to want to keep kids off school the day we move house

[yesitsme]

I want to keep the kids at home on the day we move house rather than send them to school, they are aged 10 & 12 and I feel they need to say goodbye to the old house and feel apart of the moving in process, especially as it will be nearly going dark when they get home from school to the new house, it doesn't give them much time to settle before they will be going to bed in a strange house! Any advice gratefully received.

The removal men won't thank you - they do not hang about. They won't mean to squish your children...

Someone might already have suggested this but I don't have time to read the whole thread! How about doing a 'goodbye old house ceremony' before they go off to school? Could that work for them? I agreed you'd be mental unwise to keep them off, it will make your day so much more hassle. They can arrive in the new place after school, run round and look in all the rooms, start to unpack their stuff - all good, and they'll see it in daylight the next morning.

Good luck and congrats on the move! :)

The only day I ever had off school for anything other than illness was to move house.

Are you moving house yourselves or getting a company to do it? My parents couldn't afford the additional cost of getting removers so we all pitched in - I was 12 and my brother 9 and we were able to help quite a lot with most things except heavy furniture.

If you aren't moving yourselves and getting a removal company to do it, then your DC might as well be at school. At 10 and 12 I doubt they need to settle into the new house. They should be helping make their own beds and tidy their own rooms, not needing to be settled. They will be fine at school.

Oh and it is deadly boring moving house. They won't thank you for keeping them off school if all they have to do all day is clean and pack/unpack and get shoved out of the way all the time.

DS and DD didn't go to school the day we moved house, but we were moving 160 miles away so wouldn't really have worked.

Moved on a Monday and DS started at new school on the Thursday (DD had been in mixed nursery/reception and then went back to pre-school). I am a very much not going on holiday during term time sort of person but I had no qualms in having two days before school started again.

Realise it is rather different when you are moving locally, and if children are staying at the same school I would just send them in I think.