Helping My Kids Cope with the Move

Moving is hard on children, especially when they’re leaving their friends. It’s been interesting with this move seeing how each of my kids reacts.

My oldest is the most upset. She has the most friends, after all. She finally broke down the other night, crying, and talked about her concerns.

Fortunately, she quickly got to the point where she realized that she might just love our new home. If my husband can get a transfer back to the San Diego area when he’s qualified in a year, we might just do that, and she realized that she would probably be sad to leave her new friends.

My son is insisting that he’s not sad about it, but is decidedly fussier right now. Pretty typical stressed out four year old kind of behaviors.

And of course the baby just knows that she wants Mommy’s attention. She’s too young to know more than that I’m busier than usual and don’t play as much as she’d like.

For the older two, we’ve been talking to them a lot about why we’re moving and what they can expect. It really helped my oldest when we told her about all the kids we saw in the neighborhood just driving around.  Definitely a nice young neighborhood, which will help.

We’re also driving her nuts by giving her just about any detail about the house except whether it’s one or two story. She badly wants a two story home, so we’re keeping that as a surprise for her. It makes her mad, but should make her first sight of the new home very exciting.

We’re lucky to have local, retired grandparents to take the kids. I’m trying to have them gone most of this week, as we have a lot of stuff packed up. They really hate being told “sorry, that toy has been packed already.” Much better for them to be having fun with grandparents than to be underfoot all day.

They have helped with some of the packing, plus some toy sorting for things that they’re willing to get rid of. It’s a great time for getting rid of at least some of the excess toys!

Letting the kids be involved can slow things down tremendously, but it also helps them. It’s not just something that Mommy and Daddy are doing. It’s something the family is doing together.