My 4 year old son lives in an apartment. A unit. Or if you want to use the pejorative, “a flat”. On the third floor, up six small flights of stairs, far away from a lush green backyard. He has no cricket pitch, no cubby house, and no place to make mud pies.
We live in a beautiful old corner building built in the 1920s. It has high ceilings, polished floors, atmosphere to burn. But it is on a busy road, opposite a train station, above the shops. Not a place where kids would’ve lived a generation ago. No patch of lawn with sheets flapping on the hills hoist or a jacaranda tree dropping its blossoms. Our outside world is concrete and bitumen, with a couple of trees planted along the old-fashioned shopping strip. Our only backyard – a small, dank shared courtyard. Just the other day my husband spied some of the local wildlife lurking. A dead rat – he said as he snapped on the rubber gloves to get rid of it – “as big as a cat”. Kid friendly? Not so much.
Before you snort, what a pack of w*nkers, pretending to live in New York when you live in Oz, I admit that in Australia, apartment dwelling can seem weird in a country with such great weather. But aside from the joy of not having a soul-crushing mortgage, at the moment, I take a perverse pleasure our small family unit living in a unit. Because not that long ago that they were thought as rather immoral. In 1920, when Australian poet Kenneth Slessor was a young man, he rented a flat. And In Slessor’s words, his mother believed that was “only one step away from announcing that he was going to shack up with a prostitute, because flats in those days were looked upon as evil, something really evil.”
Although that view seems old fashioned today, there’s still a view that apartment living isn’t suitable for children. And if you don’t live near to a good local park, green spaces or something like a skate park across the road, which is our lucky situation, it can definitely be tough. But the reality is that with housing affordability at record low levels, apartment dwelling kids are a much more common group of children in Australian cities. It’s happened fast, in less than a generation. When I went to put my little boy’s name down at the local school, there was a problem. “Your building doesn’t appear on our map” said the woman at the front office. Yes, because in the 1950s when the local area maps were drawn up for schools in NSW, no children lived in apartments, or above the shops. Now, there are 9 kids in our building, most under school age.
For my husband and I, because we live in a city where property prices are crazy, we could only afford a house if we moved ‘further out’ – to far suburbia. But to lose the luxury of being able to walk everywhere – to the supermarket, the fruit shop, the local primary school – and to the train to take us to the city – at the moment, for us that’s too much of a trade off. For us, the thought of hours spent commuting each day would drain a lot of the colour from life. And it would be hours. Houses are so expensive where we live, could start looking at around 20 kilometres from our suburb to find something we could afford. So right now we’re choosing what the planners call “walkability” over more space. But we have asked ourselves the question many times about our flat dwelling life. Is it worth it – and are we short-changing our little guy?
Without being able to retort ‘just go outside!’ to “I’m bored!”, the reality is that daily trawl to the local park takes a lot of effort. And like most kids, my son has the energy of a small freight train. So there’s been many late afternoons with our 3 year old neighbour at the ‘witching hour’ with 2 boys clambering in and out of his bedroom window (an interior window!) and leaping up and down under a tent made of sheets. Because I just can’t be bothered to drag him to that damn park.* A poor substitute for climbing a tree or doing cartwheels in the grass, right? Probably.
Top Comments
I am the person who lives below the family of 3 children who NEVER get taken to the park. 100% of their running around and screaming outside of school is on my ceiling. Kill me.
Children in units/apts can work, but it requires a bit more effort and it's not just taking the child down to the park, it's also, considering your neighbours.
A colleague lives in an apt in the inner city, mostly couples and singles, but a couple with a toddler and baby have moved in and the quiet enjoyment of the property has vanished. Endless complaints and tension is the order of the day. The parents say tough, kids are noisy.
Kids make noise (so do many adults!) you can't blame them for that, but to leave your baby crying for a prolonged period of time or to allow your toddler to scream on and off all day is too much.
A friend was dreading the arrival of new tenants with a 2 year old, but the parents made an effort all round, he got boisterous and loud, he was off to the beach for some solid walking or to the park for some play time. It's now 6 years later and 8 year old Charlie is adored by the residents, many of them older. It can work, but the parents have to think of the child and other residents.