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

When we lived in London the flat below ours was a literal crack house which the police kept trying to close with steel door things but people kept breaking back into, junkies were always ringing our bloody bell at 4 and 5am, and two prostitutes worked from a car in our car park.

And we couldn't afford a house and had no garden.

That, probably, was not a great part of London to raise a child.

No - you're not being unreasonable at all.

I grew up in London, and can't imagine being based in the countryside/small town/small city. But I suspect it's just what you know.

We're lucky in that we live close to the Natural History/Science museum, so it's just a walk across the park for my ds (4) who loves going there. As well as all the restaurants and cinemas and festivals and theatres and city farms and all the other attractions that are on our doorstep. And I really value the multicultural aspects of the city and what that teaches my boy.

But, if you grew up in the countryside, then it probably all sounds a bit rubbish if you could be wading through fields or whatever it is one does in the countryside

I grew up in a rough part of London, surrounded on all sides by huge council estates. Discovering the rest of London outside of this area in my teenage years was one of the most amazing times of my life. Hopping on the night bus after going to a club in Camden is a rite of passage I think.

Bringing up DS, 17mo, has been helped immensely by the huge network of groups and activities that are all within walking/bus distance.

Again, the only downside is not being able to afford a big house - but then I suppose it would only encourage your child to stay in if they had a huge bedroom full of games consoles and toys.

I'm yet to experience the schools' catchment lottery - but I think would definitely forego domestic space to stay within the catchment area of a good school in London. The life lessons alone of living in such a multi-cultural area are worth more than a utility room.

someone commented that this thread is all rural v london, with nothing inbetween. someone else commented that the rural idyll is a myth, someone else said the countryside is boring for teenagers...with those comments in mind here's my two pennorth...

i grew up in a village in a national park. 40 mins bus (25 in a car) to one of the UK's biggest cities. 50 mins on train to another of the uk's biggest cities. my teenage years were brilliant. I was never bored - was part of a village community - with lots of non-school friends of a range of ages, and access to 2 brilliant cities (where i hung out in cool cafes. not museums but I was a teen...). even then I always said it was the ideal place for kids, inc teens. the reality is that unless you're talking real wilderness a lot of "rural" places in the UK have good access to towns and cities.

re the rural idyll being a myth - well, in one sense of course it is. any form of "idyll" is a myth. but there is no doubt in my mind (after my teens in a village, 12 years in london and one year in a village near where i grew up) that community is stronger where I am now - made more local friends in a year than I ever did in London. i find people less materialistic, more creative, more willing to borrow/swap/share/make do and mend/just knock on their neighbour's door. and everyone says hello. to everyone. I also find them less parochial than many londoners who can have a tendency towards rest-of-the-uk-blindness.

I did like living in London. and enjoyed all the good things mentioned on this thread. but, tbh, I still have many of those things, plus the upsides listed above and, best of all, when I open my curtains in the morning, and look at the gritstone edge above the village i get a visceral, ted-hughes-esque wrench in the gut that london views could never give me. the view from Waterloo Bridge comes kind of close...but funnily enough the only view in london i could ever afford is suburbia.

Your post reminded me of something my Aunt once said when she was visiting my Grandmother in Shepherd's Bush,

"Hasn't YoMoJo & her brother done well considering that they grew up round here"

same place you grew up love, before you got married & moved to your little Midlands Village.

I can no longer afford to live in London (well technically I still live in a London borough but I dont have a London Postcode & am in Travel Zone 6) but don't know if i would even if I could afford to.

There are many nice places to live in London, but there are also many more shit tips - and you dont always get to choose where you can live!

Growing up in any big town/city will give you a broader range of experiences & life skills - both positive & negative. However those negatives can be rather big things in a city (drugs, gang culture, knifes etc) I dont know if they outweigh all the wonderful things that London has to offer???

I think the other mum was unreasonable to be talking so loudly when there were probably many in the room that have no choice over where they have to live.

YANBU

When I was little my family used to go and stay in my uncle's London flat. It was just behind the Tate Gallery. The flat wasn't that beautiful but it was a wonderful location. Now if I could afford to live somewhere like that I think I'd love to live in London. But DH's grandad used to live in the street where Jack the Hat was murdered by the Kray twins (I think). We used to go and visit (and to make a pilgrimage to Upton Park) and I could feel my soul shrinking as I walked down the road. I could see that it must have been a wonderful place to live once when MIL was growing up but now it just seems as if there is nothing but litter and metal grilles on the shop windows.

i love london - only place in the UK i can claim to have properly lived (although we spend time in cornwall and abroad). we visit c. London a LOT and never run out of things to do - most of our trips are completely magical. a lot of the people who moved their brood out of our area at pre-school stage, were not born in London anyway - they had settled here after university as a couple and post-children, they wanted to return to town/rural life/near relatives

"Growing up in any big town/city will give you a broader range of experiences & life skills - both positive & negative"

Disagree.

me too JV. it's quite a sweeping and basically (and ironically) parochial thing to say

I agree with JeremyVile...not broader, just different.

I'm smiling as I read this because looking out of my window (in a small seaside town) the local playgroup has just kicked out and three women have just been pushing their buggies past my house, several of them with dogs off their leads. And the only car to drive past in the last 10 minutes has just had to stop and wait for THEM.

