To belive that my children are having a great childhood in London?

[mrsruffallo]

Annoying woman at parent and toddler grouip today.
She was noisily proclaiming her intention to leave London before her child turned 5 as it's an awful place to grow up!
I said if not here, where?
There is so much to do, lovely green spaces, much better than being stuck in the middle of nowhere
Turned into quite a lively discussion

Yes, I think we can now officially declare London the loser on snot grounds alone.

I've never been to London, which makes me truly , but I hear the same arguments about raising children in New York. Why not? I personally am a total country girl and always have been. (I grew up in the middle of a forest in Northern Minnesota.) It's just where I feel comfortable living, though of course I like to visit cities. DH and I are raising DS in a rural farming community. My aunt and uncle feel more at home in an urban setting, and are raising their 4 yr old daughter in Manhattan. Their DD and my DS will both turn out just fine.

I grew up in the middle of the countryside - yes I had endless trees to climb & fields to roam in & in many respects it was the perfect idylic childhood but comparing it to my son living in London, my friends all lived miles away & I was totally dependend on my parents to drive me to everything (hence I passed my test first time at 17 & 2 months!!!). In london everything is so easily accessible from green spaces to museums & fosters an indepence not possible in the countryside. Yes it may not feel so safe but I think that is media fueled perception & actually, London is a terrific place to grow up. I have no desire to move back to the countryside.

No one has been attacked on here have they?
I think it's a civilised thread on the whole.

I love London, but wouldn't mind flying to South America for the winter

I don't think I could cope with all the Pearly Kings and Queens. Too much bonhomie upsets my digestion.

Well I grew up in Surrey, have lived in London and now live in Wilmslow which is basically South Manchester.

Surrey is inbelievably stifling and up its own bum. I could never live there again although obviously some people love it.

London, to me was good before we had kids but even then it got me down a little.

Now I feel I've the best of both. Lots within walking distance and both stunning countryside and an amazingly vibrant city on my doorstep. I love it here.

It's too narrow to say its either London or the countryside. There is so much more out there. The great thing about living somewhere like Glasgow where DH grew up or Manchester is that you can live you don't have to be well out to be well out. By that I mean you can be a short tram or tube ride to the centre (5mins)but stick feel semi rural. In London it always seems you're either inner city or well out and need to be even further out to get the sense of being so. (if that makes sense)

Me too, myred - there was even a r4 programme about living on the edge of a city, called city limits, and everyone just raved about it. The environment, not the programme.

I completely agree with lfb. I grew up in semi-rural area and we had no childrens play parks at all within walking distance. Where I live in London we have endless parks with childrens areas within walking distance and a quick hop on the tube gives us access to just about anything. There are clubs for any activity my DD may want to do and I was able to take her to see Mamma Mia (a special treat) after school one day and still be home for bedtime.
If we want countryside we can be out in it with a 20 minute drive.
I love living in London and am very grateful for the opportunities it affords us.

London is a brilliant place to bring up children. Having worked as a nanny years ago in the country, the children I looked after spend so much time in the car being ferried from place to place and in the winter it was too dark for them to spend much time outside. In contrast I am now bringing up my two daughters in London we go lots of places by foot/buggy - really because I'm far too lazy to bother faffing around with car seats - There are heaps of brilliant parks and museums etc. Who was it who said something along the lines of "when you are bored of London you are bored of life..."

LOL at Habbibu 'pearly kings and queens' . But, you know, they are not as jingly as all those pesky Morris dancers in the cuntry

Ooh, god knows London has it's bad downsides (taking longer to reach and cross the M25 than the 120 mile journey beyond it, etc etc...) but I was only thinking the other day that black snot, which was such a featue of my childhood in the coal mining Midlands has disappeared, along with white dog poo, in modern day London...

Squitten - C Palace is a great place to live! Have you discovered Dulwich Woods yet? A really nice place to walk. And Sydenham Wells Park is great in the summer as it has interactive fountains in the kids playground.

Morris dancers ain't what they used to be, Blu. Besides, I'm in Scotland. They aren't allowed across the border, in case they're eaten by a haggis. Or something.

Surely all the chimeney (sic) sweeps still have black snot, gor blimey guv'nor?

mrsR -was that to me? i agree it's been civilsed. and most enjoyable. perhaps i was a bit defensive in my response to your not- attacking post about non-londoners being defensive...or something like that (but someone did say we wear wellies all the time)

Oh, Hab, the chimney sweeps, dancing across the rooftops in their stripey trousers singing 'Chim chimenee, chim chimenee...' have TERRIBLE snot. Blacker than a dustmans 'at and cor blimey traaaasers, and ain't it a shame?

But Cockney Snot comes off well in a Competitive Risk Assessment against Scottish Sword Dancers with a Dram Too Many Inside Them! Do you not find life insurance very exopensive where you live? What with the carbiverous haggises etc?

