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My wife and I both have professional level jobs - she's a recruiter for an insurance company and I'm a financial analyst for a major defense contractor. We have a 2 yr. old and a 4 yr. old and live outside of Syracuse, NY. The majority of our families live within a half hour of us. My wife and I are both warm weather people who would ideally like to move south - we're thinking of Charlotte or Raleigh, NC. Although the area around here is nice the winters kill us!
Our issue is that we're having a hard time uprooting the kids away from their grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins. I think of different occasions when we have alot of family around - birthday parties, graduations, recitals, ballgames - and can't help but think that those events would be much less meaningful without family around.
Anyways, I'd like to hear from any of you who moved your family away and may have struggled with the same feelingsand how you dealt with them.
It sounds like we're in the same situation, and actually possibly going to the same city (Raleigh)! This is a major concern of ours, too, and I'll keep checking this thread to see what responses you get!
My wife and I both have professional level jobs - she's a recruiter for an insurance company and I'm a financial analyst for a major defense contractor. We have a 2 yr. old and a 4 yr. old and live outside of Syracuse, NY. The majority of our families live within a half hour of us. My wife and I are both warm weather people who would ideally like to move south - we're thinking of Charlotte or Raleigh, NC. Although the area around here is nice the winters kill us!
Our issue is that we're having a hard time uprooting the kids away from their grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins. I think of different occasions when we have alot of family around - birthday parties, graduations, recitals, ballgames - and can't help but think that those events would be much less meaningful without family around.
Anyways, I'd like to hear from any of you who moved your family away and may have struggled with the same feelingsand how you dealt with them.
Jazzy, I can only speak from my personal experience, and my "children" are now 27 and 30. Their father and I divorced and I remarried when they were 7 and 9 and we moved only 30 miles away, but our built-in support system crashed. This was many years ago, maybe the world has changed in the past 20 years - but they NEEDED to be with family...I needed to be with family. Our move was part of something a little more deep-seated than just moving, which is another story for another day, but the daily or weekly interaction was gone and the relationships with the extended families were...not destroyed, that's not a good word, but definitely impeded.
I think a sense of family is one of the most important things you can give your children...it sounds as if you have a very closely knit family and you are banking memories for your children right now. That's important. Some of that was lost to my children after my move - not all, but a good portion. I felt as if my family was making me crazy - after getting away from them, I realized all families are slightly insane, but it's an insanity you understand and really can deal with more than you thought.
After my children were grown my husband and I moved to the Caribbean, which was an absolute life dream for us.....and we hated it. Being away from the kids, the nutty families, everything that was important to us, was very difficult.....we elected to return and are quite pleased with our decision. We were trying to watch our families age and grow and die back from 2500 miles from "home" and it wasn't a nice experience. It was incredibly difficult on us mentally to want to be there, want to participate in the July 4th family extravaganza, want to be there for the cousin's child's national volleyball tourney - and simply not be able to without spending most of our lives on a plane.
Flip side is this - if you are going to move, do it now, then park your fannies until your kids are grown. The friends they make now and through their high school years will be buddies for life, most likely, and the older they get, the harder it is on them to make that move. They can adapt to the move and perhaps you can make special memories with regular trips back - but personally, I wouldn't do it again based on what my kids now tell me - that they felt fractured off from the people they loved the most and that they've never quite found their footing again.
We just moved our children (2 and 4) over 500 miles from my in-laws (my parents aren't in the picture much). The in-laws are very salt-of-the-earth people, and could NOT understand how we could ever move away. We saw them maybe 1-2x/mo, before...they lived 1 1/2 hours away.
They are the kind of people that will NOT get on an airplane to come visit (though it would be a lot easier, and more inexpensive, for them). So, we intentionally try to make trips to see them. My husband and I both managed a 5 day weekend to see them this fourth of july, and we saw them in april as well (we moved in March). I assume one of two of our yearly vacations will be spent with them. Point being, we are trying are darnedest to still maintain a relationship with them.
BUT....if you are moving JUST for the weather, is that worth it? We moved for weather as well (ha! we went from 1 hour east of Raleigh, to PA)...we wanted cooler summers/less humidity/some snow. We wanted more outdoor activities, better jobs, better family time. And, we got just what we were looking for. If we had a great relationship with the grandparents, we honestly probably wouldn't have left.
