Moving from one suburban town to another with two kids has been more of an upheaval than the moving of boxes from one place to another. Yes, the actual move was tough, and I'm serioiusly homesick right now. I'm missing the rough edges and the solidity of an old house. I'm not quite at home in this mid-century box. It will take some time to make it my own, I think. Still, the biggest transition is the school shift.
Jonah is in a new middle school. I admit that I had huge amounts of momma-guilt about moving a kid in seventh grade. Huge. Like wake up in the middle of the night guilt. After one day, the guilt was gone, because Jonah slid effortlessly into a new school. He knew one boy in his grade from his traveling soccer team, so he had a table to sit at in the cafeteria. When you're in seventh grade, where you sit in the cafeteria is the biggest worry and I knew that. Jonah is an easy-going kid, who makes friends easily and already has found his place in the new town. Momma-guilt gone.
His old school and new school are miles apart in how they interact with parents, use of technology, and general perky attitude. I'm not quite sure how to deal with these happy teachers who regularly inform me about upcoming tests and homework grades. There might be such a thing as too much parental involvement. I'm too shocked to make any objective assessment of this new school culture.
Ian is still attending the same public school program. This town has a program for high functioning kids like Ian, which also is a part-inclusion system. The special education administrator and I decided to keep him in his old program for the time being, until we could determine which program was better suited to Ian. The wheels of the special education bureaucracy move slowly, and with so many people involved, mistakes happen. All of his paperwork was lost, and I had to spend three days recopying everything from birth certificates to immunization records.
The biggest problem so far has been the transportation. The district put him on a bus with a kid with emotional problems. After Ian was injured for the third time last Friday, I decided that it was best if I drove him back and forth to school every day. That means 2-1/2 hours in a car for me.
I keep thinking that things are returning to normal, but then it doesn't happen. I'm not sure what normal is anymore.
Apt. 11d 
“The district put him a bus with a kid with emotional problems. After Ian was injured for the third time last Friday, I decided that it was best if I drove him back and forth to school every day. That means 2-1/2 hours in a car for me.”
Holy cow. Can you really keep that up?
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Maybe the parents of the kid causing the injuries should be doing the driving? Of course, maybe they have no ability to do so.
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We drive our kids 2.5 hours a day (or, we would if we didn’t carpool occasionally). Carpool makes it 9 hours/week, instead of 12.5. The drive ads up quickly, even when you live only 1/2 hour away, ’cause you have to drive in both directions every day to drop off the kids (if you’re coming back home).
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I live nearly my whole life in a circle of less than 6 miles in diameter. Pittsburgh may be poorly governed, unmaintained, and economically stunted, but at least everything is really close together.
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I hope the district might revisit the bus plan after news of this. That’s not good for Ian, the other kid or anyone else involved in that bus!
When we moved in 2007 we kept both girls in their old neighbourhood schools. Gradually they shifted over as they reached high school age. The bus that comes to our front door for autistic youngest is a dream after years of handling transport by ourselves. I will hope that you can get transport ironed out without burning yourself out on the road.
If you do have to spend a lot of time in the car, however, check out your library’s books on DVD or audio book lending program. I went through a number of recent non-fiction books that way during our transition years!
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“I live nearly my whole life in a circle of less than 6 miles in diameter. ”
Our’s wasn’t much bigger (well, at least until the kids’ sports schedules started intervening). The problem is the AM/PM driving in both directions (even if it’s only six miles).
I do hope the bus situation gets worked out. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the issues are beginning of year problems that will be resolvable. Although transporting our kids takes 2.5 hours/driving a day, I would go nuts if i had to do it all.
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PS: When the world settles down (and it will), I’m looking to seeing the potential of the mid century box grow. Your tastes are eclectic (as elucidated from the dream houses you post), and I’m expecting you will have fun (even though the style constraints are wildly different from your old house). It’s kind of like having a chance to dress your tween instead of yourself (with the added bonus that the house, unlike the tween, doesn’t get the final say).
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Podcasts saved my sanity on school runs. NPR has most of its programming available for free on iTunes. Many universities offer free podcasts through iTunesU.
