Anonymous wrote:OP - your family will be happier in a neighborhood with kids their ages.

We moved from our starter home neighborhood into the “aspirational” historic neighborhood. We love our house but if our first house had also been thick of kids (rather than on a busy-ish road) I don’t know that we would have moved.

I kind of wish we had made a lateral move from busy street to same house in mid neighborhood.

Anonymous wrote:Do you want your kids to mix and play with whomever is out, or do you want more control over their social lives? There's no right answer. I would like more free play for my kid, but all our neighborhood kids are busy with sports and dance. Then again, growing up I remember playing with the neighbor whose mom was a complete drunk. I think the boy turned out to be a druggie and the younger sister may have gotten pregnant? We also played in areas we should not have, like construction sites and creeks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We prioritized moving to a cul de sac neighborhood with kids for this reason. However it didn’t work out. The children are almost never outside, don’t play together at all, and the whole neighborhood is very unfriendly / families keep to themselves. It’s sad as I would have loved a close neighborhood with friendly neighbors but you can’t count on that even if you choose a house with that goal in mind.

I hear you. We don't live on a cul de sac but did choose our neighborhood in part because when we moved here (without kids) we saw so many families and thought it would be a great place with lots of kids for ours to play with. And when our kids were babies/toddlers, that was pretty true -- lots of activities for little kids and there is a sense of community for parents of very young kids.

What we didn't realize is that although the public schools here are well regarded, a lot of families do private even starting in K, and it's not all the same private but a bunch of different once. Plus some do public but even there, the schools track starting in 4th and kids in the gifted track are totally separate from kids who are not. What this means functionally is that while there are many kids on our street, our kids don't really know or play with them. Most go to different schools or are in a different school pathway. Kids do activities through school or through private travel teams or offerings, and there's minimal overlap. Our 9 year old has a couple girls from our neighborhood in her ballet classes but neither of them go to her school so those friendships don't feel very deep. Everyone is just doing their own thing.

Recently a neighbor invited us to their daughter's 7th birthday party (or son is the same age and while they aren't in the same school now, they were "besties" in preschool). We went and every other family there was from their private school, and they seemed genuinely confused as to why we were there (not the people who invited us, but all the other families). We kept explaining the connection and they'd just look at as blankly and then move on. Which I get -- they are unlikely to see us again. But we have a lot of disjointed social experiences like that with our kids, and it's been hard for them to create a cohesive social life. They each have friends but they are siloed and mostly don't know each other, and there is zero spontaneous get togethers in the neighborhood or the local playground, everything is scheduled and planned.

We thought we were being smart buying in a neighborhood full of families with good schools but it hasn't worked out that way. It's okay, certainly not bad enough to uproot ourselves, but not what we were expecting for our kids.

Anonymous wrote:We prioritized moving to a cul de sac neighborhood with kids for this reason. However it didn’t work out. The children are almost never outside, don’t play together at all, and the whole neighborhood is very unfriendly / families keep to themselves. It’s sad as I would have loved a close neighborhood with friendly neighbors but you can’t count on that even if you choose a house with that goal in mind.

Anonymous wrote:We have family that lives in suburban Maryland in one of those big houses with a big lot. They recently spent a few days at our smaller Fairfax County home. Their kids loved our kids friendly, active neighborhood. They spent their time playing basketball and football in the street, walking on the wooded trails, exploring the creeks, riding bikes. They didn't want to leave at all. Their mother said our neighborhood was like the 1960s in the best possible way.

Just when I was wondering if we should move to a larger, newer home, that experience made me realize I wouldn't want to trade this type of neighborhood for anything. It's so much better for kids.

Anonymous wrote:We prioritized moving to a cul de sac neighborhood with kids for this reason. However it didn’t work out. The children are almost never outside, don’t play together at all, and the whole neighborhood is very unfriendly / families keep to themselves. It’s sad as I would have loved a close neighborhood with friendly neighbors but you can’t count on that even if you choose a house with that goal in mind.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in a neighborhood with tons of kids. Houses range from $700-$2million. It’s amazing. They are pretty free range - bike riding, fishing, walking to 711 with friends. On the weekends I usually have to text my oldest on her watch (she is 11) and tell her to come home for dinner. It’s great.

I wouldn't say houses in my immediately neighborhood go up to $2million but this sounds like Fort Hunt.