Toddlers and roof terraces

[MollFlounders]

Hi, this could equally be an AIBU but I'd just like some views on the following. DH and I have lived for a few years in a lovely flat on a river. We have great views and a nice glass balcony over the river, 4 floors up. We now have DD, aged 9 months, and need more space and want to move. I really want to move into a house. Our balcony scares me (DD is already cruising). I know houses have their own dangers with stairs etc but I'd love our outdoor space to be a nice groundfloor garden where we can open up the back doors and let DD run around in the grass and keep an eye on her from the kitchen. DH thinks that moving into a house is letting our lives be dictated by a baby and that it would be fine if we found a similar flat to what we have now but with an extra bedroom and a roof terrace instead of a balcony. He says we'll simply supervise DD (and any other DC- he wants more than one) at all times and not let her onto the roof terrace alone. This worries me- even with just DD to look after, I don't think it's realistic. I guess we could gate off the roof terrace but it just seems to add an element of household risk that you don't have in a garden. Money isn't a problem- the flats he likes cost the same as the houses I like. We'd have to change areas (our current area is flats only) but our commutes wouldn't change (we walk to work).

What do you think? I know there are millions of people living in flats with kids. It's just that we're in the fortunate position of being able to buy a house. Or am I being a bit precious?

If I had the choice I would buy a house with a garden

Thanks random. It seems obvious to me but DH has a bent against it.

We live in a flat with a roof terrace with DS (4) and DD (1) and I would dearly love to be in a house with a garden. I was never bothered about gardens before I had the DCs, but it really bugs me that I need to keep an eye on them on the terrace and can't just have them running in and out and doing kid stuff in a garden the way I used to as a child (plus I'm constantly half-convinced that one of these days I'm going to take my eyes off one of them for a couple of minutes and they'll be up and over the railings). AND, even when supervised, the DCs drop stuff (toys, pebbles...) over the edge with lightning speed. I envy people with houses. If I could turn back the clock (we bought this flat pre-children but planning to have children while living in it) I would have bought a house instead, even though for the same money it wouldn't have been as nice a house as this is a nice flat.

i.e. You are right and your DH is wrong...

I don't think you're being precious at all! Your DH thinks that moving into a house is letting your lives be dictated to? Helll-oooo - your lives are going to change immeasurably (I'm surprised they haven't already) because life post-children is not the same.

I live in a garden flat and my DS is two. Not only is it brilliant for him to be able to be outside on his own (and you're right - it would give you heart attacks if you had a terrace and were worrying about your DC falling all the time - even if you were out there with them, you wouldn't be able to relax), it gives me more space to have friends with kids over so we can all sit out and let the kids play with trikes and playhouses and sandpits and paddling pools. All the stuff that kids like doing basically.

I would definitely, definitely buy a house if I were in your shoes.

(I think he has wider issues around the impact your DD has already had and is going to have on your lives, though. There's "letting your lives be dictated by a baby" and then there's "making your life (which now contains a baby) easier" and he seems to be confusing the two... clinging to aspects of his pre-children life almost for the sake of it. Is this a general issue, outside the house/flat thing, do you think?)

Spicemonster and PortAndLemon - I can't tell you how much I agree re the life changing aspects of having DC and yes there are wider issues with DH on this. I wasn't completely sure what to think on this one, hence the thread. My life is dictated by a baby- but that's what I signed up for after all. DH doesn't seem to get this concept and we've had other similar incidents where he just keeps on doing what he's always done whereas it seems that it's my life that has done all the immeasurable changing. I'm not over the top (or too PFB, most of the time) and I work FT so it's not like I'm baby-obsessed. But what PandL says is right- you have to make your lives a bit easier, I think, rather than cling to old ways that don't work any more. It's so frustrating. We can't even talk about it- he's just fixed on the idea that it's all about DD and we're not making any decisions just for ourself anymore. Helll-oooo indeed.

I love the fact that your DH has managed to get 9mths into fatherhood without realising that your lives basically are going to be dictated by the baby for the next 18yrs. Get a house, by the time she's 18mths and properly charging about you'll be absolutely desperate for a garden.

