Making the Move with Kids

To say that 2022 was a big year for my family would be an understatement. After 12 years of employment with a local company, my husband began working fully remote for a company headquartered in the Pacific Northwest. Our “surprise” baby turned 1. Meanwhile, my firstborn teenager grew 6 inches and found himself standing eye level with his 6-foot-tall father. And then, to top it all off, we moved.

As someone who moved a dozen times before I was even 13, I saw moving as a natural part of life. But for my kids, who had lived in the same house for their entire childhoods, moving was completely foreign. Thankfully, the circumstances surrounding our move were positive (we needed more space and found it in a home just down the road), but experts say that even positive moving experiences can be one of the top five most stressful events in a lifetime. With this in mind, I knew I wanted to tackle this life change as graciously as possible for both my children’s sanity and my own.

Involving Them in the Process

If your kids are anything like mine, they can sniff when something new is coming a mile away. My husband and I knew there would be no way to keep the process of moving a secret—nor would there be a benefit to keeping the idea under wraps—so we let them in on things as soon as we could. This gave everyone a chance to process things in their own way, side by side. My most sentimental child wanted to walk through every positive memory that was made in our old home, reliving what made each part of the house so special to him. We revisited home video footage of the boys toddling down the hallway as babies, dancing to Christmas music in the kitchen as little ones and tearing into birthday presents on the back patio in years prior. It was a good assurance to know we would be taking all our memories with us—and we had the photos and video to refer back to whenever we wanted.

With the volatility of the housing market this past year, we found ourselves in a great season to sell but at the mercy of a limited purchase inventory coupled with high demand, so finding the right place to move to was a tall order. When it came time to view listings, our boys piled in the car eager to walk through houses and have their say. Though they wouldn’t be making the ultimate call, getting their input was helpful for us and allowed them to feel some ownership over a situation they otherwise had little control over. They reveled in the potential one home had for hosting epic parties while gagging at the discovery of a dead mouse in a trap in another listing’s unfinished basement! From the moment we opened the front door of what has become our new home, each child enthusiastically informed us, “Mom, Dad, this is THE house!!!” Thankfully, we wholeheartedly agreed, which is a rare feat. After all, sometimes just figuring out what to make for dinner is a challenge with so many opinions! Better still was the fact that out of 11 offers, ours was accepted, meaning the house really could be ours.

Calling in Reinforcements

Even positive moving experiences are a lot of work, and it can be easy to underestimate how much time will be required. This compounds the older you are, the more stuff you’ve accumulated, the more children you have, and the more demanding your job is. Trying to prepare our old house for market was a unique challenge all its own. A stager came through and recommended we take a significant amount of inventory out of our home to help it show better. We hauled boxes of excess over to my in-laws’ and parked it there ourselves for four days while our home was a revolving door of potential homebuyers. Because children are so resilient, our boys looked at the entire thing as a grand adventure. After all, getting to stay at Grandma and Grandpa’s during a school week? What’s not to love?! But when an offer was accepted, the honeymoon period of moving was over. The time had come to get our hands dirty.

You know who your true friends are when a life change like a move takes place. My in-laws took our kiddos for outings while my husband and I put our nose to the grindstone. Likewise, friends and family would come over to help with packing, holding the baby or keeping me company while I sorted through items I personally needed to process. Our oldest three did what they could to help, too, from packing up their own rooms to processing items in our playroom.

On the day of the big move, loved ones showed up in shifts to help unload the moving van, shuttle smaller items from the old house to the new one in their cars and deep clean our old house to put it in order for its next residents. Midday, I brought in a stack of cardboard boxes: personal pan pizzas for each moving helper. With new kitchen chairs yet to be ordered, every person either stood in the kitchen or sat on a moving box to eat! It was among the first memories made in our new place.

Five Ways to Make Moving with Kids a Positive Experience

1. Let them document your old house by taking pictures and making a scrapbook of it so they have it to hold on to.
2. Host a send-off party, inviting neighborhood friends over for a last goodbye. If moving a long distance, set up an email account for your child to stay in contact with friends, schedule Zoom or Facetime playdates or consider gifting customized stationery, address labels and stamps to your children so they can be in contact with friends via snail mail.
3. Let them have some say in how they decorate their new space. It can be as simple as choosing a paint color, new bedding, or simply adding an accent or two.
4. Maintain your normal schedule as much as life allows. Moving throws a wrench in things for Mom and Dad. But as much as possible, try to maintain dinner and bedtime routines. Well rested children are much happier campers!
5. Pack your child’s room last in your old house and put it back together first in the new one. This gives them a sense of normalcy when everything around them is new.

Freelance writer Lauren Greenlee is an Olathe boymom of four who’s thankful to be on the other side of moving!