One of the choices we make is about where we live.

Many years ago, we had a crack house move in next door to our house.  We considered do we move or do we try to get rid of it.    Part of that choice was about what we were teaching our kids.

We had a teacher once who advised us our son would do so much better in a different school....yet, he was measuring different things than we do.

We live in an area identified as one of the regionals target neighbourhoods for social programs due to various risk factors.

Our schools have a combination of factors of why people are living with less income than other areas.  Some would say they are "poor", yet that language doesn't do it justice.  There are many who stay home with their children and live on one income, there are those who are recent immigrants, there are working people...those who have faced challenges and those who have made bad choices.

 The vast majority are everyday people wonderign what to feed their kids for lunch or hoping their teenager makes good choices.

Our best teachers would say they loved the school as they could make the most difference in our schools.

Our kids may not go to Hawaii for March Break or skiing at Whistler, but they may go to the families home in Mumbai for weeks or  be holy through Ramadan or head to Trinidad for march break.

I also know the norms in our neighbourhood was different and that sets the expectations or values differently.    My kids have understood poverty from the child who sat beside them.

Yet, I think they probably would have heard of a differnt kind of poverty if we moved to suburbia...the kind where people live from pay to pay ...over extended credit cards and massive mortgages , keeping up with the Jones...

I have to say, growing up in an area of the city where white is almost a minority (not so much in my elementary school, but mostly true in high school), I have greatly come to appreciate diversity in my life.  My area of the city is much like yours -- almost no one goes on fantastic spring/summer/winter break vacations -- but it's normal for a student to be absent for a month because s/he is visiting family in the Philippines.  It's common to see a house a little run down because the family can't afford to do extensive upkeep.  It's normal for kids to go home to an empty house because both parents have to work to afford the basics.

A lot of my friends that I have now as an adult grew up in suburbia, in the more affluent predominantly-white areas of Winnipeg.  I sometimes get strange looks from some of them when I make new friends that are drastically different from who I am.  Differences could be in ethnicity, culture, language, religion, achievement level, personal standing in life, sexuality, values, etc.  But then, that's all part of how we grew up -- my friends grew up where everyone was like them and all their friends were like them -- I grew up where everyone was different and it was the differences that made the friendship more interesting.  My three best friends are Cree, Hindu, and Muslim (The_Omnissiah).

I can think of one friend in particular who grew up in suburbia... her eyes seem to be slowly opening to diversity and its importance and value through her friendship with me.  She is starting to understand how I see the world.  Her friends and community are still predominantly similar to her, but she is beginning to understand the value I place in diversity and how that has arisen.  Slowly, she is catching on and quite liking my friends.

That being said, this doesn't always work.  My best friend throughout school, who lived across the street from me and attended all the same schools as me, definitely wants all his friends to be exactly like him.  Diversity is good, according to him, but he doesn't make the effort to bring diversity into his life.  All his friends are white, straight, and Christian.

We were pleased to be able to live in a nice neighbourhood where our kids could walk to elementary school, and attend the only highschool in the city.  

The neighbourhood has grown older now and many of the homes are occupied by older people whose children have grown and left.  Only a few homes now have children but it is still considered a 'good' neighbourhood and new, luxury homes have grown up around it in areas where we used to hike and cross country ski.  Granddaughter attended the local schools and came to our house for afterschool supervision.   Kids were bussed in from the new housing developments. 

A quiet little farming area a few miles from town developed into a bedroom community - and kids from there were bused in.   One of the two middle schools in town was closed due to an old deteriorating building and a new middleschool was built in this neighbourhood.

Seelergirl and family had by then moved our of town.  Their kids should have been bused to other schools, but granddaughter wss 'grandfathered' into the new school.  The problem is:  most of the kids there come from fairly well to do, mainly white middle to upper class families.   Parents work in government or university, or in the professions.  One of her close friends parents are doctor/lawyer.   Vacations to the warm climes, lap top computers, stylish clothes, and expectations of their own car at sixteen seem to be the norm.  

