Living in Australia - the effect on your DC

[LooWaterSunset]

Just wondering if anyone would be kind enough to share their experience of moving to Australia and what effect it had on your DC. I have one DS who is still only 1yo, so obviously any change is likely to be minimal for him. But I'm interested to hear about older DC and their activities/experiences in UK and Australia.

bf moved to Oz a couple of years ago, just outside Perth. Her ds were 14 and 16 at the time. She says they have a good outdoor life now, her and dh's life not changed that much as both still working full time, but at least weekends are nice weather.

They have had issues with the now 15 (almost 16yrold) and drugs. He was an average pupil here, usual teenager, some high jinks but nothing criminal and he's now a dope smoking, alcohol drinking, non school attending stoner! This obviously could have happened here too.

Yes, possible anywhere really.

By saying "older DC", I was thinking more like pre-teen... the types of opportunities they get in both places... a sort of GB v Aus.

hmm, no direct experience of preteen as mine were littlies when we moved from Uk to Oz - all I can say is that I'm seriously impressed with the range of activities/sports etc all children can do here of any age, there is so much on offer even for preschool kids. Now my eldest is at school (state school in QLD) what strikes me as a little different is school sport - i.e. there is very little or no organised team sport at school, just one lesson of PE in the colder terms which is replaced by swimming in summer. It seems that if you want to play in a team then you need to find a club outside school for that or swim squads if you want to be competitive. This surprised me as I remember playing in school teams i.e. against other schools, in the UK from about age 9. There are clubs which use the school playing fields after school but they are not connected to school at all.

I should have said that most kids I know do do some kind of after school/weekend sport in addition to swimming lessons (friends kids do swimming, dancing/gym, tag rugby and karate!)....if we still lived in London I doubt my kids would be doing half as much as they do due lack of availability/travelling etc

NZ - not Oz, but the life-change experience is the same!
The children did nothing but gain. Schools were great - atmosphere very different to the UK. Biggest shock was getting used to children habitually not wearing shoes in primary school!!
They made friends very quickly - being English was enough of a novelty to gain them an immediate new circle.

Oddly, one of the issues which loomed large at the time was really minor .....Milk tasted different, and preferred juice drink was unavailable, so we had real issues with drink choices in the first few weeks until we found something acceptable.

I honestly think you will find its all about attitude. If you stay positive, if you teach them to view everything as a learning curve, if they learn from you that 'different' is not 'worse than' - that it can sometimes be a lot 'better than' - then they will stay open to the changes.

I think it is also important to be able to acknowledge that missing some aspects of home is normal, and that there are also things you miss, but that the missing doesn't outweigh the amazing of where you are now. It IS hard as a parent, on days when you would give anything to be with missing family - or just be able to pop to the shop and buy the one item you can't get over there - but they really will take their cue from you.

Enjoy the amazing experiences which are ahead of you!!

My DD is 10 and we are now in Sydney. She does diving, sailing and swimming weekly (3 x swim squad, 2 x sailing & 1 x diving).

The other choices at school are athletics, gymnastics, minkey, football, netball, cricket, watersports and tennis, with some seasonal variation - this is term 4 so summer sports. Everybody does Saturday sport (ours is sailing).

She's also dabbled with riding, gymnastics, paddleboarding.

For other extra curricular she does experimental science, concert band (saxophone), chamber strings (violin), choir and beginner band (percussion).

Other options are yoga/debating/robotics/animation/chess - so plenty of scope for things to try.

We love the opportunity to be in the water and next term she's trying out for the Y6 water polo and also is being assessed for the school sailing squad in the next few weeks. She also loves music and there are plenty of opportunities in and outside of school - she auditioned for the Sydney Youth Orchestra this week and we hope she'll get the opportunity for a place.

I'm happy with the opportunities she has here, particularly water based and also the music for her age group seem better here than the schools I've looked at back in the UK (we nearly came back last year). I didn't do a particularly wide ranging study though so I could be way off the mark with the (Surrey) schools I was looking at.

Wow arfishy cool school! I thought our school was good! Hat off to yours
Current primary they play sport every day there is a federal initiative that the kids have to do a minimum of 30 mins exercise a day.
Our school they swim, soccer, afl, netball, tennis, team games, volley ball, dance and cricket. All in school time and the option to join a club after school.
For us price is a huge difference. Sport is generally much much cheaper than the uk. Private school fees are much lower. So you can in general afford to offer your kids more without losing out elsewhere.
For little kids there's kindy gym. We pay $6 a session for this. $15 for a family when all of them go in the holidays
Eldest dd swims in squads it costs $30 a week and she can swim as much as she wants.
Beyond sport there are drama clubs, music groups, numerous playgrounds, martial arts, guides, scouts etc. D of e for older ones. Endless really!
Of course your kids can go off the rails anywhere, that's life. We can do our best to occupy them.. Well that's my plan!

