Any great advice on things that help little ones move? We're moving in a month. My son is 4. I never moved from here in all my life so I can't relate to having to move....away from family and friends etc. do's dont's ...whatever works
i'm not sure if i can help. we've moved so much that it's old hat to kai. one thing to do is to make sure you put his bedroom back together immediately as close as possible to the original layout. it's really nice for them to have their space the way it was. a bit of familiarity. once there, check the community boards for family centers and parenting groups. they've been an enormous help establishing new friendships forboth myself and for kai.
The biggest advice I can give you may seem kind of silly, but do not under any circumstance let him know what's to become of his room. I only say this because when I was 7, my family sold our house and moved 15 miles away and the buyer of our house was gushing over it and told me how she was going to paint my room and recarpet it and have it for her college-age son. That devastated me, my space, my room was going to be completely changed. I think the woman was a little cruel in that aspect...telling a 7 year old how you're going to change their room is kind of thoughtless, though maybe I was just a little soft...
I recently moved and my kids adjusted pretty well. When I was young, we moved all the damn time. I never really had a problem with it until we moved the summer before I started high school. I was pissed then.
yes yes yes! when I was 16, we were moving to a new house with my mom's new finace and leaving the town house that my mom had bought after my parents divorce when i was 12. I had spent tons of time in that room painting miurals and stuff on the walls and the buyers were going to turn it into a storage room! It was the nicest, albeit the smallest, room in the house...pine floors, and my window faced the bike paths full of spruce trees which were basically right at the window and the sun would set between a dip in the trees making my room all orange....how i miss it..... yeah, so try to make that transititon nice and smooth so that he still feels comfortable in the new space like he did in the old one. I don't really know what else....i just always felt crappy when we moved, but it was usually due to crappy circumstances.... kc's idea is good, find some groups and stuff so that he can start to make some friends and feel a little less intimidated of the new place.... but he's still young, so it's really the close to home stuff that matters. Once he sees the old objects (furniture, etc...), I'm sure he'll feel a little better.
Keep his most prized possessions out until the very last minute. Then unpack them as soon as you arrive. Even let him take some of them in the car or the plane so he will know that they are going with him. Let him pack some of his things himself. Even if you have to repack teh box after he goes tosleep. Let him help with his stuff. And clearly mark the box so he knows it is his. Kathi
Try to explain to him whats going on. Give him reasons why you have to move, kids can unterstand a lot of things, we just have to explain. Tell him things that are going to be special about his new home, so he can look forward to something, and not just leave something behind. I didn't have to move often, but if I was always looking forward to it, a bigger house (meaning MY OWN ROOM) or Tunisia (YAY...AFRICA AND A HOUSE BY THE MEDITERANEAN :-D). I never had many friends, and the good ones I had, stayed friends careless where I lived.
This might not be the kind of thing you are looking for, but everyone else has given all the major advice already, this is just a side. When we moved C was almost two and got totally freaked out and upset about the process (time changes, no real bed for a couple nights, generally junky foods) I used Calms Forte 4 Kids by Hyland to help him take the edge off and it seemed to help. Luckily, he settled after about three weeks, but he wasn't old enough to understand moving yet like your's is. Good Luck! I kinda wish I was moving to Hawaii!
I would let him be part of decorating his new room. Maybe buy him a new comforter for his bed. Let him help pick it out. I hope you post pictures from Hawaii.
