What's it like growing up in a village?

[zcjtb43]

We find it difficult to make a decision about where to live.

We currently live in a village which is lovely - safe, local amenities etc. but both of us grew up in (small) cities.

We cant help wonder if there will be more choices of activities as the girls (3 year old twins) grow up if we moved, although cities feel less safe of course, with more visible evidence of the harsh realities of life. There's more choice of schools. Rural life sometimes feels a little bland and samey (winter doesn't help it's case!), with an average school and not much choice on education, and a half hour journey for education post 16. We're currently near no family either.

Does anyone else have this dilemma? We've been going round in circles for at least a year and it's driving us insane! I work from home which is a blessing and a curse on this question!

Lovely, if you feel at home in a village and can't imagine living anywhere else. If the school is the school your parents went to you tend to care less about how 'good' Ofsted thinks it is, because your family is much older than Ofsted.

If you're city dwellers by upbringing you might struggle, long term.

Honestly I hated it. Everyone knew everyone's business and the public transport was rubbish. If I wanted to meet friends as a teen I would need to take a bus to meet them then another bus wherever we were going or get a lift. I had to get the bus to school on my own whereas friends walked together. I live in a small town now which has more amenities, links and means my DDs have friends locally and can walk to school.

Depends on the village really. We live in a small one and it's half an hour on a school bus for secondary school let alone post 16, but it's on a good bus route to three small towns and also The Big City, although that is an hour.

Kids seem fine but there is a lot of ferrying them around, so be prepared for that!

I loved it as a child and hated it when we moved. The countryside may not have as many formal clubs etc but I do think you can give children more freedom there and that it's better for their imagination etc. I also wouldn't necessarily go by what Ofsted say in terms of school rating personally. However, if you don't think you will be happy then perhaps it will be better to move? Is there a halfway compromise you could aim for? So maybe just outside a town/small city?

You’ll have to get ponies so the children always have something to do (and their own transport to the co-op from an early age).

Lonely. Dangerous: the roads are fast (a fair few from my school died in road accidents) and there are lots of quiet places where sexual assault can (and does) happen.

I grew up in a tiny village (smaller than yours by the sounds of it - houses and a bus stop that had one bus onto the very small market town an hour between 8 and 6).

It was fine as a child, horrendous as a teen.
But it does depend on the kind of teens you have. I had some very horsey friends who were very happy to fill their time riding and doing all the endless horse stuff. For me, it was mind-numbingly boring and isolating most of the time.

My friends all lived in other villages - it was a twenty minute drive to my best friend's house - so it meant being totally dependent on getting a lift from parents; no going to anyone's house casually after school etc. It means you have no privacy either, everything you do is observed by your parents because you cant do anything without them facilitating it. The miserable feeling of being trapped (because you're too young to drive) is one I remember vividly.

The countryside is also pretty bleak and inhospitable for much of the year. Again, if your teens are outdoorsy types, maybe this won't bother them.

I've lived in London for the past twenty odd years. I love it and am consciously grateful for all its connectedness and fullness. I regularly do so much that I'd vanishingly rarely get the opportunity to do if I lived where I grew up. I admit to having a few wobbles when the DC were younger that I was depriving them of some bucolic freedoms, but now they're teens I get so much pleasure at them having full lives that they have (some!) autonomy over. It seems so much happier and more rewarding than my adolescence.

I appreciate there are many middle grounds between London and isolated village, of course. But that was my experience.

My advice is, if you stay put, it will make a huge difference to the DC if you are willing and upcomplaining about taxiing them about the place.

IMO it can be lonely and isolating. My DH would not inflict it on his kids after his youth!

It also means parents have to do a lot of taxi driving, and therefore teens are more restricted in the experiences they can have independently.

We have lived in a village, a small town and a small city. The village was by far the worst for bringing up kids, espcially in the bad weather months. The small town and city were different but both had far more positives.

I think these things bring real benefits to older children:

• being able to walk to secondary school
• being able to walk to the shops
• being able to walk to friends
• having access to public transport to go to other places
• having access to some form of leisure activity (the town we lived in had a cinema, a pool, a skate park, sports clubs)

You’ll have to get ponies so the children always have something to do

Yeah, 'cos every one who lives in a village has a few spare acres knocking around to put the ponies and a limitless bank account to pay the vet bills.

I grew up in a city, dh grew up in a village. I’m regularly astonished by the stuff he missed out on as a teen that I took for granted. I would never inflict the misery of rural life on my teens.

Lonely, boring and as a teen almost suffocating as we had to be driven everywhere. Both my brother and I ran far far away as soon as we were able. My parents have now finally moved into the nearest small town and keep saying they wish they’d done it years ago.

@AlexaLouder

I grew up in a tiny village (smaller than yours by the sounds of it - houses and a bus stop that had one bus onto the very small market town an hour between 8 and 6).

It was fine as a child, horrendous as a teen.
But it does depend on the kind of teens you have. I had some very horsey friends who were very happy to fill their time riding and doing all the endless horse stuff. For me, it was mind-numbingly boring and isolating most of the time.