Thanks for the replies. I want to go to Arfishy's DC's school!

So I guess it really is about the (somewhat cliche) outdoor lifestyle then.

My DCs were born in Oz, and we came to the UK when they were quite young.

Neither are particularly sporty or even particularly outdoors-y which of course will have a bearing on whatever they wanted to do.

One thing we were nervous about with our school options (pretty much all private where we were!) was how everything appeared to be about sport, sport, sport. I'd go as far as to say to the detriment of academia, in some instances! Close neighbours were private teachers and they actually moved away when their DS came of junior school age as they'd both seen academically clever DC in their separate schools suddenly regard their science or maths etc as 'geeky' and uncool, like many of the other DC there did.

Another aspect which we were a bit uneasy about was how, if a DC did a sport, it wasn't once a week or so, it became almost obsessional. Swim? OK, Mon, Wed and Fri evenings are training, Saturday morning is 'squad', Saturday afternoon is a competition somewhere or other. Nippers? At least twice a week. Footy? At least 3 times a week. And, oddly, the DCs sports seemed to have to involve the whole family! Or if was sport, it'd be dance, but Monday evening would be ballet, Weds, tap, Saturday morning jazz etc etc. All the DC's 'free time' seemed to be far more 'organised' than we've found with a similar 'social class' here in the UK.

Of course, I can only speak from my own experience; some DC are Action-Man and need and want constant activity, and I totally get that some will read what I just wrote and say 'Fantastic! Where do we sign up?'- but for us, as a family, we felt that were were being judged as a bit 'odd' that we felt that one or 2 extra-curricular a week was sufficient, with one sport played for 2 hours or so a week, not every evening. Maybe we're plain lazy

Hmm, sounds quite obsessive, sports in Australia...

What if you're not sporty, into books, nature, just hanging out....?

We like going out walking- which of course you can do in Oz.. But, and here's the thing, only really in National Parks. There are no footpaths-through-the-woods, there, and of course, between 9.30am and 3pm in summer it really is uncomfortable walking in Queensland, way too hot and humid for comfort- then at 6pm, bang. It's dark .

The beaches are nice, of course, but again, it does depend a bit whether you're a gentle swell'n'cove type beach-lover or a 10 miles of golden sand'n'crashing surf beach-lover. We're the former!

I know what you mean about sport, Ananda, I find it a yawn myself.

Books..hmm, very expensive, but the second-hand bookshops are the best I've ever seen.

I miss the public footpaths of the UK, though.

Lots of fabulous national parks around Melbourne, and further out east and west, the temperate rain forests.

I have a very bookwormy 13 year old - who is actually Australian - and she is counting the days til she can go back to the UK. Am hoping when she finally gets to high school she'll meet more people/teens who are like her.
My 11 year old seems to have seriously put weight on since being in Australia, she was a little over weight when she arrived but I think the teachers telling her she's crap at sport and has "thick English blood" has meant her self esteem has plummeted.
The only one going ok is my 9 year old but I think she has an excellent teacher, from India, who's not being kept on due to all the cuts being made to the education budget next year.

Mosman, have you taken your thirteen year old to the Fremantle Literature Centre? They are amazing and have fairly frequent family days too. The Alexander Library complex and the Battye Library are also fascinating for someone who loves books. (I was a bookworm myself!)

Her teachers seem to be disgraceful. Who speaks to a child like that? If she's thirteen and a bookworm, she might enjoy some of the more esoteric sports and less team-oriented available for children like fencing or archery.

Echt, have you come accross the Book Depository? Good way of getting cheaper books. One positive of the expensive book thing is that people tend to use their local libraries, which are generally excellent, and are sadly something that is disappearing from the UK with the cuts.

lisianthus- it was my experience that in Australia in general, there was a more 'robust' approach from teachers towards DC, for better or worse. My DS's swimming teacher pulled no punches about what he though of DS's inadequate swimming ability! In a matey sort of way, but stuff in the UK would have us mums reaching in horror for MN!

lisianthus, point taken about the Book Depository, I was pointing out non-sporty stuff for Ananda. Completely agree about the very good libraries, with quick inter-site deliveries of reserved books/films, etc. My local is wonderful. And beautiful to look at, which is a bonus.

I don't live in Oz but love reading this thread. Interesting stuff!

