Moving 6 miles / new nursery: tips to ease the transition?

[SouthLondonDaddy]

Hope it’s the right subforum.
DD is 3.5 and will start reception in Sep-2019.

We are about to move into rented accommodation while we sell our current property (we tried to sell and buy at the same time – very tough in this market). The plan is to rent for 6 to 12 months, sell, then buy another property in the same area where we’ll be renting. This is about 6 miles from where we are now; not a huge distance, but DD will have to change nursery once. Over the next year, she’ll change nursery once, and house twice. She divides her week between nursery and a nanny (who will stay the same, no changes there). My wife and I both work full time.

Any tips on what to do / avoid in order to minimise the shock to DD?

I have friends who went through similar moves and their kids were totally fine, but every child is different.

DD, as all toddlers, lives in the here and now, so we’re not sure it makes sense to mention the move too far in advance.

We can ask the grandmother, whom she adores, to come and spend a week with us, hoping this will ease the transition.

We’ll be moving from a property with no garden to one with a small garden (both the one we’ll be renting and the one we want to buy will have a garden), so we’re thinking of installing a small playhouse / swing / slide and hope it will help us “sell” the new home to DD.

Moving just 6 miles away makes no difference to the logistics of visiting her best (non-nursery) friend, so we’ll try to schedule even more playdates with that child. And with her nursery friends, as they’ll be a 20-30 minute drive away.

We’ll continue her usual activities (swimming, toddler dance, soft play etc) in the new area; it will be in different facilities, but we’ll keep the same routine.

We’ll try to recreate her room to the extent it’s possible, painting it the same colour, hanging the same pictures etc, even if it means repainting it before we leave the property.

Any more thoughts? Thanks!

It won’t be a shock and you don’t have to sell it to her. At this age they are pretty happy to be wherever you are. Definitely talk about moving house, but only when everything is signed and definitely going through. I’d start talking about the new nursery as a few weeks before she starts, tslimg about sone of the fun things they do.

It does sound like a lot of changes though in a short space of time. I’d be tempted to keep her in the current nursery and start her in schoo, in September.

We moved when DD was 3, a year before she started Reception. We kept her at her nursery and just drove each day she was attending. The main reason wasn't changes as such, we couldn't get the childcare we needed at our new location.

Move wise DD was giddy, she loved the idea of having a decent garden. But the process itself was easy. We got two moving boxes for her, lots of stickers and gave her chunky crayons so she could decorate them. These ones were then filled with her most important toys and we took the boxes ourselves, not the movers.

The moving day was a day where she attended nursery, we brought her in the morning and when she was collected we drove straight to the new house. We made sure her bed was up, her boxes there and clothes in the wardrobe. The biggest problem came at night when we discovered the curtains were for show only and couldn't be drawn, so we had to live with a blanket over the window for a week.

The room itself was fairly bare, no pictures up, walls different but in the end she wasn't fussed, she liked the opportunity to start fresh with new stuff we bought together. We kept the room simple as it was only for a year, we extended into the loft and she moved up later.

They are far more resilient than you think, go with the flow and leave it simple. There are some books around about moving house.

DD then started school with none of her nursery friends and she only knew 2 of the other children by chance and it wasn't a big friendship. 7 years later she is still thick as a thief with 3 of her nursery friends because we parents made an effort to meet up and keep them together, it helps when the parents are proper friends as well.

Thanks. We were a bit worried because our last holiday was (with us, of course, and) with her cousin, with whom she gets along very well, yet after a week or so she started missing her room, her toys, etc.

Taking her to the current nursery after moving won’t be an option: despite the short distance, at rush hour it can easily be a 50-minute drive; public transport wouldn’t be much quicker, and would involve multiple changes at stations crammed with commuters.