Do you raise your children in London? Are you scared?

[novadandypowder]

With all the news reports of shootings and stabbings, my DH mentioned to me last night that he's having second thoughts about raising our 2 dc's in London. We've both lived here for over 10 years and have a dd 2.7 and ds 15mnths. I would like to think my DH is over-reacting, and I do love this city most of the time, but I must admit, I'm a bit scared now too.

How do you feel about it?

Yes and yes.

Fortunately for us we are expats and will be going home by the end of next year.

We have considered staying here, but it is just no good for young people.

I have the option to leave before my DS starts needing more independance so I will.

I don't think anywhere is safe really, but some places are safer than others.

wemoved out of london before we had kids. we couldn't afford to buy anywhere so moved up north where i am from.

i am very glad we did. i have 2 sons and the thought og them on the streets of london as they get older is absolutely terrifying.

i know we hear only about the bad things and the terrible incidents but i think it is a dangerous city for young men.

Little children in London is a very different issue than teenagers in London.

Little children - through primary age - no problem at all. (Mine are 9 and 7.)

Thereafter - I think probably there is a bigger issue about "knowing how to keep safe" in London than, let's say, in Inverness. The common feature in these dreadful incidents is that they're about mob rule/territoriality - gangs, basically - and teenagers growing up in London will I think need to know how to anticipate and avoid those kind of risks, whereas a teenager in Truro wouldn't need the same level of street smarts. Which may be as simple as not going to certain pubs. But it may be more complicated.

We have recently had two high-profile teenage knife killings local to us in suburban SE London and we're not planning on going anywhere.
I am trusting in statistical probability and the hope that political and societal pressures will force London and national government to start taking knife crime far more seriously, at the same time as addressing the underlying causes of crime
Tbh novadandypowder, unless you are very lucky, selling up and leaving London now is financial Russian roulette. You are far more likely to lose £££ than be at risk from knife crime
But yes, I think any parent would watch footage of those funerals, or Damilola Taylor, Stephen Lawrence or Ben Kinsella's family's press conferences/campaigns and feel chilled to the core about what is going on with London's disenfranchised and under-nurtured youth

Yes and not yet.
DD is 22 months so we have a while before she will want to roam the streets.
I will probably reassess where we live before she goes to secondary school.
FWIW I grew up in rural Devon where we were all so bored as teenages that most turned to drugs. Three of my peers from school are now dead thats to drug related incidents.

Sometimes I worry.

My dd is 7 and knows that the teenage son of a friend of ours was mugged recently. She asked daddy to look after her purse when they went to the shop to spend her pocket money

Some of the recent tragic deaths have not been gang related, but have been random, senseless acts of violence against innocent people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sadly there is nothing you can do to protect or prepare your children against that kind of unprovoked, unexpected attack, wherever you live.

As the mother of two boys, it scares me.

We don't live in London.

Hear hear artichokes
I used to envy people bringing their families up in e.g. Cockermouth (pretty market town on fringes of Lakes) until I heard about a typical Saturday night on the High Street Even the coppers were too scared to come out, it was like Fort Apache the Bronx some nights apparently
As a teenager in London I had the run of some of the world's best theatres and galleries and easy access to cinemas etc.
And my dad did not have to drive me everywhere. I did have a curfew though and I knew what would happen to me if I disregarded it
London is more vibrant and diverse culturally and socially than it was then. I still think it has loads going for it.

Yes and not yet. I agree with Bink that little children in London is a very different issue than teenagers in London. When the DCs are older we might rethink, depending on what the situation is like at the time (although I think our area is pretty safe at the moment).

i love london and we are in there 2/3 times a week but are happily leaving 10mins down the M1/M25 where we can raise the dc's in relative peace but enjoy being able to "nip" in and enjoy ourselves and the great things London has to offer.

I think its so sad what seems to be happening in our society, it breaks my heart when i think of my dc's growing up, it breaks my heart to think of all the children living in these places be it London, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol anywhere, in fact it could be any town, our children our being let down, through neglect on the part of the politicians and through neglect of those parents who dont do anything to curb or discipline the behaviour of those children that run riot.

The news makes me sad, the papers make me sad and perhaps my hormones too! thats why i try so hard to hold on to those things that make me crack up laughing, like my crazy DP, my very funny babies, my mum makes me laugh, Simon Amstell on Never mind the Buzzcocks really makes me laugh, Caitlin Moran on the times makes me laugh out loud, you lot on here crack me up, infact there is a lot to laugh at and be happy about ooo and the lovely Lloyds TSB cartoony advert really makes me smile, the music mostly it makes me think of my little imp of a baby. Infact im off to start a thread....

Hello. I don't live in London now (although I work there in an area with plenty of muggings and other pleasant things) but I lived in west London when ds was born and left when he was 2, partly as a result of thinking I didn't want him to grow up there. (THIS IS NOT A CRITICISM OF ANYONE WHO DOES BRING UP CHILDREN IN LONDON BTW!)

A friend (who moved to Harpenden from Finsbury Park) said at the time "there comes a point when you do care about the dog shit and needles on the streets" and I knew what he meant.

