Do you worry that raising your kids in the dc area will skew their sense of normalcy?

[Anonymous]

I noticed when DC was in MS, and was looking on Instagram on the family iPad (DC did not have a phone). It was over winter break and their friends were all posting about overseas locations they were visiting, their latest and greatest iPhone received as a gift, new hoverboards and electric scooters, etc. I recall feeling badly that DC did not have those opportunities. I recently discussed it with DC, and asked them if they remembered that from MS. DC had no idea what I was talking about! So, the kids don't all focus on wealth, even if we adults sometimes do.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the PP, kids care and notice less than adults in general, unless those adults focus on money, houses, vacations etc. Kids care about kid things, like electronics and video games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, my family was in a similar position growing up in that we lived in a Bethesda neighborhood that was relatively less well-off than many (now it's all McMansions, but whatever). Yeah, I did notice when I got to high school that there were differences. I didn't feel poor necessarily, but I knew we had less money.

I didn't realize that we still had way more money than most of the rest of the country, or that most people's parents were not MD/PhD/JD, or that most of the country was much more white. I learned that by going to college and then staying in the Midwest for a while. I do think it's incumbent upon privileged parents to minimize the bubble in which their kids are raised. Many of my peers who grew up with more never learned that lesson, and I find them intolerable now (their disdain for people with less is palpable). We live in a different MoCo suburb that is more diverse than the one in which I grew up, and I appreciate that diversity. It's still not enough, but it's better than most of the other options.

I agree. I recently heard a friend's child refer to her Chevy Chase neighborhood as "middle class." It's a stunning bubble they live in. How can a kid with that perspective grow up to have any compassion for the real middle class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live in a very diverse suburb of DC and I wonder if my kid thinks that is how it is across the entire USA. I have told her its not but it may be a rude awakening someday. (we are a multi-racial family)

This was very true for me. I grew up in LA but went to college in North Carolina and I was shocked at how different culturally it was. I never fully appreciated how diverse and progressive LA was and it was eye-opening to learn that people still had racist grandparents, for example.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in Paris, which is far worse.

DC is provincial compared to other capitals, OP.

What anonymous countryside do you come from???

[Anonymous]

Yes. I bring them to the Northeast and West Coast regularly so they see better places.

[Anonymous]

Our kids are now in their late teens and after a long overdue trip to visit relatives in a city in the center of the country, it was interesting to hear their perspectives. They spent time socializing with cousins and their freinds living there. The main thing they commented on was the complete lack of diversity and the complete buy in for Trump and Fox News everywhere they went in this city and its suburbs. The fear of darker skin and/or immigrants was palpable and of course ridiculous in their minds. They also noticed many churches that had sprouted up in strip malls which was new to me as well.

DD, who had also spent 2 summers there in her early/mid teens actually thanked us for not moving back and having them grow up there! She saw the teen boredom, the sameness and lack of things or many fewer things to do that interest her. The first question those summers that kids asked her was "what church youth group do you go to?" This in particular is SO different than when I was growing up there.

DS could see that there were outdoor things like hunting, camping and boating that seemed in some ways more accessible to teens out there, but he too prefers it here.

I'm really hoping that they both do not come back to DC after college but live elsewhere. I'm guessing both will want to live closer to the coasts if possible. FWIW, we live in an UMC neighborhood surrounded and mixed in with lower income housing with many recent immigrants so they grew up with a lot of racial and income diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a tangent that I started thinking about after reading through the “big vs small houses” entertaining thread.

What mostly concerns me living in a modest/small home in this area is that my children’s ideas about money and success will be skewed for life. We live in a $750k home in Bethesda, which only gets us 2 bedrooms! That is insane compared to the rest of the country. We have a HHI of close to $300k and some family money as a safety net as well. Based on these stats alone we are doing super well compared to 95% of the families in the US.
But I worry about how I will explain this to my young children when they become old enough to notice the difference between our “tiny” home and their friends’ larger homes. Will they think we are “poor” even though we most certainly are not?

I know that my kids will feel super loved and will grow up in a happy home, but how do I instill in them a sense of gratitude about all they are blessed with from a young impressionable age once they start going to school with kids that are mostly “better-off” financially (at least from appearances)?

