AIBU to move our family from London to my home town?

[CoatsforGoats]

AIBU to move our family out of London to live in the town I grew up in? 3 children under 5 at the moment, so possibly imagining an easier life where getting the buggy around isn't as much of a daily challenge. We have been thinking about it as a family for a couple of years and feel completely stuck.

Points to note

• DH job is firmly London so he would be away part of the week (thinking Mon - Wed or Thursday as a pattern)
• We have a lovely little house in London BUT I am aware of the pollution here, and even walking to the park from our house involves a lot of passing traffic. Middle DC coughs at the fumes and it breaks my heart.
• The town I am from is nice and interesting (altho I haven't lived there in years) plenty going on in terms of culture and sport, good access to mountains and excellent walking/forest nearby.
• We would be able to buy a bigger house and have a much bigger garden if we left.
• We don't really have family here or in the town. Some family are overseas and location doesn't make a huge difference either way.

I guess part of it is that neither of us grew up in London, so that feels like an unknown quantity for us, and we are a bit worried about how a London upbringing might be for older primary aged children and into teen years.

I’m well outside London with open countryside 5 minutes away, plenty of restaurants and country pubs too. . Pretty cosmopolitan . 25 minutes from Paddington - my son commutes to central London and is often home before his London colleagues . My feeling is you need to explore other places and get out of the ‘it’s London or Home Town’ mindset.

London state schools are great and of course there is an integrated, reasonably priced public transport system, and just about every service you could ever need not too far away.

My daughter has moved to a town just outside the London boundary to live with her boyfriend. Buses are few and far between and really expensive - she is learning to drive, something she never needed when she lived with us.

I'm surprised by how different the vibe is, even though we are actually pretty close.

Plenty of people do move and are happy, but London isn't all pollution - it has lots of plus points too. Would a move to somewhere in London with more green space work?

Definitely this. Zone 2 East is maybe somewhere like Walthamstow. You might find Wanstead or a bit further along the Central or Elizabeth lines would give you everything. Or somewhere like Blackheath or Chislehurst will still offer you nice cafes/bars etc and easy access to London life with great schools and lots of geeen space.

Solo parenting really sucks and is such a juggle someone always loses out on clubs etc. It's difficult to estimate the toll you would be under.

Having solo parented extensively and now the load is shared to the extent I can do pickup and club with one , he does pick up and club with the other - I would never go back to how frazzled and stretched i was.

I would move to zone 3/4. It seems crazy that you would consider moving to somewhere that your DH can't be with his family half the week. That makes no sense at all.

By all means get a bigger house/garden/less pollution but you don't need to move mile and miles for that.

X

DH is in London Monday to Wednesday or Thursday every week and it is a thousand times harder than we thought it would be.

He’s exhausted all the time from work plus the commute (which has got much harder on him as he gets older).

The kids miss him and need him more as they’ve got older: when they were under 5 it was me they wanted, and he was a fun optional extra, but the boys are now 9 and 11 and honestly they need their dad more than they need me, I only see that need increasing as we head into adolescence.

I’m exhausted from running the house and caring for the kids alone all week - when he’s here he wants to have quality/fun time with them so is a great fun dad but does nothing practical.

And when we have a problem of any kind (eg hospital visits, household emergency) he is hours away. You can think it’s only going to be 3 hours or whatever, but if you’re unlucky the transport links break down just when you need him. It once took him 12 hours to get home, after I’d called him to come home in an emergency.

Moving out of London was a mistake for us.

We left London when our DC were 3 and 1. We had lived there for 12 years together, DH is from London but we moved to Scotland to my hometown. It was a completely different way of life especially for DH but one of the best things we ever did.

We initially rented our flat out for a few years then sold it and built a house. Dh started off working away a lot but now works from home nearly all the time. There are some things that the kids can't do that they could have easily done in London but they have had a fantastic education at a small state school in the country are now at excellent universities so I would not change a single thing we did.

This is it for me -- it's a completely different childhood experience living close to nature and in smaller schools. I would love it to work out like this for us!

We toyed with this idea when our children were young and because we didn't grow up in London. Now they are in their teens, I'm so glad we stayed in London. They are totally independent at getting around. They take themselves to hobbies, friends, school, summer courses work experience etc. They also use the parks a lot, so a garden seems less important. I know lots of these things are available outside of London, but not all of them are and they are not so easily accessible. There are also a lot of choices for six form that suit a really wide range of abilities/interests. It has also been really good for my work as I was able to retrain and find a new job relatively easily. I would have found that much tougher outside of London.

It was hardest when they were toddlers but it gets so much easier once they are all able to walk a decent distance and we could ditch the buggy.

Moved from a large city (not London) to a very rural location 2 years ago. With husband and three small boys. Zero regrets. Trees & Fresh cool air. Peace& quiet. Endless space for the children to play safely. No pollution or car noise. Veggie garden, kitchen garden, orchard, pets etc plenty to keep everyone busy !

There really is a lot more in London.

