High school

I will offer a personal prospective. I grew up in a very CC part of WIsconsin and was the "only" at too many things to remember. I had many many friends and those people are actually still my best friends many years later. However, I always felt like an outsider. I rarely dated because it was understood that no matter how "nice" and "cool" I was that wasn't a thing that you would do. I think it would have been much harder if I didn't have an abundance of self esteem. I went to a historically AA college and it really changed my life because it removed race as an issue in my relationships. When I didn't get along with people I figure out what was wrong because it wasn't race. I got asked on more dates in my first month of college than in my entire life in Wisconsin. I didn' t think that mattered to me but it did. Another learning was that many of my CC friends came to visit me on campus and experienced life as "me" which was very enlightening for them.Does this help at all? It is a little bit of a ramble.

I appreciate that perspective a lot. You've been there. I am definitely sympathetic with the "outsider" perspective. I can "hear" the loneliness. As far as the dating goes? Do you think that was so bad, not dating til you were in college? Ha-ha. This is partially in jest.

Beachy,another question for you....do you believe that if you have gone to a more racially diverse high school that the positive parts of that experience would have outweighed being uprooted from the community and moved to a place with all new friends, etc? and possibly a very different lifestyle? ( our daughter has a horse, eg.)

Besides the issues you've already mentioned, what would it mean to you to live in a city? If you love living rurally, and benefit from the space (I benefit psychologically and physically so much that I will never consider living in a city again), then she will be affected by your feelings on where you live. If you love the city, then it might be to your benefit to move, but since you're questioning its value to her rather than to you, I believe you should take into account the feelings of all three of you. In addition, do your older daughters come home and benefit from a break from city living?You should ask your daugher her opinion, but even as a very intelligent kid, she will sense if you are leaning one direction or another and might try to answer the way you want it to go. It might be more enlightening for all of you to practice city living for awhile and see if you really like it. Is there any way to do that?Sometimes high school means changing interests and she might change her interests from the rural setting and it would be okay to be in a city. You and she can gauge her interests over time. Could you live where you are now and send her to racially diverse camps and on small trips during the year for that purpose? Some summer schools for kids are quite diverse, if you drive just an hour away from the rural setting. That's too much driving for regular use, but is there someone she could stay with for a summer day school during the week?I replied to this question because I am biased for rural living and I have lived in cities and suburbs as well as on my farm. I think you can provide many unique benefits for your child and maybe yourselves in either setting, but if you're on the fence, moving is quite big step to take. Would it be just as easy to move back and get another rural place when you're "done", or would it be more cost effective to buy or rent an additional place in a city so your bridges aren't burned? Do you really love your current place, or even if you don't, is it hard to get similar places once you've sold one?The perceived benefits to your daughter, from her point of view specifically, would have to be quite substantial at her age for her to be able to get over the sale of her horse. If she were to lose interest in horses later, that might change. In the city or in the country, could she go to some riding clinics in more diverse areas?

Good question. To be honest I had no idea the impact that going to that college would have on me when I went. I did move across the country and make all new friends without the added benefits of my parents and siblings with me. Looking back the answer to that for me is probably yes the move was worth it. Now that odd part of that is that attending that AA college made me more sure of who I was as an AA woman who loves country music, polka and slow jam R&B. The college did have lots of economic and social diversity which also was really important. It wasn't that people looked like it me it was that the people who looked like me were also very different. I would agree moving might be a little extreme unless its something you want to do. I would definitely talk to your daughter about it. My parents would be SHOCKED to find that I didn't love my school experience because I never really expressed any of it to them. I just chalked it up to teenage angst and got on with life. Perhaps you could start with a vacation to a place where there are more people of color? Perhaps joining something anything were you are the sole CC person would give you some insight about how it feels to be her? I wonder if you could start a "Meet Up" of transracial families? There is one in our area made up of all kinds of differenting looking families and we have events every once in a while. My DD who is adopted is bi-racial and looks different from my husband and I so I thought it was important for her to see families of different looking people together. Good luck.