I loved the first three and didn’t really like the small midwestern city. I think part of it was because of covid, but the main thing I didn’t like was my kids elementary school. The middle and high schools were superb, but the elementary just seemed to have expectations that were not age appropriate. We moved the younger kids to a more child centered private school and it was much better. The school district we were in is sought after so I was pretty unprepared to be disappointed in the school. It colored my whole experience. Now, looking back, I can see several things that were great about that community that I had a hard time seeing while we were there.

How cool to recruit friends to your neighborhood! I love this.

We went out on a bit of a limb and moved in 2019, somewhat prompted by reading a few of your books about time and realizing how inefficient our lives had become. It seemed like a somewhat frivolous move at the time—it was only 30 minutes away, but it got me closer to work, my husband changed jobs, it was a more expensive neighborhood, etc., but we have loved it from day 1. It is a planned neighborhood and the sense of community is unlike anywhere we’ve lived before. We go to the pool all the time, my kids love the park, and we can walk to school and daycare. They have regular low-key activities–outdoor movie night at the park is Friday–which is great for us. We have even had multiple people we know move to our street (we started recruiting friends which sounds insane but has been amazing). All this to say that where you live absolutely does matter to your overall well-being, but I think its always a bit of a risk and you just hope it works out well. Honestly, we had moved enough that the odds were probably in our favor!

@Gillian – the independence aspect is cool. I think one thing my son liked about being at Brown this summer was being able to walk all over Providence – if the Starbucks within walking distance wasn’t great for the budget!

@Laura something we didn’t appreciate when we moved in with one 2 yo child is the early independence walkability affords kids. My kids don’t cross the street to go to school. Our kids have started walking to school with older sibs, but no adults in kindergarten (or 1st depending on the kid) and all kids are dismissed to the world from their classrooms starting in 3rd grade. Our school is open campus from 7th grade because the restaurants in town can be reach on foot. My 12 yo daughter informed me today that she has arranged with a friend to meet “for snack” at Starbucks tomorrow afternoon and often heads to the drug store on foot to get poster board or some other needed school supply. And my 9 yo routinely let’s us know he is headed to the library solo to get some new books (we have to work on taking the old ones back to be returned…). This might be my favorite thing about our town and a benefit I did not appreciate with one toddler.

It would be nice to have more space. But that means choosing a suburb, which feels like choosing a particular type of life. And a longer commute for my husband, and probably not seeing our kids during their waking hours half the days. Right now, it doesn’t make sense.

@Gillian – walkability is pretty cool! We don’t truly have that now though our old house wasn’t bad – you could in fact walk to the post office, library, our preschool and, while it was there, the grocery store. That closed but a new one is going in. When we first moved here I thought walkability was going to be really important to me and then I changed my mind 🙂

@Kat – congrats on the yard! Though yes, a yard does seem to generate its own full-time job worth of work…