How to tell 3yo we're moving house & town?

[LemonadeLady]

Hello- we're moving house and I wondering if there is a 'kind' way to tell Dd who is 3.5. She has already overheard a few things & is anxious, bless her.

I know that she loves her home & even though we are moving to give her better opportunities, she will not want to move.

How do you keep the anxiety to a minimum for the kids? How do I make it a positive that she is leaving friends and neighbours?

Any tips really welcome.
Thanks in advance.

Once she sees the new house and her new room/garden etc (you can sell it on the extra benefits to her, room for a playhouse, trampoline etc) and visits a new nursery or local park, she will be excited about it. Try not to mention too much about leaving her old house/friends, more about meeting new friends and how you can still meet up with her current friends (even if that's unlikely). After a week or two I'm sure she'll be settled and happy and you'll wonder why you worried.

Fwiw, my ds1 has been at 3 nurseries and 5 schools. He's not the most sociable child, but now at 14 is happy, confident and has always made new friends within a week of starting a new school.

We just didnt really mention anything regarding leaving things behind just talked about what we were gaining. Such as for us it was we can walk to the park, you will have more room for toys, you can play in the backyard etc.

At the same time we didnt go overboard talking it through, trying to persuade him it was a good thing. It was really just something that was happening no need for deep discussions about it.

We visited the new house a couple of times and let dd choose her own room. She was also 3.5 but she seemed fine about it.

Not long after we moved she regressed to wetting herself and it went on for nearly a year. We put it down to the stress of moving house and preschool. She had been completely dry before but she could quite happily sit on the sofa and pee away seemingly oblivious. Thankfully she seemed to grow out of it before she started school.

It's a young age and they don't know how to deal with any stress I suppose. Hopefully your dd will be alright but be prepared for anything.

We moved when dd1 was 3yo. Just present it as a calm daft no more than a month or two in advance. DD was fine & took it in her stride.

Make sure she realises all her things will move with her. My ds at one point had thought we'd simply walk away and start fresh, and was anxious about leaving his favourite toys, his bed etc.

We moved when DD was 3 and a half but started doing the groundwork to prepare her a few weeks before. We talked a lot about a lovely new garden, being closer to nursery, having a bedroom each for her and her brother...turns out we could have just sold the new house on the basis that it was nearer to Budgens ...

I remember I was bathing DS while chatting to DD about what happens when you move, she was asking what would happen to our flannels, would the new people use our soap etc? She disappeared off and came back with armfuls of bits from her room and started piling it on the landing - ready for the removal men...we hadn't even found a house at that point.

In the end she took it in her stride really.

Yes good point, when I explained to ds (then about 3) that his bed would come with us and that everything we own would be boxed up and taken to the new house he was relieved.

I think they do imagine a sort of midnight flit where you leave everything behind and start from scratch.

What about a book about moving too? This is a good one www.amazon.co.uk/Moving-Molly-Red-picture-books/dp/0099916509

It's quite old fashioned, I used it 20 years a go with dd1, but it's a lovely book.

Don't suggest to her that you're moving 'for her' - because she won't really understand what that means, and might think you're saying that she's done something to make you leave and that moving is her fault.

Also, I'd say don't oversell wherever it is you're moving to; you can highlight the good things, of course, but don't make it sound so much better than what she has now - because it probably won't be that different, honestly.

Watching Topsy and Tim on cbeebies might help - the series is part way through now, at the end of it they move house. Catch up a bit on iplayer and then record the rest. There are little mentions of moving house in all the episodes. We're not moving anywhere but dd is asking when we can move to a new house too now...!

I moved when I was 4, we moved 400 miles so left everything. I had two birthday parties one with proper friends at old house and one with local kids at new house. I was persuaded.

K

No advice but I have really vivid memories of being told by my parents at a similar age that we were moving house, and then having a dream that Winnie the Pooh and all his friends came round and picked up our house and carried it off.

I was massively excited to move house after that!!

I moved my 3.5 year old and 13 month old half way across the world. I made sure I talked to my 3.5 DS about the move - where we were going, looking at the map, talking about the cool things to see like mountains, and explaining the steps we could take to keep in touch with his friends. He listened a lot, asked impromptu questions which I answered as honestly as possible, and as a result we had no issues in the move.

I found our (me and DH) attitude to the move was very important in helping him find his feet - we made sure we projected happy-to-move vibes and were very matter of fact about it. Don't stress too much, kids are so adaptable!