Well of course you're not making decisions just for yourselves any more - you have an extra person to consider

Oh dear - have you talked to him about his plans to extend your family further but not consider your extra family members needs? Seems to me there is a bit of a disconnect there you need to sort out before you even consider ttc again. Sorry, I think you already know this. If it makes you feel any better, I know a lot of men like this and they do get it eventually on the whole, it just takes them a while.

If the children wouldn't be safe on their own on a roof terrace then it's quite clear that you're right, he's wrong. Could you casually discuss it with other parent friends, maybe he needs to hear that most other people feel the same as you

Yes you, the person you are now, wants to buy a house. That is at least in part because you're a mother to your DD, but being a mother is now part of who you are not the only part, sure, but it's not just a bolt-on or added extra that can be compartmentalised, and ignoring that is discrediting an entire aspect of you, as a person. It's extremely belittling.

IMO, of course.

If you live in SW London I'd be happy to bump into you somewhere by chance and rant on about the pain of living with children and a roof terrace until he gives in...

Thanks spicemonster- I think you posted on another thread I started last time DH and I had one of these disconnects. That time I was angry and it went in AIBU.

kitsmummy - when I say that most other people feel the same, he says "well I don't like thinking the way most people think/doing
what most people do" or, my personal favourite, "most people lack imagination". He can be such a jerk.

PandL - you describe it perfectly, the fact that once you are a mother it becomes a part of who you are. Before we had kids, I would have thought DH would really value my commitment to our DC. Instead he just seems to find it....well, I don't know what. I guess he doesn't value it or is perhaps a bit threatened by it. Not sure. Thanks for the ranting offer! I wish it would work...

Moll, you're definitely right! I live in a flat in London and we have a roof terrace and we're moving (fingers crossed) soon.

The roof terrace conforms to all building regs, ie there are iron railings all around, with narrow spacings and no gaps underneath, however ds is pretty much in to everything (he's 22 months) and although he's never had an incident, I'd never leave him up there on his own (certainly not for more than a few seconds). He peers through the railings which I'm fine with, but when he's indoors he's always moving chairs around so he can stand on them and look out the window so I'm terrified he'll do the same on the roof terrace.

Actually I'm quite nervous about him standing at windows 2 floors up anyway, I always remember Eric Clapton's poor little boy falling out of a flat window and dying. We now have window locks so we can have the sash windows open only a tiny bit, like an inch, so ds is safe.

For us though, the need to move was much more of a space issue. I know boys are sometimes more boisterous than girls, and ours certainly fits in that category, but all toddlers need room to run, and you'd have to have a pretty massive roof terrace to give a toddler the room to run around, and if you can afford that, you may as well go for a house.

Tell your dh about the house we're buying. It has massive bifold doors that open up the back of the kitchen/diner completely, so we fully intend to sit there on sunday mornings nursing a pot of tea and the papers while ds charges around the garden with a football, instead of hauling ourselves off to the park at some unGodly hour! Now how's that for not compromising your life for your dcs?

Try selling him that instead. Good luck!

I am guessing that when he says that he doesn't like doing what most people do, he isn't actually imperilling his physical comfort? He doesn't sleep on a large coil of barbed wire because most people sleep on a mattress and he doesn't want to do what most people do? He doesn't rise every two hours at night to do a forty-minute workout because it's more imaginative than aiming for 6-8 hours sleep? He doesn't eat his dinner with his toes because he doesn't like being like all those people who use their hands or other implements? It's just the stuff that would make your life easier that he feels would be following the crowd to an unacceptable extent?

So, basically, when he says "I don't like doing what most people do" he means "I like doing exactly what I want at all times" or "I don't like doing what you want to do". It just sounds less cool / maverick / interesting when it's phrased that way. And more like he's a bit of a git (in this area; I'm sure he's absolutely delightful in other ways).

HeadFairy - your scenario about opening up the back doors is exactly what I have in mind. It sounds blissful! DH says that is suburbia and he likes sitting on his balcony overlooking the river, without rows and rows and streets and streets of identical houses around him. I also remember Eric Clapton's little boy- I have had Tears in Heaven in my head all day (we saw a lovely house this morning that DH dismissed as awful and we then had a row about this issue).

PandL - yes, there is selective crowd following here. Perhaps I should bring home a large coil of barbed wire for him to try out this evening....

