What is it like to move your children to a more rural location?

[Trafford99]

My husband and I have the opportunity to build our dream house. I never in my wildest dreams expected this. However the only thing that is putting me off is the location. I have lived in rural locations before but my children haven't. It is a little further in the sticks than we would have liked, surrounded by trees and a stream running through the bottom half of the garden (the plot is about 1 acre). 3 things worry me:
1- it may be dark, although we will cut a lot of the trees back there won't be a view as such.
2 - we have children, will the stream be a constant source of worry (even though we will fence it off)
3 - the children will miss having neighbours close by (although they will have a massive garden to play in!)
Does anyone have any experience of living somewhere like this or making a move like this? I feel we'd be stupid to pass this opportunity up but have to make sure it's right for the whole family (or am I overthinking it all 🤦‍♀️) .

I don't know how old your kids are, but the first thing I thought of is that if you choose to live in a rural location, then the responsibility becomes yours for facilitating their social lives. I had one parent who didn't see the point in this and it became a combination of missing out on lots of social activities and my other parent spending a lot of time ferrying us about.

These sorts of moves always sound great for younger children.

How does it look when your children are teens? Is there any public transport, or will they have zero independence and not be able to do anything unless their parents drive them around? Your average 7 year old might love the massive garden; your average teen is more likely to want to go to town with their friends.

I would go for it as long as schools were ok nearby. The stream will be great fun and once they get to 7/8 I don't think you would need to supervise (presumably it is shallow?). How old are your children? I think it might be difficult to move teens to somewhere like this but under 9/10 I would do it (and have!).

Totally depends on their age. If they are young, then probably your only issue is the danger of the stream, in which case a good fence will be fine. They'll adapt to rural life fine.

If they are later primary or older, it depends on their personalities and hobbies. Do they make new friends easily or struggle? Do they love the cinema, shopping and unusual sports? Or do they like walks, building dens in trees and football in the garden?

Will there be sports clubs they can walk or cycle to when they're older,? What about distance to where other friends are likely to live? If not, they'll be more restricted with when they can do stuff, and you'll have to ferry them everywhere.

I think the proximity and ease of access to school, facilities, clubs etc would be the deciding factor for me. I have friends who live in rural areas and from what I can tell they spend most of their evenings and weekends driving them from A to B as even now they're teenagers they can't get to anywhere by themselves. I suspect lockdown is the first time they've really had chance to benefit from where they live!

Please don’t cut the trees back, they are so very important! If you absolutely must then please do it outside nesting season.

Depends on the age of your DC, and whether they already are use to one way of life.

Mine were use to village life, calling on friends nearby, walking to school, going to the park when they felt like (park at the of the street.

We had to move due to work. They hated it. massive garden huge! but they were lonely, everything had to be pre arranged, and friends had to be driven to us or us pick them up drop them off. after school activities were again a nightmare as one might have an activity and other might not. so I'd have to drive pick up one go home then 10mins later go back and get the other one.

as they got into teens their social life was wholly dependent on us being available to get them places.

on the plus side we all like the fact we have no neighbours.

if I went back in time and if we had had a choice, I probably would not move here.

I grew up very rurally
Echo the others, great for small children shit for teens.
I was very horsey so was able to entertain myself but it took us about 90 mins each way to get to school on public transport, my sisters had no interest in rural pursuits at all, and were constantly mithering for lifts to other places. Friends rarely came to ours as it was inconveniently far out.
I didn’t mind I was a right loner and likely my horse but my sisters moved to London as soon as they hit 18!!

Two of my friends grew up rurally and hated it!!

Our house is down the street from my kids school. Every day after school all the neighbourhood kids play together and we see the rural kids sitting on the bus as it passes by. I always feel so sorry for them :(

Moving the kids to a rural location, whilst the adults stay put, was an occasional dream when ours were growing up!

Advantages are free play, safer in some ways, fresh air, space, people know each other in the community- ok if you are into that. Your interests may fit well.
Down fall:
Driving longer distances, smaller population at daycare and schools, clicky, limited time after school so reduces clubs, shopping, less visitors, isolation. After certain ages you become a taxis service. Unable to go out and drink
Being well stocked, reliable car, make your own entertainment. Lonely.
I find the limitations of rural life huge, lack of variety, social life, when I crave variety life and a mix of all types of people
We are leaving rural living as I discovered the surroundings no longer out weighed the lifestyle and activities we enjoy.. including the small minded people monitoring my every move.

How rural are you talking about?
Our children are primary and preschool age living in within 3 miles of a local small town I would say we are semi Rural we have the benefits of being surrounded by fields lovely walks but it is just a 10 minute drive into the centre of said town where we have all of the facilities we could need.

I wouldn’t have wanted to have been any further out for the sake of the children but I do think as they get older and wish to socialise that will be more difficult there is a village bus service that stops with the last commuter bus in an evening so we have accepted that we will be Taxi for a number of years facilitate their contact and we knew that when we moved

I would do it. One advantage of not living close to their school friends is when they get to an age you can keep tabs on where they are because you have to drive and pick them up. Just be prepared to have alcohol free evenings knowing you'll need to nip out for them! It's a pain but stops nonsense like meeting up in the park to smoke/drink/drugs. By the time they get cars hopefully, they will have avoided all the unsavory nonsense.

