Moving from house to another can be an emotional event for anyone, but particularly so for children, but you can prepare your child to help ease them into a new home and neighborhood. Follow the following steps to help your child handle both the news and the upheaval of the move in a healthy manner, and go through the transition feeling safe and secure (and even excited about it, too!).
Break the News Well
Children know when you’re keeping a secret, so tell your child about the move as soon as possible after you’ve made the decision. But make sure to have the details in place, your child will have lots of questions, so first gather answers about where you’ll live, where your child will go to school, and when the move will be. The less uncertainty your child has, the better.
Get Excited
Find out what’s exciting about your new home and town, go online and look up places of interest in your new neighborhood, such as museums, parks, restaurants, and libraries. If you’re able to show your child pictures of your new home you’re moving to, great! But even if all you have are pictures, you can plan how to decorate the new room and ask your child for ideas about furniture placement in the rest of the house.
Keep Routine in Place
Order and routines are incredibly important and comfortable to children of all ages. Plan the move for the summer instead of moving in the middle of the school year, and leave yourself enough time to settle in so that once school starts, your child will feel secure in their new environment, make friends and get to know the area.
Pack Up
If you’re not able to bring everything along, let your child be the one to decide which of their toys to bring along and which to leave behind. If you’re moving to a particularly small place, temporarily putting your child’s things in a storage unit, like self storage in Lancaster, rather than selling them, giving them away, or throwing them out will make a big difference. Keep beloved items out for as long as possible, and let your child be a part of the packing, and even go as far as allowing them to decoratethe boxes of their stuff with stickers and drawing on them with markers.
Settle In
While there’s so much to do once the move is over, make your child’s bedroom a high priority. When your child can go to sleep and wake up in a room that looks like it’s theirs, it will make a big difference to their emotional wellbeing and! feelings of security.
Author Bio
Melisa Cammack has been freelance writing for a number of years, and loves to write parenting, travel, self-help, and travel articles. She and her husband and their three (soon to be four) children recently made the move from the States to Western Australia, and they’re all finding the beautiful weather to be quite agreeable.
Melisa is currently promoting Extra Space Storage – Fontana location, and wants to wish everyone a stress-free moving day!
