Lonely childhood?

tulipandthistle

We are planning to move from a small village to living on our own in the middle of nowhere, 3 km outside a village. Our house should be a bit liveable when our wee man starts school- he'll be a few weeks from 5 year old by then.
My concern is that because we'll be in the middle of nowhere will it be very lonely for our boy?
Has anybody else been an only child living like this? If so how did you feel?

Susannahmia

tulipandthistle wrote: »

We are planning to move from a small village to living on our own in the middle of nowhere, 3 km outside a village. Our house should be a bit liveable when our wee man starts school- he'll be a few weeks from 5 year old by then.
My concern is that because we'll be in the middle of nowhere will it be very lonely for our boy?
Has anybody else been an only child living like this? If so how did you feel?

Yeah I was, I had a great imagination and could occupy myself, however I would have been much better off socially and happiness wise to have kids around.

barbiegirl

Loads of play dates, get him involved with a local sports club etc. Also if time etc. allows a dog would be great. He'll be fine, I grew up in the country and it was great.

TequilaMockingBird

Hiya T&T!

I wouldn't worry, you'll be amazed at how many birthday parties there are. Your little man will soon make friends, and then you could arrange to have his little friend over one day a week etc. He'll probably have about 8 best friends, so this could fill alot of time!

As the previous poster said, theres lots of clubs etc for that age group. If he has activities/friends over/visiting friends three times a week or so, he'd be grand.

They get homework at that age, need to go to bed earlier on school nights and are tired anyway, so the day is soon gone.

tulipandthistle

Thank you everybody for your input! I think we're just a bit worried because we grew up in the city with siblings. He's also used to having kids around coz I'm a childminder. We are prepared to taxi him around if need be as well.... better get cracking on in the house then....

Imhof Tank

The same issue has been on my mind for a while, except in our case we made the move a couple of years ago to a slightly out of town location – but still within for example cycling distance. We have certainly been doing a lot of activities/ taxi-ing around to play dates etc since.

At this stage our older daughter is nearly ok to cycle short distances on her own and I have been thinking that this summer maybe she can use the bike to get to/from friends houses and from that point the relative isolation won’t be a problem for her.

Then there was an article in today’s Irish Times reporting on a conference organised by the Irish Pre School Play Association and a speaker there quoted a study report which found that “children who were not allowed out to play suffered from unhappiness, aggression, a lack of concentration and an inability to make friends”

I would have doubts myself about whether this kind of thing could be the result of early childhood isolation on its own, but on the other hand this is what the experts are saying so……….