Moving To A New HomeMoving to a new home can be a difficult transition for children and teens. They must say goodbye to all their familiar surroundings, their friends, their school, and start over anew in a strange and unfamiliar place.
Like all people, children crave stability, and they form attachments to places and things just as they form attachments to people. And while you might be making this move as a family unit, thus keeping all their primary human attachments in place, a move can also disrupt numerous secondary attachments…to friends, teachers or neighbors. So even under the best of circumstances, moving to a new home in a new city will come with some degree of pain and sorrow.
Most children are able to manage this transition without too many problems. But there are also instances where kids absolutely fall apart after a move. They don’t adjust well, they are b_llied at their new school or have trouble making friends, and they struggle to adapt. The professional literature is full of case studies involving children who took a nosedive following a move and never really recovered. So this isn’t something you should take lightly, and anything you can do to make this transition easier on children is helpful.
Moving to a new home: The Effects on children
There are many factors that will determine how well children adjust to a move:
- Their degree of attachment to the previous home environment
- The number and quality of secondary attachments to those outside your immediate family that they’re going to lose
- The size of this move (switching neighborhoods in the same city is less of an adjustment than moving across the country from Florida to Montana.)
- How well kids adjust to their new school
- Their ability to make friends in the new setting
- How similar or different the cultural climate is from the one they came from. For example, inner city kids will have a harder time adjusting to life in the suburbs, and kids who came from a suburb in one area may feel completely alien and out of place in a rural community where everyone has different mannerisms, a different way of speaking,are interested in entirely different things, and generally march to a different drum than the one your child is used to.
- Whether the move is an upgrade (better schools, neighborhood, house, etc.) or a downgrade
- The degree to which a move disrupts other elements of their life, such as sports, hobbies, extracurricular activities, or their general routines.
- The child’s own unique temperament and personality also come into play. Some kids are more sensitive and sentimental, and are likely to find it harder to adjust than those with a less reactive disposition or those who are naturally social and outgoing.
Younger children typically fare better than older ones, since their lives are more family-focused and they have less invested in conditions outside the home. Family moves are usually hardest on teens and those kids approaching adolescence, since they are at an age where friends and peer groups take on added significance in their lives. Youth are programmed to start pulling away from their parents, establishing their own independent identity and seeking belonging within their peer group. In a sense their script has been flipped, so that what would normally be secondary attachments to friends and peers seem just as important as the love and approval of their parents. So when you move to a new home, the attachments you’re disrupting carry far more significance. A teen who has put in a lot of work to establish relationships and build status within their peer group essentially has to start over from scratch. As the new kid in a new school, they’ll be at the bottom rung of the social l_dder, at least initially.
Frequent moves can be especially daunting for children of any age. When kids are moving homes every other year or even multiple times a year, this instability creates a r_sk factor that is just as h_rmful and potent as ab_se or living in poverty. So you should try to avoid uprooting kids on a regular basis.
On a brighter note, moves can also be good for children. Some kids thrive and do better in a new school or neighborhood than they did in the old one. So while you want to keep your eyes open for signs your child is struggling, you needn’t despair or worry needlessly. It’s usually not all doom and gloom.
Helping kids cope with a move: The psychological aspects
A) Approach it like an adventure
You’re all going to be a bit stressed and worried. You can ease this dread a bit by approaching the move as a grand new adventure. Before bed each night, speculate about the new friends you’ll make or all the people you’ll meet. Make plans to try out all the new restaurants in the area, or visit each park.
Fostering a sense of excitement can help provide a counterbalance to the worry. You want kids to be at least somewhat optimistic, because their attitude can all too easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A teen who is convinced this move is an unmitigated disaster that will ruin their life is liable to act in bristly, withdrawn or depressed ways that turn this fear into a reality.
B) Acknowledge their fear
If your kids are feeling fearful, show empathy toward their emotions. Acknowledge that change is both difficult and scary, but point out that these emotions are not an accurate predictor of how things will turn out. Fear of change comes automatically, even when changes turn out to be good for us in the long run. Help them make the distinction between fear of change (which arises automatically and is based entirely on negative speculation) and what the future might actually hold, which probably isn’t as sc_ry as they imagine it to be.
C) Talk over specific concerns
I’m routinely astonished at just how many issues go unresolved for a lack of communication. This is especially true of teens. Burdens you might have helped them with fester and grow because they were never expressed–either because everyone’s busy or because kids are reluctant to disclose.
So after you tell them about the move, ask for their thoughts and any specific concerns they might have. If they can’t formulate any at the moment, tell them to write it down as concerns come to them. Then discuss these together and formulate a plan for how you might address these things to make the move easier. At the very least it allows them to feel heard.
Making a move easier on children
A) Bridge the transition
If possible, visit the area beforehand so that it’s a bit more familiar once you actually arrive. You might also try introducing your children to other kids ahead of time so that they know someone when you get there. Arrange a couple excursions or try to connect on social media. If you’ll have any time before they have to start their new school, try to get a class register and call around to arrange some fun activities so they can get to know their new classmates.
B) Maintain old attachments
Make arrangements to keep in touch with people from their old community; not just friends but also teachers, neighbors, coaches, and anyone else they may have befriended. This is an area where social media can actually be a useful product and not just a drain on children’s mental health. It allows your kids to text or engage in video chats as if that person were still around. Even if these relationships fade away over time, once again you’re trying to bridge the transition so it’s not such a sudden shock, keeping some familiar people in their lives until they’ve had time to establish new relationships.
C) Maintain extracurricular activities
If your child is in dance class or plays Little League sports, try to find a new dance studio ahead of time to enroll them in, or sign them up for a league in the new area. These activities can be an important stress reliever, and they give your kids something to look forward to.
D) Keep some of the old
Try to keep some familiar items from the old home: A few pieces of furniture, wall paintings, and so forth.
E) Involve them in decision making
Involve kids in family decisions to whatever degree you can. They’re going to be feeling a bit powerless and adrift. Giving them a voice at the table can provide a sense of control and empowerment, even if you can’t indulge every wish.
F) Conduct a going away party or a goodbye ceremony
If your kids are especially nostalgic or sentimental, you might think about throwing a going away party or a goodbye ceremony to formally part ways with the familiar things in their old home and community. Invite everyone you know to a big sending off party, or before you leave, quietly go around with your child to visit all those places that are special to them–the backyard, the tree house, a favorite park, and so forth, recalling cherished memories involving these places and saying your goodbyes, just as you would do during a funeral or wake. Leaving a familiar home and community is a form of loss, and this can provide a sense of closure that helps your kids process the loss and move on.
Moving to New Home Coloring Sheet