I used to live in London, and at this time of year I miss it viscerally. I miss not being able to eat good Asian food, or having a choice of cinema, or even the option of going to the theatre or a gallery (although, honestly, how often did most of us manage it in London?!).

I don't have kids yet, so I do sometimes feel like I'm going a bit bonkers here. But when I have kids (hopefully!), I'm going to be able to walk to that playgroup and the shops with no traffic or buses or litter, and leave the buggy outside the shop if it won't fit in the door and not have to worry about it getting nicked. And that sounds much more appealing that wading through knee-deep rubbish outside Whitechapel tube station. Maybe when kids are old enough to move around a city on their own or appreciate things like museums the balance shifts, but in the very early years I can't see how being somewhere quiet and safe isn't advantageous. Surely toddlers don't care about galleries and multiculturalism, just about being able to play in the sand and find seaweed, not needles?

The bit of London I live in feels like a small town (and it's pretty central, so we do go into Central London quite a bit as well).

I miss the sea though ...

YANBU

But...

London's my home, I'm a city girl born and bred and I love it and miss it so much it hurts. Whether it's an awful place to grow up in depends very much imho upon a person's income level, housing situation and thus local schools.

I decided that whilst I'd happily live in Dulwich Village, parts of Wimbledon, Richmond and so on, I couldn't afford to and the areas I could afford didn't offer my children the education I wanted for them. The 'rougher' areas where I grew up are very different places to when I was a child.

So for me, it's god's own city, for my children, unless I win the lottery and can afford one of the nicer areas and/or independent schooling, sadly I'm on that other mum's side.

I grew up in the suburbs - it was ssssooo dull. Now we live in London and it is excellent for raising a child because the choices of things to do on our doorstep are endless. It is expensive however. We had a day out at Hampton Court on Sunday - cost us £60

Well I didn't grow up in London, so quite obviously I grew up in the middle of a field 50 miles from anywhere and with only one bus a month to go to the only Museum in the Country outside of London.
We had to go to London to visit the Theatre as they are only in London.
I don't know what non white folk look like and would have no idea how to talk to them because I don't speak their language

PS Just to add that because I agree with the other mum's viewpoint, I moved out of London many years ago. It took a lot of trial and error but now I live in a small town with great community spirit, still within reach of London.

Sorted!

I want to go home, lawd knows I do. I want sunshine and space and a house with windows all the way round.

AND I am bloody terrified that I am not going to have a clue what to do once back in the 'burbs in Sydney.

Have gotten very used to Museums/playgrounds/excellent restaurants/cafes/the West end/kid's shows and so on and lots of interesting people about. Sydney is great but it is nowhere near as diverse as London. I like how most people here rub along OK despite language issues etc.

Agree that money makes a difference (doesn't it always), I suspect London is not so much fun if you have to watch the pennies all the time because it costs a BOMB.

The education angle is interesting.

If you live in London your kids can have an excellent choice of universities within an easy reach of home (i.e. if money is tight at that stage, they can be 'home' students).

Also, many, many opportunities for extra-curricular. Music lessons/drama workshops/ dance/ sport / skating / languages / holiday activities attached to museums .

Well, I used to live in Londen when we were young and foolish, and loved it then in our little basement flat in Bethnal Green.

We have lived in big cities until our boys were 3 and 5, and moving to a village has been a REVELATION.

No more dragging prams (plus baby plus toddler) up and down narrow stairs, no more driving and bussing around to find activities to do. No more "WTF am I going to do with 2 small children in 2 bedroomflat with no garden on a rainy day.

The air is fresh and clear, we can walk to school,the school is good yet not oversubscribed, there are picnics in the local park, the playgroup is walking distance, DCs buddies live moslty in walking distance. It is bliss, even on rainy days we can walk down to the river and go fishing, or just collect sticks. Sometimes we go up to London for the day and do th Science museum etc. When we come back I always love smelling the air here.

The kids here have a lot more freedom, they ar 4 and 6 now and they can play in field across the road (only the odd tractor goes by) without me needing to supervise 24-7.

Yanbu, but you might be surprised how much you´d like it if you´d try. I could never go back now...

I think you are protesting a bit much, and she somehow hit a nerve, did she...?

Do you also have webbed feet, muggglewump? Poor deprived country folk. One day our cultural lives will be awakened but until then it's Co-ops and Spar shops and a visit once a month to the mobile library for us.

I've lived in London and enjoyed it at the time. But glad I've come away now. In fact my heart sinks a bit when I have to go in for something.
I've got to like seeing stars in the sky, hearing birds singing, not having black bogeys from traveling on the tube now.
I expect DD will want to live in a city after her rural childhood, but I also think she'll have fond memories of here.

I grew up in the 'burbs up North and was a student in a major city up North. I wanted to move to London for my first job and I immediately loved it, and have been here ever since.

Similar story for DH and countless friends.

It is a fantastic place to bring up children, and I would recommend it to anyone.

But I'm afraid the downside is kif's point - I am desperately extolling the virtues of going away to a Northern University to my primary-age DC.......

Where I live now, unless I want to drive or get at least 2 buses, the only shops within walking distance (and the nearest one is 30mins walk) are Spars and Coops.