You just need to teach them that self-confidence and self-worth doesn't depend on money. Maybe one day you truly will become poor because of some set of unfortunate circumstances. Would you feel less if that happened? You shouldn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does a child need to feel "blessed"? Kids DGAF. I've lived in everything from a basement bedroom in a house to a mansion, and not in a linear increasing or decreasing order. Life isn't about the size of your house or even how nice your house is. As a kid I literally did not even notice that some of our friends' houses were twice as big as ours. I mean, I guess I realized they had more rooms and were physically bigger, but all I cared about is do they have a nintendo system and good food. I feel sorry for people that are so focused on house size. I also question why you need your kids to express gratitude or be blessed. Just let them be kids. They are egocentric by nature.

+1,000,000.
OP, your obsession with 'house size' is very provincial (sorry to break this to you). You need to get out more.

[Anonymous]

Op, I think you’re a little out of touch. You live in a very nice part of a major metropolitan area. 750k sounds right for a 2 bedroom in most of the nice parts of the cities I know. Maybe DC, NYC, SF, LA are a little more expensive than other cities, but you make it sound like you could just buy a mansion in the best neighborhood in Detroit for 200k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a tangent that I started thinking about after reading through the “big vs small houses” entertaining thread.

What mostly concerns me living in a modest/small home in this area is that my children’s ideas about money and success will be skewed for life. We live in a $750k home in Bethesda, which only gets us 2 bedrooms! That is insane compared to the rest of the country. We have a HHI of close to $300k and some family money as a safety net as well. Based on these stats alone we are doing super well compared to 95% of the families in the US.
But I worry about how I will explain this to my young children when they become old enough to notice the difference between our “tiny” home and their friends’ larger homes. Will they think we are “poor” even though we most certainly are not?

I know that my kids will feel super loved and will grow up in a happy home, but how do I instill in them a sense of gratitude about all they are blessed with from a young impressionable age once they start going to school with kids that are mostly “better-off” financially (at least from appearances)?

You just need to teach them that self-confidence and self-worth doesn't depend on money. Maybe one day you truly will become poor because of some set of unfortunate circumstances. Would you feel less if that happened? You shouldn't.

+1, so what if they think they're poor? Maybe they'll be scrappy and work even harder to "rise up" out of the squalor and poverty of Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a tangent that I started thinking about after reading through the “big vs small houses” entertaining thread.

What mostly concerns me living in a modest/small home in this area is that my children’s ideas about money and success will be skewed for life. We live in a $750k home in Bethesda, which only gets us 2 bedrooms! That is insane compared to the rest of the country. We have a HHI of close to $300k and some family money as a safety net as well. Based on these stats alone we are doing super well compared to 95% of the families in the US.
But I worry about how I will explain this to my young children when they become old enough to notice the difference between our “tiny” home and their friends’ larger homes. Will they think we are “poor” even though we most certainly are not?

I know that my kids will feel super loved and will grow up in a happy home, but how do I instill in them a sense of gratitude about all they are blessed with from a young impressionable age once they start going to school with kids that are mostly “better-off” financially (at least from appearances)?

You just need to teach them that self-confidence and self-worth doesn't depend on money. Maybe one day you truly will become poor because of some set of unfortunate circumstances. Would you feel less if that happened? You shouldn't.

+1, so what if they think they're poor? Maybe they'll be scrappy and work even harder to "rise up" out of the squalor and poverty of Bethesda.

OMG, that made my burst out laughing.

[Anonymous]

Wow clicked on this thread expecting something completely different.

I raise my kids in a mixed SES neighborhood so they *don’t* grow up thinking they are rich (even though we are). So bizarre you’re worried they won’t think they’re rich enough.

[Anonymous]

Normal is relative. Even as a single parent apartment dweller earning $60k a year, I'm still doing way better than my family did in DC back in the 90s. My ten year old thinks we're poor compared to her friends. Her cousins think she lives in the lap of luxury. Maybe she'll move to NYC or San Francisco for college and think DC life was so dull and inexpensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op, I think you’re a little out of touch. You live in a very nice part of a major metropolitan area. 750k sounds right for a 2 bedroom in most of the nice parts of the cities I know. Maybe DC, NYC, SF, LA are a little more expensive than other cities, but you make it sound like you could just buy a mansion in the best neighborhood in Detroit for 200k.

Pretty much any large metro area in the country with a solid job market has similar real estate prices.