Are there closer places to you that fulfill your requirements? It's expensive buying four airline tickets frequently! (and rental car, and dragging car seats, and and and)
And, I agree...if you're going to do it, do it now...our children made the transition VERY easily...
Hi! We just moved away from grandparents. It was hard. We have their only grandchild. I do miss being near them. What I have found is we have met others in the same boat and they have becom family. We met another couple with a daughter the same age as ours and we have become close. We celebrated our girls first birthday together. It is hard to be away from Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents....but in my family's case we live all over the world so it would be hard to find a place everyone would stay. We did buy a webcam and got one for everyone so we could talk (for free ) and actually see each other. Good luck with your choice. It is a hard decision to make, but you have to do what is right for you as a family. There is something nice about moving together as a family. In our case, it has brought us closer together.
I am in this situation too. We came to FL RIGHT before it exploded, and started renting. Then FL exploded, and now we can't really own. Or if we do....it will be a shack. But we have the kid's grandparents down here 7 minutes away, who we see about once a week...and the kid's aunt, uncle and baby cousin come down every 3 months, for a month.
But, I would like to own a house that is an actual house. A sense of home that I can be proud of. A yard. I can get the kind of house that i have always dreamed about for $160K elsewhere...and I can get a house that is about 600 square feet smaller, much smaller yard...with needed TLC, not in as nice a neighborhood, for over $210K, and that's not including overpriced taxes or insurance. And that is a rundown house for that price.
So either I pull teeth and not be as financially secure in a house that is not the house of my dreams, in not that great of a neighborhood....but I'm near family....or I go into a better environment with a house that I will want to grow old in, feel more financially secure...but have no family at all within 1000 miles.
But hten I think, if everyone felt like they couldn't be without family, then no one would ever move away. And people do. You make friends who become like family, and then when you do see family, you appreciate them a lot more.
So I think, if I can talk my husband into it, I will make that trip.
Here are a few more details ablout our situation. Someone asked if we're thinking of moving just because of the weather - the answer is no. The weather is one of the reasons but we also deal with high property taxes, stagnant economic growth, etc. Plus we are both ocean lovers so being landlocked and 4-5 hrs. from the nearest ocean really sucks. I don't know about other upstaters but I think one of the things that bugs us about living around here is it seems that everyone hates it. Everyone complains about living here. Then I talk to friends who live south or elsewhere and they love it where they are and people are flocking there.
My wife and I are both nearing 40 (eeeek!) so it's not like we're spring chickens either. I actually lived in south Florida (Boynton Beach) from my early 20's until I turned 30 - then I moved "home". I enjoyed my time in FL very much - for that period of my life it was great! I was young and single with few responsibilities - but I don't think I would ever raise a family there. But I'm also getting off-track.
My feeling is we're going to stay around here. We want to make this decision before our oldest starts school. And once we settle we plan to stay there a very long time and be happy with our decision.
This website seems to have a wealth of good information so I'm going to spend some time on here to see what other people think of this dilemma.
Kids are tough, they'll adapt there not even in school yet were they'll meet friends and have activities ... it's the parents that will have the biggest problems. (They just want to use the kids as an excuse for the concerns, when it's really theirs. )
My husband and I have struggled with this too since his family is all in WA and mine in FL and PR. We relocated to WA and realized very quickly that Seattle wasn't the right fit for our family. My husband had a great job opportunity in DC and we decided to move back to the area. In an ideal world, children would grow up with an extended family closeby, but you have to think about what is best for your nuclear family. I do think it's easier to relocate the children when they are young versus when they have friends in school and the neighborhood. The teen years are definitely the worst time to do it.
We are very close to our families and talk to each other often via phone and email. We also try to see each other at least once per year. Now we are trying the webcam so that grandparents don't miss out on our toddler's development.
We live 3000 miles and an ocean away from all our family. We have two boys who have never grown up with their cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. We go home once a year for 10 days.
Honestly, it is hard. But it made us stronger as a family, as a couple and a lot more independent.
My son made his communion in May and in the church everyone was surrounded by their pews full of family. There was 4 in our pew and it was very very lonely. However, his teacher came and we got talking. I said it was a very lonely day for us and her reply was ; oh but you get to travel so much and that in itself is an education. Yes, it is hard at holidays not to be around family. But it means that the four of us do things together all the time.
I hope I helped
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) and actually see each other. Good luck with your choice. It is a hard decision to make, but you have to do what is right for you as a family. There is something nice about moving together as a family. In our case, it has brought us closer together.
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