Moving to a new home is hard to do...for anyone, no matter how old you are, and we all react differently to disruptions to routines and your usual day-to-day. Your child may be just fine and think of this as a big adventure, while your other child may be quite anxious and scared. Even just going to a restaurant I've never been to before, I like to Google and know exactly about the menu and what the façade looks like, but that's just me. Others will just find the address and be fine with discovering all of that on arrival.
As we talked about, kids, for the most part, like routine and information, so much of dealing with a move or any new situation is common sense for parents - get as much information as possible, pass it along to your kids and remind them that you will all be together, so they feel secure in this unknown, new territory. Here are a few other specific hints I found that may make your move go a little smoother.
-- Play "Move" with your kids. Set up a new house or a new city with blocks and use toys to act out a move. So Meow-Meow and his family are moving from their house on the bed to the new house out on the couch, pack up their things, have them be excited and maybe nervous and so on.
-- When you are packing up things, remind your children you aren't getting rid of those things, you are just putting them in boxes to make it easier to move them. Be sure to keep out a few favorites in a tote bag or duffel so they can have some toys right away in the new house without you searching through endless boxes.
-- If you aren't moving too far, go visit the new house and the new school before you move. Being able to physically be in the new space makes it less of an unknown entity. Point out all of the things that are the same as your old place (bathrooms, kitchen, lockers, or what have you).
-- If you are moving cross-country, have a whole project to find out about your new town together. Look online, make a list of all of the new places to explore and visit, which can help build excitement for the move.
-- Remind your little ones that they will make new friends but can still be friends with their old buddies. Start becoming pen pals with friends even before the big moving day to see how it works (little ones can do this with pictures).
smilings boxes
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Quoting sarah824:We have not had to face this with the kids yet, but the time will come I am sure. We have talked about it with them already and they both think having a bigger house would be great so hopefully when the time comes it won't be too hard on them.
Here I go again.....lol.
Same here. We live in the same house we did before the kids were born so we haven't had to deal with this yet. We do plan on building a house within the next 5 years. At that time our kids will be old enough to deal with it.
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- HeatherNYC
on Jun. 6, 2012 at 12:00 AM