Moving to a New Place With a Child: How to Prepare Him For a New Period of Life?

Our house – it’s not only the floors, ceilings, walls, but it is also a place full of the most amazing childhood memories for our children. Therefore, relocation and moving to another location often becomes a challenging and painful process.

While most psychologists say that children recover relatively quickly and simply unique from difficult periods, but in a situation such as moving to another city often makes a pretty hard time for kids. Moreover, such process is also usually aggravated by stress and that affect not only children but also the parents. But how to make such huge step in your family’s life much easier?

One of the most important children rising concerns during moving to another place – fear. This fear often stems from ignorance of what awaits ahead in the future and simple fear of change which is often found among adults as well. Often parents, while talking with children, avoid this topic in order to protect them, but the hiding of truth is what hurts the most.

So the first step to help your kids to deal with moving easier is to talk. Start with a general discussion, and discuss what feelings or thoughts you have, and what the child thinks. Remember that while discussing such issue, you should try not to overshadow the child’s feelings with your words, but only to present your position and encourage the child to do the same.

Another important step that will help children adapts more easily – a trip to the future home. Usually, parents tend to shop around and see the house alone, but at this stage, the child should feel like he is a crucial part of decision making.

If you decide to go into the future home, do not forget to pick up a child with you. This trip can even be a little game to make it easier and relaxed. For example, create an interesting story about why some area residents have to leave their houses quickly and as soon as possible reach the new village. Some studies show that games and stories related to moving out help children to prepare for that morally and they have more fun while moving out as well.

The third important point – packaging. If possible, encourage your child to sort and contain his own toys and objects and don’t hesitate to help him. Ask what one or the other toy, game means for a child and make sure that at the new home he will be able to find all that at the right places.

This ongoing process both for you and your child will be the same as the little moving which will help to understand that he (the child) is not only moved from one place to another but also contributes to the imminent transfer.

Finally, in order to overcome the rising stress during moving out, it is useful to use not only games and conversations but also fun, imagination developing tools – books and movies.

For example, a writer Juliette Parachini-Deny created a colorful, rhymed and entertaining book “White Cloud Street”. The main character in a book introduce your children to the fun of moving out, will introduce your kid to new friends, and will tell a lot of intriguing stories about new neighbors. The problems related with moving out and child’s feeling during that are also portrayed in a very well-received animated film “Inside Out.”

So, do not be afraid and start talking with the kids about this hard topic, because all life changes sooner or later take on their own meaning. Do not be afraid to respond to your child’s concerns, because together overcoming the problems and dealing with frightening things will help all of you to move forwards together.