Helping Your Family Move

Moving from one house to another is seldom easy or fun for adults and it can be especially troubling for children.  If parents deal with their children’s concerns and needs thoughtfully, much of that distress and discomfort can be avoided.

Children see moves differently than their parent’s do, and they benefit much less from the change in their comfortable routines, or so it seems at the time.  Most often, a change in houses or communities heralds an important step forward for the adult members of the family.   The family moves because a parent has a great new job or a promotion in reward for years of hard work.  They move because financial success has allowed the purchase of a bigger or nicer house.  They move because they can afford more space.

In 2000 mobile and hard striving people typically live in a house for about four years and then move on as their careers or fortunes allow.  That short time span is only a small percentage of the life-to-date for a 30 or 40 year old, but the same four years is a half the life-time of an 8 year old, and it includes almost all the years he or she can remember.  To a parent, this house may be only the place they have lived recently.  They think of it as a weigh station on the road of life.  To kids, however, it may be the only home they have ever really known.  This is their house, the place they feel safe and comfortable and thoroughly at home with.  A house is much more than a roof and walls to a child.  It is the center of his or her world.  A move threatens to take that sphere away and leave something totally strange in its place.  The familiar friends, schools, shops and theaters, the streets, tress and parks – all will no longer exist for them.  Everything soon will be strange, and they will live in someone else’s world.

The impact of a move on a typical child starts about the time he or she first hears that Mommy or Daddy has accepted a promotion, and often continues for about a year, until the new house becomes home and memories of the previous place fade.  It’s not usually necessary to announce this big change to children immediately, although they must hear about it from you before someone else breaks the news.  Most teenagers see themselves as adult members of the family, and will probably feel they have been left out if they don’t hear everything from the first day.  But it is probably not a good idea to tell toddlers and preschoolers until they have to know.  There is no point in making them worry far in advance.  Be sure to announce the move in a totally positive way.  You might say how proud you are that your company has chosen you out of many other employees to manage a new office in Cleveland.  Talk about what a beautiful city Cleveland is how good the schools are and how nice the people are.  Tell truthful but very positive stories about how nice the new house will be.  Ask them what the favorite things are in their lives now, and then try to make them happen in the new home.  If the new home is too far away to allow a visit by the entire family after it has been selected, show the children pictures of it from every angle.  Videotape it, if you can.  Emphasize the positive views and be sure to include pictures of each child’s new room.  Try to name the house with some romantic description like   “oak hill” for the big trees and the sloping lawn