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I think the secret to making a mid-century box a “home” is taking over with paint, furniture, art — things you love. I hated so much about our split entry for the first couple years because it did not reflect my style. 8 years later it is definitely “home” and comfortable. I still pine for another antique, but it will have to wait until both kids have finished high school.
I definitely understand the school transition thing and am glad to hear that Jonah is adjusting so well. We moved when my daughter was in 6th grade. It took her 3 years to adjust. She still refers to middle school as “the lost years”.
I really hope that the district can work something out with the transportation issue. I know in the program I worked with we constantly had to tweek the special program vans. We moved kids around and constantly reinforced positive behavior. At one point one kid had to have his own van because he disrupted the ride for all the other kids and was a physical threat. It cost the district money, but because of new anti-bullying policies had to be addressed.
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So sorry about the driving. I do that for 2 weeks in the summer when I make my daughter do a camp in Providence, and I’m ready to blow my brains out by the end of the first week.
We saw the perfect house yesterday and would seriously consider moving, but the transportation issues are daunting. E would go to a different school in the district–or I’d have to drive him to his old school. S would no longer get the bus in front of the house but instead would have to walk 1.5 miles–or I’d have to drive her. I think I literally cannot do that, and I don’t have enough social capital to call in carpools.
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1.5 miles isn’t that far, but I suppose kids have a ton of stuff to carry and much of the walking would be before the sun is up. To get free parking, I walk a mile each way. Parking costs $100/month, which would be worth it if it wasn’t 3/4th of a mile from my office.
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Is there a huge bureaucratic process involved with filing a complaint against the other student? How do they guard the safety of all passengers on the bus?
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Wow. You are made of stronger stock than I. I would be bitchin’ and whining about that drive. My whole commute for myself is 20 minutes each way. I hate the car, I wouldn’t last living in it as much as you have to.
Way to step up, but I hope it resolves itself.
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Having moved a year and a half ago, I know the biggest issue is whether your kids will be OK. After that comes the personal issues. You describe them well. Take care!
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“I live nearly my whole life in a circle of less than 6 miles in diameter.”
This is a really fascinating question. Our usual circle is surely smaller than that. In a normal week (even if you count my daughter’s school which I personally don’t go to every week), it’s less than four miles, from East End Avenue to West End, and from 40th Street (my job) to 101st Street (our church fellowship group). I will keep track now, and see how many weeks I can go without being more than two miles from (say) 79th Street and Central Park West.
Of course, four miles in New York City is a lot more travel time than four miles in the burbs.
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When I lived in Park Slope, I pretty much never went much more north than 14th St, and more often than not just stayed around the City Hall neighborhood (where I worked) and the Slope, and Brooklyn Heights (in the middle).
And I walked everywhere. *sigh*
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I have no idea how far apart those things are. My house, main office, the school, and the two parks where kiddie sports happen are all in a three miles circle, but I have a second office and like to buy nice groceries, so I travel further. I always thought of it as a small circle, at least for a family with two cars.
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Yes, I could complain, but I’m not sure how much good it would do. Besides, I want to save my complaints for bigger stuff. I’m trying to turn this negative into a positive. My gym is on the way back from the school, so is Trader Joe’s. So, I’ll combine transportation w/chores. Also, I went to the library and got all sorts of books on CD for myself and for E.
I have a much, much larger diameter for my day. Ian has speech therapy about 20 miles away. Jonah does soccer five towns away. On Tuesdays, I’ll spend four or five hours driving places. I feel like a trucker.
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I calculated today’s travels, in our temporarily 2 car household. Spouse, w/ some combination of kids, is driving 116 miles today (assuming particular routes on google, and ignoring small (i.e. <1m detours to pick up carpoolers, etc.)). I am driving 10. Google estimates a total driving time of 146 minutes, but I suspect that the total will be at least 20% higher, potentially 50%, to account for traffic, parking, etc.
This is a fairly high travel day since it includes our furthest away activity (hockey, for the boy, at an ice arena 15 miles away).