A small theatre, woodland and meadows…
London has 3000 parks, 100s of museums and 100s of theatres, not to mention music spaces, activity centres etc and short train rides out to the countryside in all directions.

Based on your list it is incomparable, although that doesn’t mean it suits everyone or is to everyone’s taste.

But how many parks does a family need?
There might be 3000 in London but how many would a family use?
Little children want a play park. Older kids a skateboard ramp or a football pitch.
My friends who live in a tiny village have that !

We were in the country in lockdown, we had beaches, we had woods we had open fields, animals. Our children had the most amazing time that I would never ever change.

All within a miles walk? I've lived in London ( Manor park and canning Town) and tbh there wasn't all that stuff

And I'm less than an hour by train from London if I felt the need to go there( maybe once every 2 years)

No need to get defensive- clearly some poor reading skills. I never said in that post it was better or worse or that everyone should prefer one over the other.
Howevwr, it is pretty disingenuous or perhaps lack of ever living there to say one museum, one theatre etc is comparable to what London has.

Sure a 3 year old may be happy going to the same play park every day but not me.
It’s nice to wake up one morning and try a different park - Richmond Park, Battersea Park, Kew Gardens, Crystal Palace and many smaller local parks.

Some teens may just be happy with a skate park.
Over the Summer holidays mine went to week long series of music workshops (free), orchestra camp (not free), saw several live music events (classical, African beats - some free, some paid), went to the theatre (not free), open water swimming in our local lake (life guard supervised, free), played tennis, football and basketball (all free or minimal cost), exhibitions (not free) went to markets, cinemas, parks etc all over London, majority independently when not going as a family.

And yes, we have football, skate park, pools, courts and parks (multiple) all within walking distance from us.

However, you don’t need to have all these things within walking distance - transport is easy and very cheap/free for kids and teens.

A lot of focus about moving to the country is about life with young children - babies, toddlers, primary age but the key age, I think, are teens and young adults.

On the other, my friend’s son finds all this too much of a sensory overload so they have moved out of London.

@Coffeewinecake if it was me you are saying was "defensive" I wasn't meaning to be so I am a bit baffled by that 🤷.
The OP didn't say she wants to move to the country - she said a town.
Towns have plenty of activities for teenagers too !

Who is mentioned the country though? That's the point there are town and cities that are not the " country" outside Londob

And I guess the comment about one years one museum comes from now " living in London to know any better" Well I had the misfortune of living in London in my teens and early 20s so I do know what it's like living there. And I still didn't have all these things you mention as pluses on the doorstep. London was nice for the well off who lived in the leafy parts with money to spend. Less so for those in Newham especially in the late 80z/ early 90s

As a teen yeah we could go to the museums" over an hour away in South Kensington" if we had scraped together 60p to get a red bus Rover . Theatre cost money (that we didn't have) in fact very little was free. So unless you have e
money to spend you werent gaining anything living in London

We love the West End and the theatre as a family. There is no way we could replicate that anywhere other than Broadway!

I live London/NK borders, in a London borough. Lots of open spaces, but very easy 20 minute commute to London. Low pollution levels, apparently.

I actually moved to a village in Sussex for 6 years - and couldn’t wait to get back to London.

Too insular, appalling transport, no near entertainment, and too boring and limited for me. 🤷‍♀️

Nothing would be worth my DH living away most of the week tbh

I agree re: depending on the town but would just note our London two form entry primary school has afterschool that can easily be booked on the day and there are definitely schools outside of London that can’t offer that flexibility.

Well bus travel is now free for teens, so that alone opens up lots of possibilities. And it sounds like the OP and her husband are not being pushed out due to lack of funds and could live in some of the nicer areas. Newham versus say Richmond are very different.

We moved from London to a nearby commuter town when our DD was born. I found it a bit of an adjustment at first but am really settled now and wouldn’t want to live back in London. For me, though, being near enough to get the train in in under an hour was really important: for work, seeing friends and for things like going to the theatre or exhibitions (not that I/we did/do a lot of that — but it’s nice to know we can!).

The thing that would really give me pause in your shoes is the fact your DH would be away for part of the week every week. I’d be fine with that for a period of time — but permanently? I’m not sure that would be for me. (Nor my DH — and historically he’s worked away from home a lot.) Of course, it might really suit you and your DH, but I’d suggest really thinking about how the setup will look/work in reality. Also what happens if, two years down the line, he gets fed up with living in two places? Or you get fed up with doing everything solo during the week? Will you have a plan b in place?

I’d say move, get out of London it’s not a great place to raise kids between the crime rate and the fact that you’re paying so much for everything especially your home. I’m raising my children in my home town (although it hasn’t changed much since then and I did have kids super young literally 15 and pregnant) so this would depend on whether it’s still a nice place to live or not. Maybe spend a weekend there and see how you feel.

We have the beach on our doorstep, the countryside on our doorstep and a really nice community here where people know each other. London is a dangerous dump you don’t know what you’re missing out on yet