A Mom Says Her Teenagers Grew Up Almost Entirely in Apartments, and Now They Treat Shared Spaces, Crowds, and City Streets Like Second Nature
A mom with two teenagers, an 18-year-old son and a 16-year-old daughter, said her children have spent almost their entire childhood living in apartments in urban areas. Their family did live in houses during the years when her husband was serving in the military, but the children were so young that she doubts they remember much about those homes. As the years passed, apartment living simply became their normal way of life.
That reality sometimes attracts criticism from extended family members who believe the family should move somewhere they could have a traditional house. The mom, however, has never felt that her children were missing something important. In fact, the more she compared their childhood with her own, the more she started noticing that apartment life may have shaped them in ways she had never expected.
She Noticed Their Attitude Toward Personal Space Was Completely Different
One of the first differences she noticed involved how her children treated their bedroom. The teenagers share a room because of the family’s limited space, but their parents gave them the master bedroom and divided it into separate areas so each child could have some privacy. Instead of spending most of their free time behind those dividers, though, the siblings mostly use the bedroom for sleeping and changing clothes.
The rest of their time is usually spent in the living room with their parents. The mom remembered that as a teenager, she would have preferred to disappear into her own room whenever possible, although she acknowledged that her relationship with her parents may have played a bigger role than the size of the home. Her children’s comfort with shared space made her wonder whether apartment living had quietly taught them to see togetherness as ordinary rather than restrictive.
The Family Has Learned to Make Limited Space Work
Living in a smaller home has not always been perfectly convenient. There are obvious moments when everyone would probably appreciate an extra room, especially with two teenagers growing older and needing more privacy. Still, the mom said the limitations have never seemed to make her children unhappy with their home.
Instead, the family has developed routines around communal living. Meals, conversations, entertainment, and much of their downtime happen in the same shared areas, which means there is naturally more interaction between parents and children. What once looked like a limitation from the outside has become a normal part of the family’s rhythm.
She Thinks the Arrangement May Have Made Her Children More Sociable
The mom also believes her teenagers are more comfortable socially than she was at their age. Because there is not a large house with several separate rooms to disappear into, much of their leisure time is naturally communal. She admitted that this can be inconvenient, but she also suspects it has helped the family grow closer.
Her children seem comfortable being around people rather than constantly looking for somewhere private to retreat. That does not mean they never want time alone, but shared space appears to be something they understand instinctively. The mom wondered whether growing up around that constant interaction helped them become naturally more sociable.
Their Apartment Building Became Part of Their Social Life
Then there was the building itself. The family knows many of their neighbors, and they are fortunate enough to get along with most of them, creating a small sense of community just outside their front door. For the teenagers, that has meant having friends nearby without needing long drives or complicated plans.
The 16-year-old daughter, in particular, benefits from having friends in the same building. Her mom said sending her daughter to a friend’s home can be as simple as letting her walk to another floor. What might sound like a small convenience has made socializing feel much easier and more spontaneous.
Good Neighbors Changed the Entire Experience
A response from a person who had raised children in a 770-square-foot apartment described a surprisingly similar experience. The children shared a room, and the apartment had only one bathroom, which created its fair share of frustrations, but the family remained there for 11 years and generally loved the experience. The person’s strongest memories centered not on the lack of space, but on the community around them.
Every afternoon, the children could go outside and spend time with the other kids in the complex while the adults talked nearby. The family was also struggling financially at the time, so having a group of neighborhood children to play with meant the kids did not seem to need endless paid activities. Years later, several of those same children were approaching high school graduation, and the families could still look back at old pictures of them waiting together for the school bus when they were little.
Another Family Discovered That Apartment Communities Can Disappear
The same person later explained that apartment life had not remained exactly the same forever. People moved away, new neighbors arrived, and the close-knit atmosphere eventually changed. Their own family eventually moved to a townhouse community hoping to recreate the same experience, but the new neighborhood turned out to be much quieter.
That contrast highlighted something important about apartment living. The building itself does not automatically create a community, and having nearby neighbors does not guarantee that people will know one another. For some families, the right group of people can make an apartment feel almost magical, while another building can feel completely anonymous.
One Person Said Living in Apartments Taught Kids to Be More Aware of Noise
One of the more amusing differences came from a person whose brother-in-law had grown up in an apartment. According to him, his extended family had something he jokingly described as “house feet,” because they walked around making far more noise than apartment dwellers would normally tolerate. Apparently, people raised in houses can forget how clearly footsteps travel when no one is living directly above or below them.
Another person who raised children in a house immediately recognized the description. The children there were apparently loud walkers and enthusiastic stompers on a daily basis. It was a funny example of how something as ordinary as walking through a hallway can become a learned habit depending on what kind of home someone grew up in.
