Do Kids Play Outside in Encinitas - Considering a Move (San Diego: HOA, vacation home)

[kanabkona]

Hi!
I'm new here and I appreciate everyone's great feedback on North County in the threads. It's so important for people who don't know what to expect to get information from someone other than a realtor. We live in a charming town outside of Park City in Utah, called Midway. Population is about 4,500. We have a fabulous neighborhood where the kids run and bike all over and the neighbors are friendly. The kids bike to the bus stop and leave their 8-15 bikes or scooters there and nothing happens to them - the kids or the bikes. We have no qualms about our 2nd grade daughter going to the park in our neighborhood on her own and meeting friends there or walking or biking on her own. Our house is bigger than we need an it's affordable. We have great hiking and mountainbiking and it is strikingly beautiful. We have a great group of friends as well.
What we lack is opportunity, the ocean, an influence that aligns more with our values, and a good school system. Park City has some of these things but has become a nest of the wealthy and wealthy wannabes.
In Midway, we are surrounded by Mormons and conservatives even though we aren't Mormon or conservative. They are very kind and we share many values such as the de-emphasis on materialism and money, family first, being kind and supportive, but we don't share other values which makes it harder as a parent.
We visited La Jolla on a trip to buy a vacation home and fell in love with Encinitas. We are thinking about moving to Encinitas. We liked Carlsbad and La Jolla as well but we can't really afford La Jolla.
So, here are our questions:
1. We thought it was odd that there were no kids or people outside in the neighborhoods in Encinitas. We were there during the week and on a Saturday. Are there neighborhoods where kids play outside or does this not really happen there other than the beach? Is it more of a formal playdate environment?
2. What are the parents like?
3. What is your favorite Elementary School?
4. Is there a better place for families around San Diego with excellent schools and friendly atmosphere? We'd prefer to be closer to the beach - I don't like brown.

Thanks for your input and for reading my very long post. This is a big decision!

[NYSD1995]

Kids in SD county are overscheduled. They are driven to soccer and playdates. Mom and Dad are busy and working hard. Raising kids in SD or anywhere in SoCal is a high stress, high pressure life. It's a transient community and people come and go. It's also expensive, and parents tend to be older and busy with their own interests vs. being focused on their young kids social life. If you are looking for areas with lots of little kids, the coastal areas are not going to be ideal in that regard unless you are very very wealthy or want to live in very small homes. Most of the young families can't afford to live in those areas. The families are generally in cookie-cutter, mass-produced tracts that are more inland, i.e. San Marcos, 4S Ranch, Chula Vista, etc.

[kanabkona]

Thank you for that insight. We can afford a reasonably sized home because we are older and only have one kid, but we are less enthusiastic about overscheduled kids and busy parents. I can live in the most laid back town and stress and busyness will find me!

[JakeDog]

A lot of kids are playing in backyards with friends. It's not as gloomy as suggested.

[Axxlrod]

We live on the encinitas/carlsbad border in an amazing gated neighborhood, but there's no way we'd let our 8yo take off and go to the park by himself on his scooter.

And I feel it necessary to dispel the myth that we go to the beach everyday. Most days are like anywhere else... school, sports practice, homework, dinner, shower, bedtime. Throw in a playdate or two per week, and add in a sports game/BBQ on weekends.

We'll go to the beach maybe two or three times per month during summer.

Some do go to the beach everyday, but most don't.

[sprez33]

Originally Posted by Sassberto

Kids in SD county are overscheduled. They are driven to soccer and playdates. Mom and Dad are busy and working hard. Raising kids in SD or anywhere in SoCal is a high stress, high pressure life. It's a transient community and people come and go. It's also expensive, and parents tend to be older and busy with their own interests vs. being focused on their young kids social life. If you are looking for areas with lots of little kids, the coastal areas are not going to be ideal in that regard unless you are very very wealthy or want to live in very small homes. Most of the young families can't afford to live in those areas. The families are generally in cookie-cutter, mass-produced tracts that are more inland, i.e. San Marcos, 4S Ranch, Chula Vista, etc.

This post has some very broad over-generalizations and is pretty much the opposite of our experience since we moved to SD 14 years ago.

Driving through my neighborhood (Carmel Valley) the parks are generally filled with kids, especially on the weekends. A combination of organized and non-organized activities. An interesting recent event in our neighborhood. Across the street from our home is a small park. It's really a large plot of green belt, maybe an acre, but it's owned by the HOA and it's been kept mostly as lawn. The HOA had some surplus money that it wanted to spend and proposed xeriscaping the plot to save water in the future. The local parents were so against this because so many kids use this for play, a lot of it unsupervised as it's close to homes. In the end, we organized and voted in a new HOA board that promised to keep it as is. Are some kids in SD over programmed? I suspect it's so but it's not universal. Also, the other side of the over programmed coin is high levels of achievement. Each family seems to find it's own balance. In my experience, SoCal kids are exposed to a lot more in life and probably bias towards over programming but there's a lot of kids who take up surfing as a hobby. Actually, if you want to see SD kids in unsupervised play, go to the beaches. We let our kids walk to middle school (about a mile) and there are lots of kids walking through the neighborhood on school days.

As to SD being transient, our experience has been the exact opposite. We moved here ~14 years ago when our kids were very young. A lot of our new friends were made through kids school and other activities. We formed a network of close and loose friendships across a couple dozen families. Pretty much all of us are still local and whilst our kids have diverged in terms of interests and activities, we still have a very strong network of family friendships. In fact, we have a group of about 2 dozen dads, all from having our kids in Adventure Guides, who get together monthly to er, discuss being better fathers, perhaps whilst sharing a beer. Professionally, my experience is that people want to stay in SD even as companies expand, merge, fail, etc. In my field, life sciences, which is very dynamic in terms of new company starts, failures, buyouts, etc, people do their best to stay in SD by consulting or starting new businesses rather than moving out of the area to new jobs.

Life in SD and SoCal can really be what you make it.

[NYSD1995]

Originally Posted by sprez33

This post has some very broad over-generalizations and is pretty much the opposite of our experience since we moved to SD 14 years ago.

Driving through my neighborhood (Carmel Valley) the parks are generally filled with kids, especially on the weekends..

Could you afford your current home at the prices they are now?

How many of your friends are in the military vs tech industry

It all depends on your socioeconomic rung on the ladder.

[sdurbanite]

Originally Posted by Sassberto

Could you afford your current home at the prices they are now?

How many of your friends are in the military vs tech industry

It all depends on your socioeconomic rung on the ladder.

According to the link below, 7.6% of the county's population is active military (including family members). Can't tell you what the percentage of tech workers is though.


"San Diego County has the largest concentration of military personnel within California. There are approximately 110,700 Active Duty personnel and 118,300 family members, which represents 7.6 percent of San Diego County’s total population. "


Military Demographics - PAL Military Resources

[1AngryTaxPayer]

Gone are the days you let your kids ride down to the park as it seems each park is assigned it's own homeless population at least part of the time.

There is no where in SD I'd leave a kids bike out front overnight.

[kanabkona]

Thanks for your helpful insight. One of the reasons we are thinking about the North County towns is because there is more opportunity. With that probably comes more scheduling for children and adults, so that is the trade off.