Glad you survived Burns Night, anyway.

Carniverous haggis, I mean.

Sorry - London has driven me to drink - and it's showing!

Ah, but you forget that we're made of tough stuff up here, and generally go out wearing protective coats made of deep fried mars bars. Besides, as it's all cuntry, with barely a hovel in sight, you can see and hear the sword dancers/haggises coming a mile off and take evasive action.

I've always thought that those gold-paved streets must be hell on fallen arches, anyway.

I'm now laughing at midnight's comment that all places have good and bad points except Cumbernauld! Grim!

I moved into London with my daughter last Autumn after a year on the edge of a provincial town in Staffordshire, and have found it a double-edged experience. As a widower with a 6 year old child I've found London much easier to live in than our old place in Staffs. On the positive side the access to excellent parks, the public transport, the things going on for children here, the cosmopolitan society, the opportunities, the shopping for kids is absolutely wonderful. We've even seen foxes outside our home, something I would never have dreamed of seeing in London.

On the other hand I'm seriously disappointed in the level of her school (she's repeating things in Year 2 already covered in Year 1 at her old school), and the impossibly long waiting lists for other places.

Errrr. London is full of foxes...they were having shagfest last night in my lawn!

"We walk to school through the woods. Deer and badgers scamper up to us and push their damp noses into our hands. "
"How unhygienic"

Oh lolol at both of you!

I'm definitely coming down in favour of edge of a non-London city.

I think.

Shame there aren't any within driving distance of London (work).

I wouldn't be defensive if someone said I wore wellies all the time...'cause I do.

We move away from London but only because we couldn't afford a house in the area we lived in and all the local schools were stupidly over subscribed (west London, zone3).

We now live in another, smaller city and I do miss all the things to do in London as well as the fab transport. But don't miss the uncertainty of renting and rubbish parking. People who live here are quite scared of London, but I can't wait for DD to be old enough to go for a visit.

I adore living in London, and DH frequently comments how lucky we are to be living here, and what an amazing lifestyle we have.

We are living in one of the world's largest cities and one of the few DH can live for his job (others are NY, HK, Singapore and Paris). We live in Zone 2, in a nice-size house with a 100 foot garden. We are walking distance from 6 parks, just around the corner from a bus which will take us to Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Oxford Street, Regent Street and Piccadilly. We are 10 minutes away from Notting Hill, have easy access to the M4 and A40 to get out. 10 minutes away from Kew and Richmond.

We belong to a fantastic club with loads of land and activities for the kids. I can walk to the High Street to go to the shops or have the mall conveniences of Westfield. I can drive 10-15 minutes and go to a Japanese grocery store to get amazing sashimi or the Thai grocery store for other oriental goodies. We are in close proximity to michelin *ed places, gastropubs, greasy spoons, fast food joints, conveyer belt sushi places, great sushi places, fine Indian places, a fanastic Vietnamese restaurant, decent family friendly places which are not pizza restaurants (have those too), not to mention small quirky restaurants. Not to mention the Borough Market and the Sunday Marylebone High Street Farmers market!

We have the already mentioned free museums, galleries, but also all the other attractions in close proximity, from the Tower of London to Legoland and all the theatres with special productions for kids. How about the amazing theatrical spectacle of people watching which one can do in London?

I love having the Eurostar terminal here, and use it at least twice a year for day trips to Paris

Lastly, I am American-Oriental, DH is French, and DSs are truly mutts with smatterings of Korean-American-French-English in them. They are considered normal here, and our social circle is filled with similar multi-cultural families. They do not feel different and instead, feel Normal. I am certain this would not be the case in the more ethnically homogeneous countryside/smaller town.

I grew up in Greenwich and we used to live in Penge. I feel at home in London (well South London anyway!) because I know it really well. So taking the children out was easy, we'd hop on a train/bus/tram and visit all sorts of places - I'm not a good indoors sort of mum, so most weekends we'd go somewhere. But dh got to hate living there (he's always had more of a commute than me, and found the tube really got him down). So after lots of argument and discord we eventually moved. To New York. Another city, fairly similar in many ways (although with easy access to beaches, which I really didn't expect), but I preferred London really.

Now we live on the edge of a fairly small town in British Columbia, and are enjoying the whole countryside thing, and the freedom of living somewhere with so little traffic the children can walk/cycle to their friends houses. It is very beautiful and very stress free. I can't imagine living here forever though, and probably would like to live somewhere near a city, with easy access to the countryside or vice versa (although of course such places are very expensive, because they are the best of both worlds).

Born and bred in London, I moved out of there when my 4-month-old PFB had black snot. Actually I got so shocked I moved out of the country, but now I realise that might have been a bit extreme