I'm the mother of 4 lovely children, plus the wife of a demanding husband, and - topping it off by recently adding a lively dog to our household. When we decided to move into a better organized home, things turned out differently than we expected.

My family has been living in number 5 Simmer Lane ever since we came to this neighbourhood, 4 children ago. My husband and I started off like most other Sim couples; we had just a few rooms and the items that we needed the most. Each time we were blessed with another child, we solved it by expanding our old house. And when my husband insisted on building a large swimmingpool in our living room, it was solved by adding a 2nd story to our house. So why do I tell you all this, in an article that appearantly should be about children?

Our household always worked well. The house was rather large, the children had their own rooms with their own personal style. We always wanted to help them develop their true persons. We never really worked hard to make them study for school, or to catch the school bus in the mornings, although we naturally kept an eye on their needs and grades. But most of this worked fine without too much interuption from us, the parents. I think the times that one or more of the children missed the bus can be counted on one hand!

Well, after 90 days in this evergrowing house, we figured it was no longer a practical home. The rooms were not well planned (sorry Crawl, but they weren't) and parts of it were never completed, so we decided to move. We hired a professional house designer, who came up with a nice 2 story house which was built in another corner of this neighbourhood. We were all thrilled, and the feeling when we ran into our new home for the very first time was something special. You all know what that is like. The new house was very well layed-out, somehow a little smaller than our old home, but still about 4000 square feet, including 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. But no indoor swimming pool.

The children were just as enthusiastic as us, and even our son's dog seemed to like it in the beautiful garden. But then things started to worry us. Each morning 1 or 2 of the children missed the school bus! No matter how early we got up there was always someone to miss it! This never happened before, and the run from the dining room doesn't take longer than in our previous home.

We contacted our house designer, and even if it was against the new local community rule for house adjustments, he helped us with very small adjustments such as adding one extra door to the dining room, and just slightly adjusting a wall. We thought it was solved, and it pretty much was with a better access through the doorway for everyone. But no. Still the norm is that one of our children miss the school bus! And things only got worse!

A few days later I got a call from Military School. They wanted to warn me about my son who has been slipping grades dramatically after we moved, and they said if he didn't improve he had to be taken away! I was in state of shock, but I realized that my son very often missed the school bus. He still did, but I payed a neighbour to come to our home to make sure he did study hard while he was at home. He improved slightly, but then the Military School called again, this time they said it was too late for improvals! But I hang up, not willing to accept the facts, I commanded my son to study harder right away, and I must admit I was tempted to get rid of that dog that constantly sat next to his desk trying to get all his attention.

My son managed to improve one grade, but he will continue to miss the bus. Even if we tell him to skip breakfast sending him directly to the bus, he will walk to the bus, then suddenly stop without us knowing, to return to the house, walking slowely around the house in order to get back to the bus, and then it is too late. This never happened in our ould house, not even after he got his dog.

I could go on forever, but I must say moving with children certainly can cause problems you wouldn't dream of! I can't see any other changes than the house, and my conclution will be that the structure of your house might affect some children's behavior. In our new home everything seems to pass by much slowlier, although we kept the same routine. I wanted to share this with you in order to warn you, but also to give a sign of hope in case you are having these problems in your old home, maybe it's time to move on to another house.