Whew, our cars don't get great gas mileage (let's assume 15 MPH, which is a bit worse than the EPA estimates, but, I think more accurate). That means 9.7 gallons! At gas about $3.80, that's $36 mostly on driving the kids around.
The calc doesn't include any errand driving, and we're doing all the driving today (i.e. our carpool days, though all of our kid routes involve a carpool with at least one other child). It also doesn't include the grandparent driving. Grandparent driving is normally part of our carpool/driving, and makes us, really a 3 car household; the presence of grandparents increases driving because we don't try as hard to multi-task the kids/trips).
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Yes, I’ve started a spreadsheet. It’s interesting, because i think it’s an example of the costs we don’t think about. I think it would be very interesting to compare our routes to that of a transit-oriented city dweller. Y81 throws off the idea that a 4 miles in NYC is a lot more travel time, but, really, have we just normalized ot time? i.e. we’re willing to travel 45 minutes, and in our area, that can take you 15 miles, while in NY it takes you 4?
We have an environmental institute here: http://www.sightline.org/ that encourages people to try to do calculations like this to uncover the true cost, for example, of car ownership. My calcs aren’t enough, of course, ’cause they don’t include car purchase, maintenance, or insurance or time.
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“I calculated today’s travels, in our temporarily 2 car household. Spouse, w/ some combination of kids, is driving 116 miles today (assuming particular routes on google, and ignoring small (i.e. <1m detours to pick up carpoolers, etc.)). I am driving 10."
Wow, you guys are really burning up the dinosaurs. As the crow flies (and as Google Maps erroneously recommends), it's 1.1 miles from our house to school. In reality, you can't drive straight through campus both ways, so it's about twice as far and it takes just under 10 minutes by car. I can look over my back fence and see the gym and it's 1 mile to the grocery store (a so-so one, admittedly). You can get from pretty much any two points in town in 20-25 minutes.
Today, however, one of the kids is going to be out riding at the ranch, so it's going to be 17 miles each way.
All of my house-hunting plans involve minimizing daily commuting time.
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…to uncover the true cost, for example, of car ownership
Dumping one car would be the easiest way for us to save money. Logistically, next year I think we could get away with it and suffer almost no extra inconvenience. However, there is no point in doing so as long as our old car keeps running. Including insurance and repairs, the fixed costs have been less than $2,000/year for the past five years. When it dies, the calculations will change.
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I suppose my first sentence is contradicted by the rest of the comment. What I mean is that over the longer term, having only one car would save a fair bit of money. Right now, it won’t do much.
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I just remembered that things reverse in the summer time. During the school year, we have a mostly very compact range of daily activity within a small area of the city (with occasional forays to suburban doctors and dentists). However, in the summer time, our daily driving range expands greatly to compensate for the fact that we don’t live near where a lot of other families live, so the camps and swim lessons and such that our kids do are on the other side of town, the very edge of town or in a suburb. But, as I said, it’s at most 25 minutes from one point to another within the city and suburbs.
It’s nothing like Dallas. We do occasional day trips to Dallas and eventually we realized that we have to just choose one (or at most two) destinations in Dallas for our day trips, because traveling between any two points in Dallas inevitably seem to require as much driving as our driving to Dallas from our much smaller city.
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“Today, however, one of the kids is going to be out riding at the ranch, so it’s going to be 17 miles each way.”
We do live 6 miles away from the kids’ school, and 8 miles away from spouse’s work, so both of those contribute to our driving (It would be difficult to live very near spouses’s work, but we could live close to the school, and that would be closer to work).
But aside from our foray to hockey (15 miles away, like your 17 miles to the ranch), our commutes are all within about 25 minutes, too.
I think you should do a calculation of the real miles for a week, and see how it stacks up. I’m planning to. At some point, I remember our DOT asking for survey info on the same calcs, though they couldn’t be as specific, ’cause they wanted to protect privacy.
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A golf cart would be ideal for me if there was somewhere to drive it where I couldn’t be crushed by larger vehicles.
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“I think you should do a calculation of the real miles for a week, and see how it stacks up.”
We count based on gas money used. I just checked my budget, and this month we budgeted $160 for gas and we’ve used $92 for gas so far.
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