How to make moving with kids easy

Relocating wears on grown-ups, and for the youngest members of the household it can be downright bewildering. A child rarely grasps the reasons behind a household change, the destination waiting at the far end, or the mechanics of getting there. To take some of the mystery out of the day, our crews at Teddy Bear Moving pulled together this short set of pointers for guiding the little ones through a family relocation.

Seeing the day through your child’s eyes

Before you can smooth the road for a youngster, it helps to picture the whole event the way they experience it. In the weeks leading up to the big day, the house fills with chatter and activity. Familiar belongings that once sat out in the open get sealed into cartons, daily routines shift, and mom and dad seem preoccupied more often than not. Then a team of unfamiliar faces shows up and starts carrying everything they know out the front door. Framed that way, the confusion makes perfect sense.

Match your approach to their age

You do not need a crash course in developmental psychology to help your kids through a relocation. What matters is recognizing that three broad age brackets tend to react in different ways, so shape your plan around whichever one fits your family.

• Young ones. Babies, toddlers, and preschoolers usually take a change of address in stride. Even once they begin forming a sense of home, they seldom treat the place as permanent. To them, home is simply wherever the family happens to be gathered. Keep the familiar faces close and the transition tends to go smoothly.
• School age. From the first day of class up through the mid-teen years, children build friendships and interests of their own while still leaning heavily on their parents. A relocation lands harder on this group.
• Teenagers. Adolescents are the toughest to uproot. By this point their sense of self is rooted in a social world they assembled themselves, and leaving it behind can stir up genuine worry about finding a place in an unfamiliar crowd.

Hand them a role in the process

The surest way to settle a child into a move is to let them take part in it. A job of their own restores a little sense of control when everything else feels out of their hands. You might, for instance, point them toward websites or reference books about the place you are headed and ask them to dig up facts about their soon-to-be hometown.

Another idea: rather than leaving every carton to the professionals, invite your kids to pitch in with the boxing and wrapping. There is nothing wrong with letting them feel like true contributors to such a meaningful family milestone. When the heavier lifting calls for a professional touch, our packing services team is ready to step in.

It all comes back to talking

At the end of the day, the single biggest factor is honest conversation with your child. If they can see why the family is making this choice, or simply trust that you are confident it is right even when the reasons are hard to spell out, you are already most of the way there. Keep the dialogue running in both directions, too. Give their worries a real hearing, and act on whichever ones you can. When you are ready to plan a smooth family move across New Jersey, our Fairfield team is a phone call away at 973-500-6003.