My friends all lived in other villages - it was a twenty minute drive to my best friend's house - so it meant being totally dependent on getting a lift from parents; no going to anyone's house casually after school etc. It means you have no privacy either, everything you do is observed by your parents because you cant do anything without them facilitating it. The miserable feeling of being trapped (because you're too young to drive) is one I remember vividly.

The countryside is also pretty bleak and inhospitable for much of the year. Again, if your teens are outdoorsy types, maybe this won't bother them.

I've lived in London for the past twenty odd years. I love it and am consciously grateful for all its connectedness and fullness. I regularly do so much that I'd vanishingly rarely get the opportunity to do if I lived where I grew up. I admit to having a few wobbles when the DC were younger that I was depriving them of some bucolic freedoms, but now they're teens I get so much pleasure at them having full lives that they have (some!) autonomy over. It seems so much happier and more rewarding than my adolescence.

I appreciate there are many middle grounds between London and isolated village, of course. But that was my experience.

My advice is, if you stay put, it will make a huge difference to the DC if you are willing and upcomplaining about taxiing them about the place.

Enjoy London! I went to Uni there and had an amazing time. The amount going on is incredible and I found several of my own passions whilst having it in such easy access to it all, a lot of which was free of course.

I found it quite claustrophobic as a child, you just can't get away from the same people, and you tend to be pigeonholed young (as naughty in my case) and it's hard to break out of that. I did love the rural location and nature but I'm happier to be raising my kids in a city.

Asva child it was idyllic. Lots of freedom, building dens in fields, playing in the stream, riding bikes up and down the tracks etc. As a teenager.... Awful and isolated. Bus was terrible and not fair to expect parents to be a taxi service all of the time. We moved when i was 16 to the town and it was brilliant!

Great when kids are babies and toddlers . Absolutely shit when teens.

I loved it, but I was at boarding school, so the holidays were a chance to have some down time, pootle around with friends who had horses etc. But my brother, who was far more sociable than me, found it stifling, and my parents did a LOT of driving us/him to parties etc. Where we lived, there were no buses, so you had to drive or be driven.

We currently live in a town and my 4 children walk to school and to friends, leisure centre, bus to the cinema etc. I feel claustrophobic a lot of the time, but realise it's much better for them at this current stage of life!

Shit. Hardly any kids when I was younger, and social class creates silos which means it's hard to mix with the kids that are about (the land owners.kids wouldn't mix with the farm hands kids or the estate kids). Teenage years were incredibly isolating because getting anywhere involved begging parents for a lift to somewhere an hour away. I'm bringing DC up in a city for very good reason!

I grew up in a village. Lovely as a young child but I absolutely hated it from about 12 onwards, as did my brother.

We both found it suffocating, totally trapped in this tiny place with barely any public transport and full of folk who knew everyone else's business (or at least thought they did!)

We both left asap (despite living in a lovely house with wonderful parents!) and never looked back. It's no coincidence that we both fled to London initially and eventually settled in large, vibrant cities.

I grew up in a village. It was shit.

At primary school it was fine as all the kids lived in the village too.

At secondary and beyond it was pants. All my friends lived in the nearby town so I was always having to get lifts to see them.

There were very limited opportunities for things for us to do even in the town.

Nearest city was 45 mins away. Ended up going to a sixth form college here which didn't make seeing friends at weekends any easier.

I live in London now and would never go back to rural living

Oh and don't be misled that a village is 'safe' There was some pretty dark stuff going on in our village amongst the teenagers when I was growing up! I don't think boredom helps and there is so little for children to do as they grow up in a village and have nowhere to explore.
My dc have grown up very street wise, I definitely see the difference when they mix with friends who have had more of rural/sheltered upbringing!

it has all been said above,
i left village life to go to london as soon as i was an adult, but came back when pregnant.

teenagers make their own fun in villages, camp outs in fields, or become isolated or rely on parents to drive here and there
my village is being eaten up by new houses = new families and new bored teenagers congregating

Loved it. Lived outside a village so was a mile for anything. Primary school was a 25 minute drive. Secondary was almost an hour even if I didn’t take the bus (4 a day, 5 during term time). Moved to a village just before DS was born. There’s no shop, school or even play park here but we have everything we need. About a mile from the nearest town and we walk across fields to get there. We’d prefer to be more rural but it’s so hard to find property (in budget).

I love it. Grew up in the same village, moved into a town for a while and then came back to the village when I was pregnant. Yeah there is the element of nosiness but there's also a good sense of community. People know each other and care about each other. Our village is pretty rural with some lovely walks and beauty spots but it's also not too remote - a ten minute drive into town and good bus and motorway links. We have a nice village school, pubs, village hall and I much prefer it to being some anonymous face in a big city.

It’s dull for teens and you will turn into a taxi service.

If you aren’t keen to move back to a city then could you shift to the outskirts of a market town? One that would also improve the educational opportunities?

Hated it as a teen, no transport, shops or friends