And granddaughter seems to have a very unrealistic view of how 'normal' people live.  I'm wondering now if she would have been better off attending the downtown middle school that draws kids from more diverse backgrounds, both economically and ethnically.  More like the school Pinga's boys attend(ed).  

Hope is in the fact that next year she will be in high school and the students from both middle schools on this side of the river will join together in one high school (there is a new high school on the other side of the river now).  There will be a bit more diversification.  But maybe friendships formed in middleschool will carry over and there might not be quite as much mixing.  

I know that through the church her youth class is reaching out to the downtown neighbourhood but I'm afraid that she might be starting to look at this as charity rather than a learning experience for people from various backgrounds.

 Thanks Seeler and Youthworker for your reflections.  I remember when I was a teenager we lived in the East Side of Galt.  It was middle middle class.  The west side had most of the wealthier people, the North side is the area that I currently live in.

We used to joke:  At Southwood they could afford the expensive drugs, Glenview it was pot, and GCI was booze (or glue).     The fact was that kids who were going to rebel would do so, the amount of cash drove the choice they had.   The kids at southwood had houses alone due to parents away for a long time on vacations.

We bought our current house after Little Mendalla was born so his possible needs played a big role in choosing the neighbourhood. That still came down to a combination of factors. It's close to the university where Mrs. Mendalla teaches and Little Mendalla went to their day care for the first two years in care (and may be a student there someday). The local schools are highly regarded (although he is going to another school for other reasons than the quality of the school). Having shopping close by was a factor as well, esp. when my son was little. We have a large, established shopping centre east of us and a new, growing power centre west of us, plus a smaller shopping area in between where our regular grocery store is located.

I don't think we looked that closely at the character of the neighbourhood other than talking to some people who knew London fairly well. It's a fairly white collar, educated middle class neighbourhood which suits us fine since that our social stratum. Ethnically, it is very diverse, largely thank to proximity to the university and a large teaching hospital, and that doesn't seem to cause any upsets.

Crime's not bad. No noisy parties or other disturbances beyond the odd dog. Neighbours are nice (there's bitchy ones, but that's normal for any neighbourhood). There's a natural ravine nearby for walking and wildlife. An older neighbourhood might have more mature trees and such like, but we knew we were going into a new-ish area when we built.

Overall, we're happy with our choice.

Mendalla

 I think Seeler and Youthworker though have posted about the element of expectation or lack of awareness of privilege.

I know that there are wise people on this forum who have figured out how to get past that or been working on it....wonder if there are thoughts they can offer?

as far as the whole 'work outside the home' thing, i have some insights there...

i don't think that there is one that is better than the other option.  imho, what is important is how the choice is percieved by the parent.

if the parent percieves what they are doing as a choice that they made, they will be a happier person than if they percieve themselves as having to suffer through this for the sake of their children.

having a martyr for a parent is hard on a kid, imho.

Pinga,

Not all folks have a choice where they live. Some do.

My experience was this - we lived until I was 16 in the inner city of Detroit. Detroit has spent many years as a murder capital and as the US's most dangerous city. At 16, I had never been intimate with anyone, smoked a joint, drank a beer with friends (I had snuck sips at home). I had never tired drugs. I had not stolen a car or done graffiti... I had however all my life seen shootings, dead bodies, prostitution, beatings...

My parents made the decision to move to western Pennsylvania's Amish country because of seeking a better environment for my siblings. When we moved, my siblings were under 12.

By 16, my younger sister had lost her virginity, had been pregnant, was on speed as well as drinking and smoking pot and had tried acid. All in rural Pennsylvania. By 16, my younger brother was very promiscuous, and was on probation for vandalism and was drinking, smoking pot and generally seeking trouble.  

It would be simplistic to blame their early years or my mom's illness. My siblings were not doing anything their peers were not. Keg parties and sex simply became commonplace where hanging out at a mall arcade used to be.

Having in the past decade moved from the GTA to the country, I honestly see the same dynamic. The kids in the apartment building and neighbourhood in the GTA were not doing what the rural kids often do out of boredom. Around here in rural near north, the weekend for teens means drinking, looking for trouble or action,  and sex... there are no movies, no malls...

