Need some advice please

[kazza9988]

Hi. I am hoping to get some insight into what it is really like raising children in Australia. I live in the US and am not very happy with alot of things here. I have 3 children (6y, 5y, and 3 y) We are thinking about moving to a small town in Northeast Victoria. My hubby grew up in this town and claims it is very safe and would be a wonderful place to raise our children and for us to grow old together. I have spent a fair bit of time there and have fallen very much in love with the area. My concern is that I'm not looking at it objectively and my hubby is thinking it will be the same as when he lived there (over 20 years ago!)
Is there by chance anyone willing to share some insights with me about kids in oz these days?

I have a few major concerns, schools (education in general), children growing up too quickly, and violence.
Any thoughts?
Thanks so much.
Kazza

[JnA]

Hi kazza

I only lived int the US for a relatively short time, and really only in big cities, but my preferance would be to raise children in Australia. Then maybe I am bias because this is my home country.
You may get all sorts of opinions, but really I think a child can be raised safely anywhere with smart and informed parental choices.
Without any real stats on hand I would guess that general violence in lower in Australia.
A school is a school, but a small town school is different to a large American school (I only taught at one 'secondary' school in the US and that was in the middle of LA, so I don't have an unbiased opinion of them.) However, I did see a private primary school in Vegas, that was beautiful and the children seemed well behaved. In my opinion the way to tell a good primary school is to ask the principal if they know a lot of the kids names... this indicates an interest from the head and all things filter down from there (good and bad).
There is the thought in education circles that children are growing up faster than 'we' did at their age, but I think that can be said for many generations. In *some* highschools (I know you aren't there yet) there is a wannabe ghetto / hood culture, but that is more to do with the influence of rap artists than anything else (when I was in highschool I tried to look like the Kinks.. didn't seem to damage me too much ;) ) Again, all of this can be solved with smart choices of school and smart choices of friends by the child. (something you have not much control over, but what will be will be.)

I hope that helps, somewhat. Good luck.

[Ky]

We moved to Australia from New Zealand almost 2 ½ years ago.

OK, not the same distance or very similar circumstances, we actually liked and felt safe living in NZ, but we were up for trying a new country and a new lifestyle.

We set ourselves a goal of staying for 2 years before we made a decision as to whether to stay or not. In that time, we have moved away from Sydney, down the coast and have settled somewhere that we feel we may never move away from!

Schools, well NZ has a pretty good system, but I have found that the system over here isn't too bad either! We are sending our dd to a private school next year and even at full fees it is pretty affordable. We don't have much of an income, and yet the school was happy to accept Bella and is going to charge us fees that are absolutely minimal!

The public schools in our area are mainly pretty good and the kids I know that attend them are doing well and love going there. The main reason we decided to go public is that the public school we were zoned for isn't that good.

It is like all areas ... there are some good schools and some not so good!

Give it a try ... I bet you will love the lifestyle and so will your kids!