Preparing (All) Your Children For the Move: Telling Your 5 Year Old vs. Your 25 Year Old. Explaining the decision to move house to your children can be a challenging task. These days, you’re nearly as likely to be justifying your choice to your 25 year old as to your toddler.
Image Courtesy of belfasttelegraph.co.uk
“More than three million men and women in their 20s and early 30s are now living at home – a 25 per cent rise since 1996.” (The Telegraph) If you have sons, it’s more likely that they’ll live at home for longer than your daughters will. The trend of children leaving home later in their lives is largely due to an increasingly expensive housing market. This often stops most young home-buyers in their tracks.
Image Courtesy of telegraph.co.uk
So, whether your children are young or, not so young, bear in mind the difficulties young adults may be facing when they seek to find their own home. Whether or not you expect it, you could end up with a grown-up child still living with you years after you expected to have an empty nest. While there are a number of factors that can influence your decision of where to move, a recent study has shown that. “21 per cent of parents moving house had opted for a larger home to prepare for their children staying with them into young adulthood.” (The Telegraph)
Whether or not this is something you are considering at the moment, here are three tips for preparing your children for a move, whatever their age:
1. Make Them Feel Empowered
Moving can be a disruptive process for any child, so giving them ownership of an appropriate amount of decision making (anything from letting them choose which room will be theirs to allowing them to provide input into which neighbourhood they’d prefer) can make them feel more in charge of a confusing situation.
2. Anticipate Their Fears
There will always be fears and doubts involved in any move, but taking the time to anticipate your child’s worries can go a long way to smoothing the moving process for everyone involved.
3. Manage Expectations
This is an important one that goes hand in hand with the two above – ultimately it’s your decision to move, and you need to make that clear, despite any objections your children may have. Discussing any objections in a positive manner (keeping in mind the underlying reasons why you’re facing resistance) can help to keep everyone a bit more sane.
