Hello,
Really enjoyed your story, Dan. And hearing from the others.
For my family, we moved from a small town house, with houses connected on both sides, to a yurt in an isolated river valley when our children ranged in age from 9 1/2 to 11/2. The kids took that move well, but the older two understood the conflict that we had with one previous neighbour and that the move was essential for our mental and physical health. (That neighbour's chimney would leak smoke into our house.)
Perhaps the easy transition could partly be explained in the fact that we have always been outdoorsy people and were always adventurous. We weren't far from their friends, so we didn't uproot them. They did have to start using an outhouse, but they were used to using a dry toilet, as we got rid of the flush toilet years earlier. They took having to stop at the cemetery to fill up water containers as just another one of those required living tasks.
When the kids ranged in age from 14 to 6, we bought our house and 6 hectares a couple of hours away. The kids had gone with us to see it, so they agreed with us and were part of the decision to make the purchase offer. The purchase process took seven months, so there was lots of time for the kids to prepare for the move. Just the same, I ended up agreeing to make a weekly drive to bring our daughter to dance classes because she didn't want to give it up. And we were making trips far too often for a few years to see friends. For the past couple of years, there has only been one annual trip.
Our kids range in age between 26 and 17 now. The 26 year old is actually planning to build a tiny house with a dry toilet because he's tired of renting an apartment and sees it as a way that he can return to school in a city a few hours away. He comes home as often as his current job allows, but it's not for the outdoors, it's to work on his car and tiny.
Our daughter, 22 is about to graduate from university and living in an apartment in the city forty-five minutes away. For the time being, she will probably continue to be an apartment dweller. She comes back home almost weekly, depending on her schedule, and when she does, it's to be close to nature. She's actually in her second apartment in the city, after hating that the first one overlooked a street and other buildings. The current one is on the building corner, with one window looking out at another apartment building and the other looking onto the backyards of houses. One backyard ihas a greenhouse in it and the other is heavily overgrown. So she really likes it because she feels more at home.
Our youngest is actually the one who likes home the least. He is in a dormitory during the school year and perhaps it's partly the isolation here that has that he doesn't like it. He hates our (Brittany) weather and longs for a Mediterranean climate. He likes going to the gym and there is no gym nearby, so that's part of it, too. He has never brought any of his friends home and goes to his friends' places in cities instead. Our daughter loved having her friends over here when she was in a dormitory during high school, so we don't really understand why he doesn't.
By contrast, our youngest is the one who seems to prefer our way of doing laundry. His older siblings were happy to move to washing machines and will return to their apartments because they need to do laundry. The oldest plans to put a washing machine in his tiny. But our youngest declines when I offer to take his clothes elsewhere because machines don't clean the clothes as well, even if doing it here takes more time.
We are close to all of our kids and I think that it's part of how we live that has made us close to them.
Good day to everyone
