantastic and we are still in touch, some stayed, most didn’t. The lifestyle for me lacked the other dimensions like grit, difficulty, deep study, edge, cold snowy days. There was no other side to life - just endless sunshine and pools, and a vacuous existence.

I craved studying and learning, the type you can do in the U.K. that is really rigorous and academically demanding, having a voice in my community, investing in something I knew my great grandchildren might enjoy or appreciate. I felt like I didn’t matter much, I was a passing feather.

When we had kids it magnified - I then felt we had no family safety net. My bil died unexpectedly and I feared that happening to me and being alone with tiny dc - relying on friends. I felt vulnerable in a way I didnt before, I would wake up screaming at night. I wanted snowy days, family roasts with gps, cozy nights, family Christmases, British TV with the rain hitting the windows and feeling snug, wholesome farms, picnics, small villages and more than anything else I wanted to feel safe.

We came back when dc were 6 and 4.
We had had enough, and wanted to go home. I was done with the plastic feeling life, sick of the sun and realised belatedly how much we were missing at home with both sides of the family. Ultimately that matters more to me than anything else. The look on my mothers face stays with me still when I broke it to her. I haven’t regretted it at all, my dc love the stability and security, family relationships and don’t remember our lives there now. We travel a lot, and it’s right for us.

@Lastchancechica Gosh, I can understand so so much of what you’ve written. Can I ask where you were and where you returned to in the U.K.

We lived in Europe think of somewhere warm and Mediterranean.
We also did an early stint in Australia, which was worse in the ugly prefab type houses, incredibly unbearable heat and a total culture deficit. It felt like a cultural and an academic dessert. Its redeeming feature being the lovely people that are so warm and engaging. We spent less time outside than in the U.K. as it was too hot to do anything! Despite it being billed as an outdoorsy country. It has a long way to catch up, particularly the men and their view of women and racism etc.

There is so much more to life.

*desert

🍧😂

@Lastchancechica Spain, Greece, Portugal?

Where are you now as it sounds ideal!

Were your children born there? Were they sad to leave and did they fit in easily in the U.K.?

I know what you mean about the grit etc, my friend who left described it as living in a bubble, but then sometimes I think what’s wrong with no grit or difficulties and an easy life 🤷🏻‍♀️It’s a hard one

We live in the SW now, but had a lovely time in SE too. Oddly some of the Cornish beaches are much nicer than where we used to live. I love the distinct change of seasons in England - the freshness and order of each new season and what it represents.

Winter snows, sleep and hibernation, autumn gathering and fireworks, spring celebrations of flowers and the warm lazy but not endless summer days. The cycle of life feels complete here for me.

They fitted in effortlessly

I have the same thoughts with a different home country. We had a shabby second home at the beach and spent all summers and long weekends there. I’m sad my DC don’t have that and we haven’t been able to recreate that in any way where we live so they’ve really missed out, aside from know their cousins and wider family

It’s not that I was craving problems, of course not, just that whatever happened when we lived there I didn’t really care about that much. The pot holes. The terrible state hospitals, the local corruption, the inaccessible accountability. The lack of basic health and safety. The casual racism. I felt like I was living in a bubble outside of BOTH countries.

It felt superficial. Like a life everyone should want but was missing a soul, a heartbeat.

I have no idea if everyone feels that way when they choose a life away from the country where they grew up. It’s always missing something. I adored where we lived, the people and the lifestyle was fun, but I guess I was looking for more connection and meaning in the end.

Can you do a trial over the school holidays?
You say you miss England, it’s understandable, is this guiding your decision? Or do you genuinely feel you would all be happier at home.

I realised my dream wasn’t the same dream I had 20 years before. That dream s and goalposts move and nothing stays the same wherever you are.

@Lastchancechica So many parallels here, even the Cornwall aspect, which is where we’d return to (not from there originally but all family there now)
How long were you in the other country and how old are your kids now?
Can you not say the country you lived in? Is your Dh British too?

Wow, I'm Australian and that's a nasty comment!
You must have stayed in bad area.
Plenty of culture and snowy winters, beautiful autumns and springs where I am. Yes summer can be hot.
Childhood memories for me are of glorious days spent at the beach.
Cultural and academic desert, dear me. Parts of the UK are like that too.
Maybe you came here when you were in a bad mood.
As for men and their views of women and racism plenty of that in the UK too.
I certainly noticed it when I lived in there.
Sorry you didn't have a happier time here.

Wait, isn it 2016? The year of Brexit?

I mean what is this British childhood? Enid Blyton?

YABU as it sounds like your dd is having a much better experience.

Where are you based?

Dh is British - professional portable skills. We both are.
Dc were 6 and 4 when we moved back - now 18 and 16.
I lived in Dubai, Australia and Spain over a period of 15 years.

