AIBU to feel guilty that our lifestyle doesn't match my child's personality and preferences?

[BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz]

Fairly low income family, not poor poor but income = basic costs plus a smidge to save for holidays in the UK. We live in a built up area, homes stacked on top of each other, positives:- cheap and diverse and central, negatives:- little to no open spaces, no garden, too built up for childhood dream freedom. Dh and I both work ft and tbh this is what we can afford, and is fairly similar to how we ourselves grew up, with a smidge of "we've done slightly better than generations before us"

Somehow, we've birthed a child who is, in all honesty, a farm girl from the Railway Children / Spirit and her horse Lucky / ranch hand mould.

Literally would ideally spend her days breaking horses the riding them through the surface, shearing sheep and roaming the lands with her pack of alsatians. 12 years into parenting her, scraping the funds together for the odd riding lesson and tailoring our holidays to her personality (farm stays and the like).

She's happy, we spend time outdoors as much as we can, camp a bit, plenty walks, etc. We can't get a dog, as our lifestyle isn't fair on a doggy, yet I know it's something she would absoloutley love to have.

I know we can't give our dcs everything they ask for. But she doesn't ask. I can just see who she is, and how our world isn't what her perfect life is.

We talk a bit about her growing up and the kind of future she envisages for herself, and how she could tailor her future career to enable a life spent at home with animals and fields around her. Everyone she knows suggests she becomes a vet which she gets frustrated at. She wants land and pets. Not putting down sick animals and what not.

I know we can't magic up a farm lifestyle, or suddenly be able to afford to ditch it all and move to a ranch in Montana or whatever; but it doesn't stop me feeling guilty that we've got a child who would just suit a totally different lifestyle to the one we have.

Anyone else feel the same?

When she is 18 she can get a working holiday visa and come to Australia and work as a Jillaroo on a farm in the outback. I Imagine she could do the same in Canada or New Zealand.

I get where you are coming from, I don't think it's silly. But it sounds like you are recognising her preferences and trying to meet them where you can.

And those preferences may shift over time, and if they don't she can tailor her future choices around aiming for rural living as an adult

You’re doing a fantastic parenting job as you’re supportive and listening. She’ll get the outdoors lifestyle and you’ll have helped her. Your dd knows that she can’t be on a farm at the moment and respects that you and her dad are doing the best possible. It will work out.

Many children are born into families where they don’t quite fit for whatever reason. The advantage your daughter has is that you recognize her as a person with her own interests and desires. So many parents, even with the financial means, want their children to fit a particular predetermined family ideal. The bookish child born to sporty parents, the sporty child born to parents who hate sport but love art, and they can either thrive because their parents let them thrive, or they can wither because their parents try to make them into something they are not.

We live in a ground floor flat in a built-up area in London, but my daughter spends all her free time after school and on weekends at the local yard. We own a pony, but loads of kids there share and work or volunteer at the yard. Can she not volunteer at a local livery yard? We also have guinea pigs and a tortoise and budgies who are all pretty low-maintenance pets that you don't necessarily need a garden for. We also have our dog and get a dog walker to take care of him when I have to go into the office.

Is there really no way you could do any of the above?

We live surrounded by farms and fields and woodland. We currently live next door to a working farm. I grew up here. It's normal for us to be around animals and it is an outdoor lifestyle. We have dogs and see horses and livestock everyday. People even do the school run on horses ! It is picturesque and I do sometimes stop and look around and appreciate how lucky we are.
I have 2 dc and they couldn't care less. It's just normal to them. They still prefer to sit and stare at screens. I think if you lived this life your dd may be similar. It's the novelty. If it isn't she can follow her dream when she's older. My eldest has decided she is going to get an apartment in a major city and do fashion design! They are always drawn to the unknown and unfamiliar.

Hehe- you have brought back some happy memories for me. I was your child. And, you are not standing in any way. She will grow up to be resilient, industrious, farsighted, and capable of planning to achieve her dreams. I managed to get work for rides, overcame shyness to walk onto yards and ask if anyone needed help- just mucking out. Then went to university and discovered Bunac- got my visa and worked as a cowgirl in Colorado. Good luck and God bless to your horse girl and all you horse ladies out there x

Plenty of charities that want volunteer dog walkers, it really helps people that are too unwell to walk their dogs and is a real kindness to them and their pets. It would have to be yourself and her as she is obviously a child but have a look in to that.

I've got an uncle who is a horse dentist. Must pay well because he has a farm (not inherited) and many horses.

So, none of the sad parts of a vets career

I have one that is really keen on animals. We do lots of related things but one thing she learned is that when you live the lifestyle you are talking about OP, 80% of working with animals is things like mucking out, the not directly animal related stuff, entirely necessary. It soon took the shine of it when my daughter realised it wasn't all patting, feeding and loving on the animals and most of the needs didn't involve interacting with the animal directly. It's hard physical work.

