Moving far away with teenagers

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MarthaSo

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Hi all,
We currently are moving about an hours drive from where we live now. Our daughter is in her last year of HS and we’d be far from our old neighborhood (she doesn’t drive) and there are no buses. My eldest son is more independent at 20 and drives so i’m not worried about him. We want to move to a bit of a larger home with more space for the baby.

Has anyone any experience with teenagers being pulled away from their friends? I’m concerned this move will affect my daughter negatively. We live in nyc and are moving to suffolk for anyone familiar. She’s still in NY but far from her friends. She’ll be starting college soon after we move and is applying to the local schools in that area.

My husband is not concerned at all, he’s very flexible with his job and says he can drive her to class and to see her friends until she gets her license.

Any experience or advice appreciated. Thanks very much.
 
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When faced with the “move away or take new job with a dramatic lower pay” decision during our son’s senior year of high school, I chose the lower pay.

If the only compelling reason is room for the baby, the baby will not need any more room at 15 months than baby needs at 3 months. Personally, I’d wait to move after daughter graduates high school.
 
I am familiar with where you are talking about. Is there any way that your daughter could finish out at the high school she is in? I actually think that to move her this late and to a place that is so different might be detrimental to your daughter’s future. Do you have relatives or does she have a good friend where she could stay during the week and come home on weekends?
 
hi all sorry i was unclear she would have graduated by the time we move😊
 
Hi Irishmom! She will have graduated HS by the time we move in July and start college the next month.
 
Hi thank you, another reason would be to buy vs rent as this is what my husband would like. thank you
 
MarthaSo said:
Hi Irishmom! She will have graduated HS by the time we move in July and start college the next month.
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in that case, she’s already looking at the post high school dispersion.

It’s easier on kids these days with FaceTime on unlimited bandwidth than the 80s when long distance was still twenty five cents a minute . . .

I set a hard deadline of the summer after my oldest finished eighth grade to be somewhere I was willing to remain five years (she had a sisters a year behind her, and I didn’t want to move while they were in high school).

I didn’t find anywhere else, so we kicked out the tenants and moved home.
 
Is there a reason daughter doesn’t drive? I would remedy that, quickly. She will have more independence and it may soften the blow to her of moving.
 
I think it sounds like this will work out all right, but I would try to be supportive about helping her stay in touch with her friends. Will she be living at home for college? How many kids are at home in the family? I think it depends on the family dynamics as well. It’s such a different situation if there are, say, seven kids at home vs three, etc.
 
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As your husband seems to have a solution to any angst, the point seems moot. However, considering that many children he age and class are about to go away to college, which often means they are going somewhere that may not be the destination of anyone they know let alone better or best friends, it likely can be an introduction to the next step in her scholarly life.

Which is another way to say, that it is not that she will feel no uprooting, but rather that she is getting that about 7 or 8 months early,.

Good dad!
 
We just moved with a teenage daughter and the move actually turned out really good for her. Pray about it.
 
NYC native here! Suffolk County is only something like 20 miles from NYC. There is only one county separating Suffolk from NYC. That is really not a long distance. It’s actually no further than Staten Island to the Bronx. Like people have said, kids move away from home after high school anyway. There’ll be people moving to the west coast or Europe. Personally, I like living in a big city, but if you don’t mind moving out, and if you can buy a house there, and a bigger one at that, it sounds like an obvious thing to do. Your daughter can keep in touch with her friends easily enough and if she really wants to live in NYC again she can move back there independently in a few years.
QwertyGirl said:
Is there a reason daughter doesn’t drive?
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I don’t know where you are from, so forgive me if you are from NYC. In short, NYC is one of few places in the US where it is possible, and indeed quite normal, for many people not to be able to drive, so there is quite possibly no particular reason.
 
It’s actually 83 miles from NYC to Suffolk County, but you are right, most people there don’t have cars or drive, while in Suffolk County, you really need one.
 
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do_justly_love_mercy said:
I don’t know where you are from, so forgive me if you are from NYC. In short, NYC is one of few places in the US where it is possible, and indeed quite normal, for many people not to be able to drive, so there is quite possibly no particular reason.
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Son can drive. Even if one doesn’t drive, but knows that they can, it can impart a feeling of Independence that otherwise is not possible. Sounds like it might be worthwhile for daughter to get her license as well.
 
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It seems pretty clear that moving would be the right decision. You’re daughter will be done with HS, as will her friends and they will all be headed different directions in the fall. Buying generates equity, renting flushes money down the toilet. You are blessed with the option of leaving NYC for cleaner air your baby, more space for the entire family is just a bonus.
 
QwertyGirl said:
Son can drive. Even if one doesn’t drive, but knows that they can, it can impart a feeling of Independence that otherwise is not possible. Sounds like it might be worthwhile for daughter to get her license as well.
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I agree. I was just explaining why this might be the case. If the girl is in her final year of high school she has presumably only been old enough to legally drive for about one year anyway. In NYC there is no need for a 16- or 17-year-old to learn to drive. In many parts of the country kids will learn to drive as soon as they possibly can, but if you live in NYC there is no particular reason to do so. People from outside NYC will often imagine that there must be a reason why somebody doesn’t drive, whereas if you are from NYC, it could simply be because you are from NYC.
Irishmom2 said:
It’s actually 83 miles from NYC to Suffolk County
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It depends between which two points you are measuring. I was measuring from the easternmost point in Queens to the westernmost point in Suffolk County, which is about 20 miles. From Tottenville, Staten Island to Montauk is about 120 miles. So, yes, 80 miles is probably roughly the distance from the middle of NYC to the middle of Suffolk.
 
That is a different thing.

Your then adult daughter could even choose to get a job and find her own place to live if she did not want to move away.
 
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