What I have learnt since returning and raising my dc is this:

A sterling education for dc is not negotiable, anything else and you are severely limiting their future options. A British university degree - masters etc will take them anywhere in the world in the future. Not all countries offer anything like the same education. I didn’t think about this in such finite detail when they were very small. I now feel we were too complacent about this.

Once the dc hit a certain age - 12/13 max your chances of leaving become really small and much more difficult.So you will need to plan to live there indefinitely as old pensioners, and fund your care, or leave them behind and move home what an excruciating choice. This is the reality.

Once the dc are teens and become young adults they get jobs, partners and eventually have children etc. The window is small to move back and resettle easily and it is ever diminishing.

I felt regret I had missed so much time with my family, they die and that time Is gone forever. My grandma especially. Ditto close gp relationships, no matter how much face time you do nothing beats a real hug.

This is very taboo, but I will say it, my expat friends that remained talk about a widening cultural difference between them and their own children. Their children were absorbed into the host country naturally, and as they have grown older they have grown away from their parents culturally and feel sometimes like strangers, they have different accents, different dialect, values and attitudes. My friend said she couldn’t be absorbed in the same way and felt like an outsider, but her children were not in the same position. They also struggled with the school systems, helping with homework, knowing the nuance and history. It all felt so alien.

My children have excelled academically, and my friends children are no longer continuing their education now , I feel they were disadvantaged heavily by not being natives and having parental support. They are bright kids, and have done well enough but face high youth. unemployment where they are and fierce competition. That is why so many families move back home for secondary education, university etc but it’s so much harder to adjust for the dc by that time.

I had a major operation that I did not expect to have, and I was totally incapacitated, I couldn’t have managed without my sil, sister and friends. We are not all young and healthy forever.
Who is going to look after you when you are old? When dh dies? When you need a hip replacement? Are divorced unexpectedly?
Think ahead, plan for nasty surprises and set up a safety net if you stay.

I am not intending to be negative, but there are two sides to expat life as we know, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

I didn’t intend to offend you, I think I said the people in Oz are amazing.

However you do not have thousands of years of architectural history, you do not have ancient villages, towns and cities. The world class art galleries and museums here are simply not available in Australia. Nor are the world class universities and institutions. Australian teens come here because they recognise the advantages. We can watch Opera from Vienna or a Russian ballet. The enormous scale of history and culture did not seem available in Australia to me.

I can surf on the beaches here and not die in the process.

I can be in Paris, Milan or Venice in an hour.

Australia is wild and beautiful, and environmentally diverse, but we can’t pretend it has the same heritage or culture as Europe.

My kids are being raised in Germany and it's a great life for them. But I feel similar to you with a bit. Halloween parties, Santa Claus, etc.

@Lastchancechica You've highlighted all the things that worry me. My worry about returning, especially to Cornwall, is the lack of affordable housing and well paid jobs, have you found that to be the case? Are the people there welcoming? How long did it take you to feel at home? Did you ever miss being abroad and think you’d made a mistake?

Also, did your parents ever ask you to come back?

I’ve thought about coming back for the summer, but I don’t think it would be a realistic enough insight as I wouldn’t be working and would be staying at my parents house etc

I wonder if I could do a house swap with someone for a year 😅

Feel the same way. There are obv benefits, but I definitely secretly see things how you do.

I do think English people sometimes underestimate how important our culture is to us, until we find ourselves removed from it. We often struggle to define what English culture is, because it's so heavily influenced by our interactions with other places, but when you live somewhere else, you can miss such totally random things that you'd never given a thought to before. Not everyone is cut out to live abroad. My dh can manage it no problem (his mum is Scandinavian so he's used to home being 2 countries) but I hated it.

Re childhood, kids are funny - the experiences that stick in the memory are not necessarily the things you thought they would love. You can spend a fortune on Disney world and the%y barely remember it. But the wet caravan in Wales sticks in their mind for some tiny reason that you never gave a second thought to!

But you can never really give your children your own childhood, because you are not your parents and times/people change.
I have a brother and sister much younger than me and even having had the same parents, our childhoods were completely different. I grew up in London and have a whole set of memories they don't share. They were born and grew up in Wales. My dad hasn't even moved abroad and has a nice life in Wales but his soul is in London. Sometimes you just want home, wherever that is.

I’m guessing you were in Perth! You don’t describe my experience of Australia at all. The academics there are significantly higher than the school my son is at in the U.K. at the moment, and all my friends are very well acquainted with politics and culture. We’re in Sydney though, I think it’s a bit different if you live somewhere other than Syd or Melbourne. I lived in Adelaide for a while and the casual racism there was quite eye opening.