Moving House

[Willsoo]

Hi. Please can I get advice from anyone who has made a recent move from one place to another with a family? We have previously lived down south, husband is from the area and I have lived there for about 8 years, originally from up north myself. My husband’s work is finance based so pretty much down south in the city. I am a teacher so can work anywhere. We have two small children under 5.
When I moved down south after university, where I met my husband, I was happy to have a bit of a change and try it down there. Although I missed home and my family up north, I mostly enjoyed it and made some great friends down there. When the arrival of my first son came, which was during covid (very difficult times) I started to really miss my family. My in laws were great in the help they gave me but it wasn’t the same as the bond I had with my mum. I felt so sad that my parents were missing out on those precious early days with my son. I tried to let these feelings go and moved on with my life. A few years later the birth of my next child arrived. I started to feel the same. A lot had changed with my in laws and my SIL also gave birth which started to create some problems. I felt like my MIL started to favour her daughter’s child more and I felt quite pushed out. We lived in a 3 bed semi but I was ideally wanting a detached home. I felt uncomfortable paying the London prices and suggested to my husband we move up north.

I always thought it would be a flat out NO from him but due to covid happening, and him working mostly from home, his manager agreed to it with him travelling once every two weeks. Fast forward a year and we are in our new home- 5 bed detached with the beach on our door step. I feel so lucky but after all that stress, upsetting my in laws a lot- I miss it down south. I thought moving up north was everything I wanted but actually I miss my friends down there, the weather etc. The childcare I thought my parents would give has been different. They don’t seem as interested as I thought they might be.

I understand it is going to take some time to settle, perhaps a year or so. I just feel like it was the wrong move and perhaps I should have not been selfish. My children were happy down there, my husband and I shouldn’t have pushed it. Has anyone made a big move like this with family? How long did it take for you to settle? I can’t see moving back as an option now where I don’t have a teaching job currently. Plus I can’t hack the thought of going through it again.

We lived in London for 5 years, and had 2 babies there. Our parents missed out on a lot of our first baby as it was so far from them and so expensive to travel that we didn't make it back to visit family very often and they came to visit once each.
I had made great friends in London and loved it there, but my husband was keen to move back to where we're from. We moved back and got a 3 bed house with a garden (as opposed to the damp 2 bed flat we were living in in London) and we were a 15 minute walk away from my family. It all seemed ideal. I went all out and got the children into a school that was 5 minutes from my parents house and 20 minutes from our house, thinking they might like to collect their grandchild on the odd occasion or to help us out from time to time. Turned out they were not that interested. They collected my child once in 7 years. They were interested from afar but when we were nearby they never came to visit, never offered to babysit and usually seemed to be busy, going off places themselves. I thought my dad was going to retire when we moved back, but he decided to stay working even though he has a very good pension. And a few months after we moved there my sister had a baby and my mum was only interested in helping her instead. So my experience is you can't count on family. It was nice initially for a few months but then everyone just lived their own life with little interest in us. I really missed the life I had built in London for about 4 or 5 years after the move, looking back it was possibly cos I was missing my freedom as I was so tied down as a SAHM of 3, aged 3 and under by then. My family could have helped out a lot more but they didn't. But you don't know these things til you try them.
I think you have to weigh up if you could go back to a smaller sized property with your kids at the age they are now. We could not have gone back to London very easily and made it work so had to mentally move on and accept it was a new phase of life.

How long since you made the move? Moving is very unsettling especially if you need to build up a new network of friends. Work on that for now and review it again in 6 months.