We're considering a move from South Jersey to Connecticut. I never moved in my childhood but I wanted to. Badly. I desperately wanted to be the new girl- I wanted to reinvent myself. I was convinced my parents would let me dye my hair blonde, and I would practice a valley girl accent (to blame- Sweet Valley High and Stacey from The Babysitter's Club.) As it turned out, it didn't happen until I was 20, and at 20 it wasn't exactly traumatic. I did dye my hair blonde. It was tragic.
My older son doesn't share the same hopes of reinventing himself as a cool valley girl (Thank god?). He doesn't want to leave what he knows at all. It's important to me that we make the right decision for the whole family. However, we can't let arguments such as "but I like my summer camp and there is NO summer camp I will like anywhere else in the world" sway us.
We have no family or friends in South Jersey. My family lives in Pennsylvania, and Todd's family lives in Connecticut. If we make the move to CT, we will be the same distance from my family which we are now, the same distance from my oldest son's father as we are now (he's currently mulling over whether he'll give his permission for us to make the out of state move) and much closer to Todd's family and our mutual friends (and their children). We'd also be in better neighborhoods and a much better school system (are current school system is good...the one we're considering is exceptional.) We'd be closer to family, closer to friends, close to the beach, and we'd be in a REAL house with a yard and enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own. Currently we have no family near us, no friends near us, a condo with a shared courtyard, and the boys share a room. Okay. The details aren't really necessary. Opinions - will this screw up my kids? Were you screwed up? For reference, Johnny is 9 and Mikey is 19 months. We'd be looking at doing this within the next 18 months.