So, neighbourhood impact is there, but often not in ways we think they will be. Most parents would think it is idyllic to raise kids here as my parents did about western Pa.

 Understood SG.   It is part of why I raised this thread.  We make choices, we have no ideas where they will lead.  Some don't have choice, but feel guilt. ...ie, I am not in a good enough space.

My sister lives in Northern Wisconsin.  The other week, a niece of a good friend died from sniffing the aerosol used to clean a computer -- they call this high "huffing".  It is an area of small towns, hunting/fishing, small town.  It is also primarily caucasian....it reminds me of here in the early 70's

Yet, there are impacts of our location.  Our house was purchased because it is close to the public & high schol.  Our boys have grown up in a multicultural space.  Big backyards, lots of trees.  Playing on the school playground. 

SG - I grew up in a small village.  Church once a month, kids from grade 7 up bused out for school, but not for after school activities so team sports, clubs and school dances were for the town kids.  And in the village, no movies, no shopping mall, no sports or clubs.  Social life was going to the post office every evening when the mail came in, meeting the train three times a week, and drinking and sex on the weekends.   The few girls in the village were usually pregnant and married by the time they were 16 or 17.  I guess I just wasn't popular enough.  I managed to finish high school and get out.   No, I wouldn't want that for my children or grandchildren. 

But I do wish she realized that she is privileged, rather than entitled to the good things in life.  And that she appreciated more the sacrifices her parents make to try to get her the clothes, dance classes, othodontist, electronic gadgets, etc that help her to fit in with her classmates.   I don't want her to feel poor - just appreciative and understanding.

Good discussion Pinga - and all.

We live in an area fairly close to UBC. We chose this area because it’s a bike ride away for my partner for work (at UBC). We were committed to being a one car family and not spend time commuting (even on transit). We had lived in this neighbourhood for a number of years and had a bit of time away (in a more suburb type location) and missed the urban culture and our friends here. We would have been happy in a more funky part of town (east side), but we found a house that fit well in a familiar neighbourhood close to work. We live in a middle to quite upper class area. It feels safe and for the most part, rather comfortable here. There isn’t as much diversity as I would like for mystchild to be immersed in right in our ‘hood, but more than I might have imagined and even in this neighbourhood it’s in many ways more diverse than he experienced in the more suburban area. We have always been on the ‘lighter’ side of buying things compared to some of my son’s friends and other relatives. And yet compared to many, my son lives a very privileged life. We try to balance that with discussion and awareness of social issues – but the reality is we live a middle class life.

We ended up where we live because it was the safest housing I could afford.  For the most part it has been a good place for my son to grow up.  There are 2 playgrounds down the street and a corner store so my son has been able to go farther afield as he gets older and more responsible.  Now that he is entering the teen years I would like to move to a better neighborhood.  There just seem to be more pitfalls now that he is older. 

When I was a teen my best friends lived farther outside the city than I did.  A bus came near where I lived and when my friends came over we would take the bus in to a mall or the city where we would have coffee and eggrolls, go to the arcade or movies or just walking around meeting up with other friends.  My best friend's father thought I was the devil for taking his daughter to the evil city.  When I stayed at my friends house, we would hang out in the woods smoking pot and drinking while my friend banged her boyfriend.

I just moved to a different area to get into the neighbourhood of a highschool I want my son to attend in September. It's also the local shopping area and close to the University town (where to live I can't afford, but it's only a ten minutes drive to go to the concerts and events that are happening there.

Having grown up in a city, I realized in the first week, how much I like the feeling of living in a subdivision with everything in walking distance, at the same time hiking trails just down the road. We had lived rural, were we had to drive everywhere for the past three years- not my cup of tea. It was also not a good neigbourhood where people yelled at each other all night and the police stopped frequenty at their houses.

What I wanted for my son is stable relationships. Diversity has nothing to do with that, poverty has nothing to do with that. But broken families and neglected kids do.

