The House That Moving Built

By Wendy Stewart-Hamilton

It’s back-to-school time.

 It is during the three months of June, July and August that most people move and then begin to unpack and nestle into their new home and surroundings just in time for school to start.  

How do you help your child adjust to their new situation?

Advance Communication 

Although, ultimately it is the adult making the final decisions, there is less mutiny if the kids have a little say-so or at minimum the right to express their concerns, ask questions, or get information about the new community and be included in the house-hunting process.  

In the summer of 2004 our family relocated from Corpus Christi to Dallas.  We took four house-hunting trips between May and July 2005.  One with all of us, one with just our then five year old who the transition would affect the most because she would be starting school for the first time and then two house-hunting trips with just my husband and I with our kids in the care of friends.  

Through the use of the web, we were able to access and print pictures and information of potential homes to show to our children using www.realtor.com.    Once we had a contract on our new home, our daughter kept the picture of the front of our “new home” pinned to her bulletin board.   During a previous walk-thru, we had recorded the inside of the house had the video of her “new room” available for her to see.

Advance Connection 

Even before choosing our home, we choose our home church utilizing the services on www.areaconnect.com.  After deciding upon a group of three different cities in the northern suburbs of Dallas, we began to look for and research churches on the web.  We had a list of several choices, but after the first visit to the first church on our list (which oddly the owners of the house we were buying and our next door neighbors were also members of) we had found our church home.  

By plugging into a church home even before we reached our new home, we were able to be connected with web-savvy and friendly people willing to provide us with a multitude of resources for the “best gym” (www.healthandathletic.com),  kid’s athletic and music programs, babysitters or drop-in day care (www.adventurekidsplaycare.com), hair stylists, Pediatricians, dentists, and more.   We were even fortunate enough to find Moms and Dads with similarly-aged kids for playmates and play dates at our new house (and even their house while we moved in and unpacked boxes). 

We even got a referral to the Christian School we selected for our children’s education from the connections we established prior to our move.

Advance Choices 

Once we had our home under contract, we knew that there would be some changes in room layouts as well as some new furniture in need of purchasing.   

This is the stage where your kids can become the most enthusiastic about a new move.  After all, most of us like something new. 

Because all of our children’s rooms became much smaller to slightly smaller, two of three sets of furniture from their old rooms would no longer fit in the new rooms which were all the exact same size but had different layouts and color schemes. Picking out new twin size Select Comfort mattresses (www.selectcomfort.com) and new bedding along with other pieces of furniture and décor items online at Home Decorators/Home Decorators Outlet as well as Walmart.com and www.brylanehome.com  became a fun process for our kids and the highlight of moving day as we were greeted with “new” boxes with new things inside in addition to our other stuff the movers unloaded.  

Our youngest daughter said it best when she exclaimed “It’s like getting presents!”  

Even if you do not need to do major furniture overhauling like we did, allowing your kids to pick the color of paint for the wall, a new bedspread, blanket or comforter, or even a new lamp for their room can help perk up their spirits on moving day.  

A little bit of gifts of something “new” helps ease the transitions of giving up the old.   

Moving is stressful, but by taking some additional steps to unify your family before, during and after the move by keeping the channels of communication open, creating a network of new friends and a church “family”, and offering some choices on design (especially for their unique spaces), allow the new house to be built on a sense of family unity and togetherness.

Happy house-building this post-moving season!