Moving Tips For Parents
Moving a household is stressful, even when you don’t have a lot of stuff to pack and transport. When you have children, moving can easily turn into a nightmare.
Not only do children have lots of personal items and stuff, but they also need to go to school or kindergarten at your destination. This article shares a few hopefully helpful moving tips for parents. Read them carefully and make use of them for your next move.
Prepare Them For The Move
To start with, make sure your kids understand that they will go to a new school next year. Whenever possible, you should make the big move during the school holiday, to avoid disruptions.
When kids are smaller, this is not such a big deal, so you can move whenever you want. However, older children may need to stick to their school until the end of the current school year, so you won’t be able to move before the holidays.
If you don’t change the neighborhood, you won’t have anything to worry about, as your kids won’t have to leave their current school to go to a new one. Anyway, if you intend to move your children to another school, you have to ensure you discuss your intention with the school principal so that they secure a spot for them for the next school year.
Start such arrangements at least half a year in advance and try to consider multiple options, if possible.
Spend Time With Your Kids
If you move far away from your current neighborhood, you’ll need to spend time with your kids to ensure they are aware of the fact that they will have to give up their actual friends and start making new ones at your destination.
Don’t underestimate their need for socializing. You could consider several sessions of therapy to help them overcome this stressful event in their life.
Teenagers are extremely sensitive, and they love their friends, so they may not overcome such news without professional help.
Check For Medical Help
Moving with kids also requires you to ensure that you have good medical care in the new neighborhood you’re going to call home.
If your children have special medical needs, check whether there are proper clinics or medical facilities close to your new address. If you don’t pay close attention to your children’s medical needs, you’ll have to spend a lot of time in traffic to ensure they get their regular treatment.
Involve Them In Moving Activity
One of the best moving tips for parents is to involve the children in the move actively. They should contribute to the collective effort by sorting and packing their stuff.
Teach them how to assess their belongings and let go of all items they don’t need anymore. If you want, you can even organize a garage sale for them to get rid of unwanted stuff while also earning a little money along the way.
Old clothes that don’t fit them anymore, old books they don’t read anymore, and old games they don’t use any longer are the perfect candidates for a garage sale. If your kids are old enough to use the internet, you can show them how to take photos of their unwanted items and upload them on classified websites.
Thanks to modern technology, you don’t need a physical garage to organize a garage sale. There are special websites for that.
Allow Them To Pack
Children are fast learners, so try to explain to them the best way to pack and label everything in their rooms.
Show them how to do it, but allow them to handle everything by themselves. Of course, you shouldn’t let them carry heavy boxes. Just check that they fill their cardboard boxes and that they label them properly.
Also, teach them how to put together inventory lists. This only applies to parents with relatively older children, who can walk, talk and make decisions.
Pack Their Essentials Separately
Parents of infants and toddlers have other things to worry about. For instance, you should make sure you pack all baby-related stuff separately to find anything whenever necessary.
The last thing you want is to need diapers or pacifiers and discover that they are in a box that’s beyond your reach. Also, all kitchen utensils you need to prepare food for the baby need to be very easy to reach.
Pack them in the same box with the baby food and keep this box at hand. You’ll be glad you’ve done it by the time your little one will start crying with hunger.
As you can see, parents who need to move house have way more things to handle than childless families or single individuals. If you want your kids to accept the situation and to feel at ease in their new home, you have to support them and cater to their needs the best way you can.