I want to cry when I read about these stabbings, it's so sad. If I still lived there I would be moving. I realise that nowhere is risk free, absolutely not, but I do like living in the countryside in an area where we have low crime. The front page of the local paper carries stories about new shops opening, that kind of thing, and I like it.

I love the area we live in (W10) and due to my DH's work we won't be going anywhere for a few years yet. I don't like this constant feeling of feeling under threat though. I don't walk anywhere at night, I don't wear any jewellery, I find children (and sometimes parents) intimidating at local parks, and I just generally worry.

We've had more shootings than stabbings near us, and the hopeful part of me believes that it's gangs going after each other, not the innocent joe on the street. I still have a rosy view of raising my children here, but it's becoming a bit more tainted.

I lived in rural East Yorkshire and my sister and I knew loads of young men and women who were killed in car or motorbike crashes.

Also agree that in areas like that, your children are just as likely if not more so to use drugs.

But I am terrified about the thought of letting the DSs out the door when they are teenagers .

When I go back to my hometown in the Midlands I am truly fearful walking around at night. The level of drunken yobbish behaviour and feeling of threatened violence is much higher than in London IMO.

I think it also depends where you live. There are parts of London that I lived in years ago that I wouldn't fancy bringing up children in because I did witness more acts of aggression and knife crime than in other areas.

Ds still goes to London every other weekend to see his father and I realise as he gets older he is going to want to go out in London, at night and this will worry me when he's a teenager.

I watched a bit of that programme on Channel 4 last night (couldn't bear to watch Andy Murray - too nerve wracking!) and was shocked to hear the statistic that violent crime happens 3 times more often in London than in New York. That was a surprise to me - although I had heard of the zero tolerance policy in NY.

I am desperate to move out of London (DD 9 weeks old and DS 19 months old). Luckily we live in Wimbledon which is relatively OK (or so I think). But cannot wait to sell up and get out next year. Am dreaming of going home to be near my family in Norfolk.

However, also agree that going to the countryside is not always idyllic. I grew up near Norwich and there were lots of alcoholic incidents and lots of people taking drugs. Hmm hmm.....

I too am in SE London and I'm starting to get more and more concerned about the all-too-regular news on knife crime.
I agree with Bink - I have had few concerns about primary school age (road safety was/is a far bigger issue for me) and I have always encouraged independence with my ds (allowed to go to the park with his friends etc.) and I have tried hard not to be over-protective mum.
But now that my ds is due to start secondary school (autumn) I have started to worry for him. My dd is already at secondary school, but it is my son that I am more concerned for (rightly or wrongly)

However, like Marina, we are not going anywhere. I will make sure my ds knows how to keep safe, but watching the news about Ben Kinsella last night and this morning has affected me. It sounds like he ran away from trouble (what I would advise my ds) but it still all ended in tragedy.

I watched some of the documentries about knife crime last night and they were just chilling. This whole dialogue that these kids have as common parlance! I know (hope?) that they must have been playing up/showing off for the cameras, but this just seemed such a big part of their lives.

We moved out of London when ds was a baby. I was thinking about schools, obviously, but there were also an awful lot of yellow boards in the area around my house. Final straw was a shooting in the house opposite. Gunman rode up on a motorbike, burst through the front door and shot the daughter's boyfriend in the head.

I know the boyfriend must have offended a Mr Big of some description (plenty of crack dens near us) but it could so easily have been the wrong house...

We're in a rather infamous London neighbourhood, and I wholeheartedly agree with Marina's post. The general levels of rowdiness, drunken fighting and other anti social behaviour I see in suburban/outer London areas are rare in my neighbour, and the tragic incidents are still rare, though they always hit the headlines.

In my much-maligned neighbourhood, I am always greeted with cheery smiles from neighbours, shopkeepers and strangers helping me with my buggy. Despite what's seen on the news, the majority of people here, like most places, really are good eggs.

My part of inner London was like that, Perkin - very friendly. But sadly high crime, too.

What frustrates me is that I DO see some great role models out there - like the fantastic guy who runs my ds's kick-boxing club in Brixton and tries to instill moral fibre into these kids, but theres just not enough of these individuals out there working with the kids and stopping them thinking that "respect" is something that is their human right without doing anything to earn it.........

Absolutely bettenoire - the random things could happen anywhere - and possibly possibly there is more of a chance of them happening in places where boredom is more of an issue? ... I am thinking of the ghastly attacks on vulnerable people - there was one in, I think, St. Austell, which is very affected by nothing-to-do.

Totally agree about drugs/motor-bike accidents etc. Those were a feature of my non-metropolitan growing-up. And again a lot to do with teenagers not having enough to occupy them.

On a trivial note, I have a dream that my children decide to be intense ecologically pious surfers, so that they insist we move to a coastline & they spend every moment (that they're not reading books) engaging with the elements & being political about sewage. I think that is probably the ideal teenagerhood.

redpanda, sadly, your instinct to worry about your ds more is correct
Boys are much more likely to be mugged or the victims of violent crime

I know.............

Hence the kick-boxing lessons........although as I said earlier I think I would prefer him to run rather than try to defend himself.