I have no practical advice but I wanted to say you seem kind, loving and involved. This is what your DD will remember.

My youngest used to want to live in a villiage, like a chocolate box villiage. Now she's 18 we laugh about this past fascination. Shes very happy with all her friends around her in the city.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

My parents gave me just about everything. I was happy - I never felt neglected or that I didn’t have enough or that I didn’t get what I needed or wanted. Ever.

Still, my mum told me once that she carried around a ten stone bag of guilt because she and my dad couldn’t provide everything for my siblings and me.

Relax. Your kids are happy. They’re healthy. They’re not looking into the next field (or yard or building) thinking it’s greener. They love you for loving them and for giving them the best life. They absolutely wouldn’t have it any other way - I promise you.
Be happy too. There’s plenty of time for your daughter to grow up and roam the countryside on horseback. Have faith.

I think you sre being way too indulgent.

On one hand it is nice to acknowledge your child’s interests and preferences, quite another to wish to tailor your whole life around it.

I am staggered you choose holidays based entirely on what your children want, what about you and your dh? Do you even want to spend every holiday on a farm??!

Don’t lose sight of your own dreams, aspirations and preferences. When you have finally reached the end of hands on parenting, and the dc have left, in another 15 or so years and you have run out of money, time and energy you may wish you had kept a sense of your own identity, and had a more balanced life doing some things you enjoy as well. it is your life too. I am not sure how healthy it is to live through your children.

Especially if dd decides she is in fact a city girl after all. Children’s fads and tastes change all of the time and you can’t morph your life into something different each time! Even if you wanted to.

You are doing more than enough as it is.

I see where you are coming from, there is some excellent advice on this thread, so many opportunities. It's not a bad thing for teenagers to have dreams, it can be motivating.

I think she has a very idealised view of farming/owning animals at her age.
How many animals has she sat with whilst they die for example. With enough animals (ie a farm) you can have times where it happens fairly regularly. It isn't all running through the fields in the sunshine with calves and lambs!
In another year or so her social life will start becoming all encompassing and she will more than likely be glad to live where she does.

We are/were very child centred - the same as op. Dc now off to university. Dh and i are shattered after 19 years of devotion and they evaporate without a trace (which is a good thing!)

Take some time to enjoy stuff just for you and dh. Kids grow up and make their own dreams happen, they are enabled by your love and support - your life is important too. By the time they leave many years will have passed from your own life. Some doors may be closed for you now, the moment has gone.Don’t lose sight of who you are.

I love your post ☺️You seem like a loving family , thinking of your child's needs. As she gets older she will carve out the right life for herself... Be there for her , provide access to books etc and everything will work out.

She will grow up OP and realise that a lifestyle of just roaming the country and tending to the land is pretty unrealistic. How is she going to live? If she aspires to live off someone else (eg a farmer) I’d be having a serious chat with her. Don’t feel guilty that you don’t live in the country, her childhood is what it is. She can carve out a future for herself and if that’s her dream to live in the country then she needs to find a career that would facilitate it.

This was me growing up. I made the most of our UK holidays in pretty places with the resolve that one day I would live in the countryside.

And now I do, perhaps not quite as picture perfect as I'd like but much closer than it was when I was young. I've raised my own children rurally so they've had much more of that outdoors freedom but finances mean I couldn't give them a farm upbringing or riding lessons.

Luckily all mine are happy being rural.

People can have lots of interests and change their interests.

If her preferences continue she can look into a higher education location and potential careers that fit with a ‘country lifestyle’, and associated pay - these will go well beyond agriculture, eg some ‘portable’ roles in other sectors such as healthcare, education, retail.

Or she might decide on working in a city and commuting somewhere green, having outdoorsy hobby etc. plenty do that where I live (London commuter belt)

A farm up bringing is not idyllic. It is tough. You barely get any holidays, money is always tight, everyone in the family is expected to pitch in with work -in all weathers

It’s fine for her to grow up in that setting and make her own choices as she gets older.
Are you and DH happy with the location you’re living in? If you think there’s any chance you would both also enjoy a
more outdoorsy lifestyle I’d strongly consider starting a new chapter and relocating. xo

I was your daughter growing up, even now I’m happy outside in the pouring rain in my wellies patting horses over the field wall and breathing in cow muck. I spent hours mucking out horses for free at the stables as a child and living for my biweekly riding lesson.

I can afford that lifestyle now as an adult but I wouldn’t take it as the reality is so much harder work than my child hood world, where I left the horses at the stables and came home to a cooked tea and clean clothes and a clean bed and fell asleep dreaming of when I would own my own horse.