Should I move house in school hols when dc's are away?

[SpringBunny]

We will be moving house at some point (when the solicitors etc manage to get their acts together). I am expecting it to be in July, and the dc's are going away with my mother first week of the hols.

Wondered if that was a good time to move as no distractions, or bad as it may be very traumatic to go away for a week and come home to a new house?

Any advice apprecaited.

Sounds fine, maybe have a small leaving party with a couple of their friends before you go.
And make sure you give them the new address.

My kids were away for the weekend when we moved 200 miles. They were 2 and 4, and I explained it all to my 4 year old dd beforehand, then when they came back we drove down to the new house. I did have some problems with my then 2 year old, as he was rahter confused, as at that age he was still non verbal and didn't grasp what was going on. dd was fine.

Oh and the next time we moved, we had four kids with us, and it was so much harder! I'd go for it.

My dc were aged 3 and 4 ish when we moved. They stayed away for a couple of nights - although I had arranged for them to go around the new house beforehand - and we focussed on getting their rooms decorated and sorted for when they came 'home'. Worked well.

Ds was really upset about moving, and we had to promise him that if he didn't like the new house, we'd go back to our old one!

Why don't you do a run or two to the new house before they go. You could let them fill a couple of boxes with their stuff and let them put it in their room for when they come home?

How old are they? We moved (350 miles) first week of August when dss were 3 and 5. They went to stay with my parents for a week before and a week afterwards, and it was fantastic. We got everything sorted, cleaned, packed up; unpacked and sorted and all straight before they arrived.

The boys adapted very well to the move, and has no confusion about the move, even though they'd hardly even seen a packing box!

We then had 3 weeks' of the summer holidays left to explore our new area.

Thanks guys for the advice.

There is a fair bit of work to do on the house (rewiring, new heating system and boiler, new bathrooms etc) so we won't be able to decorate their rooms straight away.

I like the idea of them packing up their favourite toys but I am worried that if I tell them before they go away they will worry about coming back to a new house and it may spoil the holiday (which is the only one they will get this year due to various factors)

I like too them seeing the truck being loaded then being spirited away for the day until it gets unloaded at the other end ....

We moved house a few months ago with DS (3.1). We started talking to him about it a couple of weeks beforehand, when we started packing things up. It sunk in, because he started talking about it at nursery. Professional packers came the day before the move, and he was at nursery that day (having been told in the morning that everything was going to be packed while he was there). The actual day of the move I kept him off nursery and my MIL came to look after him. We had a special box of toys that were to be last on the van and first off, including some new exciting things. On the day of the move he played with MIL and watched Cars on a portable DVD while the van was loaded, then said to MIL "OK let's go to the new house". He settled in at the new house very quickly and I am sure being around for the move was a good thing for him. If we had collected him from nursery and taken him straight to a new house he might have been wondering, every time we went to nursery, whether it was going to happen again!

Why not tell your DCs about the move, if they are old enough to care about it, and ask them if they want to see everything packed up and put on the van?