Family moving to residency

[vicarious]

I'm sure more will come to me as this thread goes on but here's a start.

 

Pro and Con: All the usual stuff that goes with moving. Establishing the family in a new community, school, church, job(s), new house, and possibly new climate.

 

Just a hint for those relocating to colder climates, choose a winter project that will keep you busy indoors and possibly warm i.e.: crocheting an afghan. Make lots of friends while the weather is good so you'll have lots of company visiting or to visit once your more shut in. Invest in full spectrum light bulbs.

 

Pro: You get to see pretty closely how DK's training is progressing.

Con: For me it's difficult not to but in on the training process at home. All of those "How was class?" questions at the small home school have become more intense in proportion to the increase in intensity of the training. Now it's "So, how was your hip in rond de jambe en l'air en dehor today dear?

 

Pro and Con: The whole family may get involved in ballet.

Con: Non-dks and spouse might feel left out. Research what there is for them to do.

Pro: It's an exciting time that you can share as a family and will always remember.

Con: Non-dks may ask "When are we going to move so I can study..."

Pro and con: Children learn that their dreams are insanely important to parents. (Not saying this isn't the case with those that don't move.)

 

Con: There's a different atmosphere in the management of a residential program versus a small home school. For good and bad parents have less influence in the running of the program. It can be a hard pill to swallow if you've been a mover and shaker at the home school.

Pro: You save dramatically on the cost of the program because you're not paying for room and board.

Con: If you buy a house you're basically married to the program for better or worse as long as the housing market is in slump. Affordable places to rent might be an issue. You never know how things may change with the program. I'm so glad we didn't move to the Clara R. Noyes program. I understand that some the students and teachers have rebounded but I can only imagine the anxiety during that that transitional time.

 

Pro: DK can have all those familiar things of home around them.

Con: Oh my gosh, moving all our stuff is expensive.

Pro: DK has parent influence, supervision and support.

Con: DK longs for the dorm expirience like everyone else.

Pro: DK can "hang out" with friends at the dorm and there's plenty of supervision rather than hanging out on the streets or in homes that may or may not have supervision.

Con: Seems like DK only comes home to sleep. (Everybody has snacks in their room and most has refrigerators so no need to come home to eat.)

 

Pro: Dancer's like to get away from the dorm and come to DK's house. I had so much fun during prom when several girls came over to get ready and then have an after prom sleepover. You know the feeling you get when you see your young man or woman all gussied up a leaving for the prom multiply that by 5.

 

Con: Employment. This could be a pro or con depending on the situation. It was a con for us because this area has a depressed economy.

 

Pro: No long drive to ballet.

Con: I feel like a trolley zipping back and forth down the street to ballet.

 

Pro: I can better monitor DD's health.

Con: DD feels overprotected at times.

Pro: DK can go to church with family rather than possibly skipping out.

Con: Some of DK's independence may be postponed. This might be a pro.

[dancemaven]

You never know how things may change with the program.

 

This is very true. The lesson I have learned in the last five years of my DD's ballet training is that 'the only certain thing is change'. And if the directorship changes, all bets are off. Even very stable programs can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. So one can never be too cautious when deciding how many of the dancer's eggs---much less a whole family's eggs---should be locked into one basket.

[balletbooster]

I moved with my daughter to residency. However, she lived in the dorms and I lived about 35 minutes away the first year and about 10 minutes from school the second year. This allowed her to qualify for instate tuition and room & board (which are free to state residents) after one year and also allowed me to see her often. It was nice to know her friends, give them a home to go to for meals or hanging out and since her school did not allow students to have cars, I also became the official go-fer when supplies were needed for a project, rides were needed to off campus auditions, friends were sick and needed a late night drugstore visit, fast food runs and any myriad of other things that she and her friends wanted to do. It gave me a window into her residency world, while she still got to have the residency experience. It also provided her a place to go for quiet study or serious work on a major paper or project and also somewhere to get away to, when the intensity of ballet residency was extreme.

 

Being a single parent with an only child and a job to which I telecommute, this arrangement was possible for us, without disruption to siblings or parents' jobs. This also allowed me to move with her during her senior year when she was offered a trainee position with a pro company.

[dancindaughters]

balletbooster and vicarious, a belated thank-you for your posts. I was wondering, if you had to do it again, would you do anything differently?

 

I would also like to hear stories from parents who have moved without their spouses and/or other children, (hopefully on a temporary basis). There are so many considerations, and it is so hard to know what is right.

To weigh and balance one child's needs against anothers is perhaps the hardest part of parenting.

[Quarterking]

ddaughters,

 

My wife and I are in the beginning months of this very matter. DD dances at a major school in a large city. She and my wife live in an apartment near the school while I am at home, holding down the fort. We have no other children at home, so my situation is a little different. We stay in touch via phone, email and text messages. We get to see each other about every-other weekend.

 

The rewards are outweighing the challenges by ten to one. DD is blossoming in a way which she could not at her old school. She had rec'd everything they had to give to her. Her old school once had a solid reputation, but has fallen off greatly in the past five years. We watched the decline and realized we had to move forward if she was ever going to have a chance to dance professionally. The opportunities she has rec'd already have been worth the entire trip!

 

My wife and I actively work on our relationship. It is a necessity.

 

I hope this help,

[vicarious]

I was wondering, if you had to do it again, would you do anything differently?

 

Sorry I'm so late in replying to this. I missed it somehow.

 

There are a few things I would do differently but I don't know if it would have made things any better or worse.

 

First, rent a place rather than buy. At least for the first year. Although one of the reasons for moving was to have a separate apartment for my mother who lives with us. I don't know how that would have worked. The layout for the house we bought was an answer to prayer.

 

Second, shop around. In hindsight I see that there are other good programs that we could have moved to. I don't know that we would have been any happier with a different school for dd. The location of this school made for an easier and probably less expensive relocation than others. We only moved 5 hours away from our previous home.

 

Third, breadwinner get a job there first. Luckily, my husband was able to commute that first year until the right job became available. I don't know if waiting for the job would have been the right thing to do.

 

The timing was very right for the move on several fronts, many of those are personal to our family and not ballet related so I won't go into those here. Her need for improved training coincided amazingly with our other needs.

 

The timing in DD's training was absolutely right. She was really not getting along well with one of her teachers. Her desire to go to class went off and on depending on who she had for class that day. I don't think her personal strengths were being acknowledged and utilized there. Within the first few minutes of the audition here, they saw her potential and what they had to work with. Frankly, the training here is better than any she could have gotten within a two hour drive of our previous home. She was 11 and I knew at 13 she'd be going into high school and if she still wanted to pursue a career in ballet she would need to go to a residency program. Students from her school were not going to residency programs. I wanted her to be technically ready for a pre-professional school. Most important in our consideration was that my husband and I both felt strongly that we didn't want her to board because we wanted her to continue to going to church and learning our values.

 

So with all that, why wait.