He just thinks he can live the 'single' lifestyle forever. Does he have a sports car?
Get yourself a house and garden, you will realise then what a PITA flats are if you don't have to live in them.
When i was growing up (until the age of 11yrs old) we lived in a block of flats and we were constantly told to be quiet so we would not disturb the neighbours and then the neighbours would have all night parties!
A detached house with a big garden....best thing in the world

What does he think flats are? Rows and rows of identical box units on top of each other!
A real blot on the landscape!

Your flat will come with a long list of restrictive covenants listing what you can't do; a house won't, so he can sunbathe naked in the garden while making glue, listening to loud music, breeding scarlet macaws and inviting any friends of dubious moral character to stay (just thinking of leasehold restrictive covenants we've had over the years). That ought to appeal to his desire to follow his own path...

I think suburbia is a state of mind. We're moving to a Victorian detatched house, with beautiful original features that an architect and his wife have lovingly restored, the house is fab, quirky, slightly arty, not a beige wall and net curtain in sight. It's down to you if you want to live in "suburbia" but you can live in a house and still be bohemian, arty, city loving, cultured etc etc.

By the way, not to disrespect your dh, but he's only one half of a couple, do your views not come in to it? If you work full time, you are contributing to the family income. Can you afford to live somewhere close enough to the city, but far enough to make a house a realistic option? Are you in London?

Hmmm sounds like we could have some interesting neighbours if we move to SW London then PortandLemon! (although the combination of nudity, home made glue and birds with large beaks sounds very risky indeed)

Ripeberry - he does have a sports car (although we do have a family-ish car too). And one of his other reasons for not wanting a house is that we won't get secure undercover parking the way we have with our flat. But you can rent spaces as far as I'm aware so this can hardly be a deal-breaker, surely...

I want to sit in my kitchen making coffee and watching DD toddle around safely in the grass!

Headfairy- where did you get your block locks for sash windows as I am looking for something similar. Sorry for highjack

Ha! One of the big reasons we wound up in a flat rather than a house was that we could afford a flat with secure parking or a house with on-street parking, and DH really really wanted the secure parking for the sports car we had at the time. The garden would have had a far greater positive impact on our quality of life.

Sorry poppy, when we had the windows fitted, the window fitter chappie put them in for us.
They look like this but are brass.

HeadFairy, your place sounds fabulous. What he is referring to as suburbia is what most people would think of as a pretty happening suburb in Zone 1 (we're in London). So it's not like we're contemplating the ends of the earth where we've got no prospect of ever getting out to a restaurant or a bar or the theatre (well, if we could ever get our babysitting arrangements sorted). Yes, my views.... I've realised since having DD that DH is quite selfish. I guess that gets exposed a bit more when you have DCs and you realise you're the one doing all the adapting. I earn quite a lot more than DH which is another topic all of its own. I think he is quite resentful of that and can be quite unsupportive.

I've just suggested to him that we look at perhaps renting a house in the area in question for 6 or 12 months so we can see what it's like (there's quite a lot for rent there at the moment). I thought that was quite a good idea. He's just emailed back saying "I don't want to move twice". Neither do I, but nor do I want to be living in this flat in 5 years time because we can't agree on how we want to live!

Sorry, poppy they actually look more like these (click on removable stops, the first option under sash window locks on the right hand side)

Crikey, I thought you were going to say you wanted to live in Purley, or Surbiton, or Kingston (nothing wrong with those areas by the way )

He's really got his head in the clouds hasn't he? Does he earn a fortune? Because I think he'll have to to ever be able to afford a house in zone 1. We live in Battersea (plenty of river frontage there, not many houses though), we're down by Wandsworth common, and it's not cheap to live in urban coolness, close to London and have a house.

As I said, terraced houses round here are about £750k (which is why we can only afford a flat) but for the same price as that pokey two bed flat we're getting a three bed house. Ok so it's in Reigate, which isn't probably what he's thinking of, it suits us, but from what he's saying, he'll never accept anywhere outside of zone 1, and unless he's a Russian Oligarch, you're not likely to ever be able to afford a house with a garden in zone 1.

He's not giving you much to work with really is he? Unless he knows he's about to inherit millions and you'll be able to afford a lovely townhouse in St John's Wood!