I do wonder if just maybe.. Just maybe there is more analysing a way of living.. Culture..teachers etc as it isn't "home" straight away. Just a thought! I compare life in the uk with life in aus and for us life is better here in aus. But we have been carefully to look at both. Our dc all swim. From inter squads down to baby class. Dc2 has special needs. His teacher us great and the centre accommodates well for him.in fact he is a fish! Dc1 leant to swim in the uk till the age if 5. When we arrived here it was a shock. Smaller more intense lessons. Yes far less beating about the bush! If little Harry is rubbish.. You are told. I appreciate this now. It also teaches little Harry life's lesson that things don't always go your way! Again I like this. I dislike the current very English beliefs that the world owes you a living. I also accept that plenty of Aussies have the same attitude.if I can do anything to stop this becoming my kids I will.. So bring on the "blunt" Aussie approach.

As mad as it sounds my dd spends less time outdoors here in WA than in Scotland. Most of the year it is to hot/too many flies(that's now) to go out on her bike/scooter although as the helpful Aussies point out we should get up early and go out before school
Swimming is free until aged 16 in Glasgow , 10 lessons here $150 dancing/drama the same as Scotland.

The only difference is being able to go to the beach, but don't get me started on the WA sharks!

So many things to consider before you move! We moved to WA from London, one sporty and competitive DC, and one is not. But both of them are loving the outdoor life, and they spend a couple of hours every day in the pool at home.

I preferred their UK schools, but am not unhappy with their school here. Giggly, I'm absolutely amazed that you spend less time outdoors here! We're not massively sporty as such, but we all enjoy body surfing, cycling, walking the dog etc - weekends feel like proper holidays. I love it here.

sounds like a lot of here from WA!! I'm another lover of it here. We do nippers but only once a week( was abit cold in the water this morning!!). They swim once a week, footie train Thursday and play Saturday winter months, taekwondo twice a wee and cubs.
My boys were 3.5 and 5.5 when we moved over and we haven't looked back.
We like the laid back way of life. You have to learn to chill here but once you get it it's lovely here. I like that it doesn't take me 45 mins in school traffic to travel 10km like it did in the UK.
Schools are different in the fact they love parent helpers. In any sense, canteen, classroom and P&C stuff( PTA). My boys are doing well.
The biggest and most important thing is that there is NO WINE SHORTAGE IN WA!!!!!

I absolutely recognise you said "there is NO WINE SHORTAGE IN WA!!!!!" tongue in cheek, but it suddenly resonated with me, something I'd forgotten, and that was how many of my mum-friends, co-workers and neighbours were almost alcoholic in Qld! I mean, we Brits are big drinkers, but I was finding that at toddler get-togethers at each others' houses, the cheap fizz was being cracked at 10am. You couldn't have a casual lunch at someone's house without there being wine or fizz involved; every laid-back evening around the barbie, by the pool involved beer.

I should add, few got slaughtered, but it was very much part of life.

Maybe it was just my circle?!

We are in UK and I know lots of kids who do lots of the Aussie sports mentioned. Including year-round cycling, a local free surfing club, Scuba & Snorkelling (mostly in pools admittedly), free surfing with the school even, a friend of DD's just got back from week-long sailing camp, etc.

Meanwhile I grew up in Southern California & had a very indoor childhood. My dad's fave sport is basketball which is mostly indoors.

To be fair, though, lijkk- 'year round cycling' is more of an endurance sport here in the UK, in, say 2 degrees with a howling wind off the North Sea with 40 tonne trucks bearing down on you -than say an amble along purpose built cycle paths, in 22 degrees in the depths of winter, palms waving in the whispering breeze, sun shining from a cloudless sky as you cycle past- as in Brisbane .

It's potentially easier to live an outdoor lifestyle in much of Oz (bearing in mind that often translates as having a barbie on the deck rather than weekends bushwalking!), though remembering, Oz is a huge country so generalisations about Tassie won't hold true of Cairns, for instance. As mentioned before, the ishoo for us and 'the outdoor lifestyle' was that it was positively dangerous to expose young skin to sunlight between 10am and 4pm and the sun set at 6pm! And sport, where it was played rather than watched, was taken very seriously, all or nothing, 'no 'second place' or 'well played' for the loser (and as already mentioned, often 'all consuming' for the family). Australians are not what we'd call sportsmanlike, so many of the values we Brits like to bestow upon partaking in sport, (esp when given as a reason to want more of it in private schools!), values like being a gracious winner, a noble loser, team work, cohesion, leadership skills aren't really present in much of Australian sport. It's win at all costs.