It worked for us.

My family moved to a very rural area when I was 10. Me and my siblings loved the change. We made friends with nearby neighbours and would cycle/walk to meet up with them. We spent all our summers outside, climbing streams, mountains etc. They were the best summers.

I have my DC now in the same area (we are building our dream house at the minute). I have two boys and know they will love the big garden, tree house, all the things we can fit in the garden, and the mountain walks etc.

We did the same thing. Self build opportunity and have been in a year now. It’s fabulous. Kids have adapted well to country life. The local school does outdoor muddy learning every week. They love playing with mud, sticks and making dens in the woods. Wish we could have done it sooner. The space they have to roam around with friends is amazing. Appreciate we will be giving lots of lifts when they are older but that’s only for few years till they can learn to drive. Don’t overthink it too much!

Do you and you DH both drive and have a car each? You will be doing a lot more driving.

How far from schools, shops, pub, public transport, medical centre etc will you be?

They will be tween+teenagers for longer than they will be at the playing in the garden stage.

I grew up very rurally And from what I can tell being a teenager in the middle of nowhere is just very different to growing up in a busier places. It’s definitely ‘character building’ and my friends from
home and I have quite a specific ‘culture’ that comes form having fuck all to do and spending our teen years walking miles to see each other, which then quite often tuned into staying for days at at time doing very little. We all knew each other’s parents very well!

In contrast to @tobyhouseman I rarely got lifts as a teenager cos I walked a lot! Easily walked 5 miles to see friends, but then that often turned into sleepover cos we weren’t going to walk back in the dark; parents couldn’t be arsed to pick us up. This inevitably can lead to smoking/drinking/drugs/sex and there was a drug scene (weed for most) from 13 at my school and quite a lot of underage sex/sexual activity. I think there was more of this in my peer group than my town/city friends because we were routinely unsupervised and left to our own devices. I was incredibly sensible and had some equally sensible and square friends so there wasn’t much of a downside for me, and tbf even the people who were into the drinking and smoking weed mainly lost interest by 6th form. I personally found being a teen in the countryside really fun and I developed a lot of independence BUT I know my mum, who grew up in a city, struggled with the lack of knowing where I was, she basically had to go with it for the most part.

I think you have to be ready for a weird hybrid of relaxed and strict parenting. As in, you can wander off by yourself but YOU MUST be sensible.

Sorry that was quite long I got a bit nostalgic 😂

My parents live rurally. As pp have said, they had to drive us everywhere as teens. We got the bus to secondary school (over 3miles so provided by the council) but my Mum couldn't have worked when we were in primary school because there was no wraparound childcare. Admittedly I'm in my 30s now so hopefully this has changed! Their Internet is rubbish as well

I would do it in a heart beat, but only if there were other things for them to do within, say, a 30 mins drive, and good schools nearby. Jealous!

We live rurally and it's a mixed bag. How far away are the schools and are they good. Is there a school bus and how many kids are on it (school buses are a good way of building friendships and after school playdates. Is there any kind of community (ours does christmas/ halloween parties for the kids which is lovely). Is it welcoming or will everyone ignore as haven't been there forever. We have a burn (stream) round the back and a river 100m away wet socks and the odd set of soggy knees is all that's happened in the 8 years I've been living here. Really don't think children are as determined to drown themselves as we adults like to imagine.

Children get a lot more freedom but you do have to drive for clubs and things.

We lived rurally.
The positives were lots of space and freedom as dc.
The downside as teenagers were hours spent on bikes getting somewhere and parents having to give lots of lifts.
Including well after midnight by late teens.

I guess if you try to recreate town or suburban living but in the countryside it’s going to be hard. You probably have to accept they won’t do extra curricular activities but instead will do things in the garden at home like grow plants or rear chickens. Otherwise you are just driving miles and miles to access sports halls and dance classes and not really getting the benefits of the country lifestyle that you’ve chosen.

I grew up rurally. As pps have said, there was a lot of drink/underage sex. The garden aspect was of no interest to me, even when little, I was an indoor kid, so playing outside was a much hated pastime. Got a driving licence as fast as I could and moved away as soon as possible, truly tedious place to grow up.

I also agree with superstardjs.
I had a lot of siblings, the ones who naturally gravitated to outdoor activities found it a lot easier than the ones who were indoors types.

So one sibling was musical which was and another liked one dance both of which were harder.

The horse mad one was given a pony and loved it.

There was also a lot of drink, drugs and sex because of limited other stuff to do.

but instead will do things in the garden at home like grow plants or rear chickens

Haha Haha

yeah we did all that, plus horses.(I am born and breed a country girl)
They.were.lonely.

Plus the utter heartbreak they had of seeing our rescue chickens killed of one by one or sometimes 2 by foxes. after trying for 2 years and 16 chickens later. We all decided it was kinder for chickens to not be rescued by us.

Playdates all had to be arranged with other parents who didn't want to be bothered with driving and dropping or picking their kids up (as they lived in a village and was easier to have their DC friends round the corner)