As "immigrant" and maybe as "divorcee" family, I found that my son developed friendships with the other kids at the "edge"- the ones from other "incomplete" families, or the ones with learning disabilities. The "middle class kids would come to birthday parties- but they would not invite back and as the kids got older, they wouldn't even bother to politely say they were not coming.

The kids from broken families would also often not show up- because mom/dad didn't care how important the birthday party was for the kid- it was "their" weekend. The kids  did not learn "manners" in relationships. So those "friendships" did not really turn into real friendships. I have often paid the way for those kids to join in an activity, because otherwise, they could not come along. I also have wished there would be a friend from a "middle class" background who might pull my son along into some more intelligent activities than movies and videogames, or where he could actually see a functioning family relationship.

I have been pointing out differences to him. He learned from experience which kids are trouble, and he stayed away from them. I have been including him in my thought process how I made decisions and admitted to have made the wrong decisions.

We have the priviledge to be able to choose our neigbourhood- why should we not do so?

Good thread.

Hubby and I both grew up in middle class neighbourhoods, and I always expected the same for my son.

But we now live in a partly poor/partly not, but humble, quiet, rural neighbourhood, not swish like other areas, but not bad, and the school my son goes to is very small, with few choices for friends for him. There are only two boys his age and he doesn't like them much. He has made friends with younger boys, both with their own problems.

I feel I've let my son down living where we do. But he is a kind and compassionate and smart person, and will always be. I fear he is not getting the opportunities he should. He should be in a larger class, in a gifted school. His intelligence is not properly utilized and encouraged where he is. Most people assume we home school him. But as an only child he needs to be around other kids, and learn some independance.

It's a nice, well kept school, with good terachers, but I'm always so dissapointed how few students there are.

At least the high schools here are larger. Then he will have more people to make friends with. And there are arty families around, so he will find other smart, creative kids. If we're still here that is. I'd like to at least move closer to our local town, if not to the Fraser Valley.

Culture and education are the things I most want my son to have. We enhance that ourselves at home. One day, I want to take him to see the Nutcracker ballet in the city. As a kid my parents took me every year at Christmas.

The definition of "safe" and "good" are very subjective ones. I live in what would be called a very decent urban neighbourhood. It's good, but neighbours are very close, the backyard is tiny, neighbourhood parks are not the greatest, etc. But schools, stores and library are a few blocks from home and we have excellent bus service, so that our children can do things on their own.

Many members of our extended family complain that we don't have an ideal neighbourhood for a family. Yet they live in suburbia; their closest high school is 4 km away, their closest store is 5-10 km away and only has plastic-wrapped vegetables; they don't have bus service so kids can't develop their own independence. Alas, society seems to find that life in suburbia is the ideal.

Good point.  I grew up in North Bay and I moved to the GTA in 2001 for a teaching position.  I'm always surprised when the other teachers are shocked by the stuff the kids in my middle school are doing: drinking, smoking, using drugs, having sex, vandalizing, etc.  The ones who aren't shocked usually grew up some place in the north or a smaller town.  Boredom is definitely an issue for kids in smaller places.  We had a bowling alley and a movie theatre with 2 screens.  The mall was relatively small.  There was also an abundant amount of bush area for kids to do stuff that they shouldn't be doing without getting caught.

What about raising a child in what some might say is "a great neighbourhood"?

My wife's siblings are all well-earning professionals. Having money, they picked the "perfect neighbourhoods". Safe areas, big houses, large yards, great schools, lovely park spaces... shopping nearby, movie theatres...

The neighbourhoods, they all live in different places, have in common that they are each rather affluent. It is also very white and very Protestant. Are the children learning about diverstity? About poverty? Are they learning to care about it? Do they appreciate movies and dining out, cell phones and mutliple cars?  

Are they learning prejudices? Are they learning that anyone who wants to have/is not lazy/ is not dumb... can have what they have?

These family members admit a constant battle against a sense of entitlement, an elitism, prejudices, lack of social awareness, lack of understanding and empathy...