Apartment Living Comes With Fewer Household Chores
Not every difference involved social behavior. One person who had experienced both houses and apartments pointed out that apartment life removes a long list of chores that can consume a family’s free time. There is no lawn to mow, no garden to maintain, and usually far less exterior maintenance to worry about. For families who would rather spend their weekends doing something else, that can be a major advantage.
Another person took that idea even further by remembering how much she disliked the chores that came with growing up in a house. She recalled raking leaves, shoveling snow, cleaning multiple floors, and dealing with the endless work that came with larger spaces. By the time she became an adult, she had decided that she never wanted to spend that much of her life maintaining a house again.
But Smaller Homes Can Become Cluttered Very Quickly
Apartment life also has its less glamorous side. A person who had compared both living arrangements pointed out that while apartments eliminate many outdoor chores and make some responsibilities easier, they can become cluttered quickly. With less storage and fewer separate rooms, there is simply less space to hide the piles that families naturally accumulate.
The same person also pointed out that having people over can be harder. A larger house may make it easier for children to invite friends over without everyone feeling crowded, while an apartment requires more planning around limited space. In that sense, the same feature that creates closeness inside a family can sometimes make entertaining more difficult.
One Person Said Growing Up in an Apartment Never Felt Unusual
A person who was raised in a small apartment said it never occurred to her that her childhood arrangement was unusual. During summers, she stayed with her grandparents in the countryside and enjoyed having more open space, but returning to the apartment always felt completely normal. She did not remember viewing her home as something lesser simply because it was smaller.
Now that she lives in the countryside herself, she has discovered that the experience can feel completely different as an adult. She loves having space for her own children to play outside without needing elaborate plans or frequent outings. Her conclusion was simple: both environments can work as long as children have opportunities to get outside, explore, and experience life beyond the walls of their home.
Another Person Felt More Freedom Came With a House
Not everyone who had experienced apartment life saw it the same way. One person who had lived in both said that her apartment building did not provide much of a community at all because everyone simply ignored one another and went about their business. For her, living in a house offered more freedom to relax, be herself, and invite friends over without worrying about bothering neighbors.
That experience showed just how much the surrounding environment can matter. A house can provide privacy and space, while an apartment can provide proximity to people, but neither outcome is guaranteed. The same type of home can feel completely different depending on the neighborhood, the people nearby, and how the family actually uses the space.
Her Teenagers Have Grown Into Unexpected City Experts
The mom then revealed one benefit she had not expected when her children were younger. Because they have spent so much of their lives in an urban environment, her teenagers have become extremely comfortable navigating the city on their own. Once they were old enough to go out independently, they quickly became the family members with surprisingly detailed knowledge of buses, train routes, stations, alleys, and side streets.
She said she can casually mention that she needs to go somewhere in town, only to have one of her children immediately suggest the fastest combination of public transportation. When the family walks downtown, the teenagers can move through crowds with ease and seem to know every shortcut. Their navigation skills have become such a normal part of family life that she finds the whole thing genuinely cool.
Another Person Pointed Out That This Skill Isn’t Exclusive to Apartments
A response from a person who grew up in a small town pointed out that this kind of independence can develop anywhere. That person remembered being able to find a way around almost every part of town, including places they had never visited before. Knowing the local streets and figuring out how to get somewhere had become an ordinary childhood skill.
That observation added another layer to the discussion. Growing up in an apartment may expose children to public transportation, crowded streets, and densely packed neighborhoods more often, but independence is not something that belongs exclusively to urban children. Different environments simply give children different opportunities to practice it.
Her Biggest Surprise Was What Her Children Never Complained About
Perhaps the most interesting part of the mom’s story was what she did not observe. Her teenagers had shared a bedroom, spent much of their free time in communal spaces, and lived without the yard or extra rooms that some family members believed they should have. Yet neither child seemed resentful about the arrangement.
Instead, they had friends nearby, knew their neighbors, enjoyed being around their parents, and became highly independent navigating the city. Their childhood had its inconveniences, but those inconveniences had also become familiar parts of daily life. The mom began to realize that children may not measure their childhood by square footage nearly as much as adults assume.
The House-versus-Apartment Question Turned Into Something Else
A response from another person who had lived in both kinds of homes brought the entire discussion back to the emotional side of the issue. That person said that as a child, the most important thing was not having a traditionally impressive home, but whether life felt interesting and enjoyable. In that person’s experience, being able to walk over to a friend’s home and feel part of the surrounding neighborhood created more memorable experiences than having additional rooms ever could.
The mom agreed that the point resonated with her. She admitted that she personally prefers the place where the family lives now, and she believes that her own happiness probably influences how her children feel about their home. What began as a question about whether apartment kids grow up differently ended with a much more unexpected realization: the atmosphere a family creates may matter far more to children than whether the front door opens into a house or an apartment.
