I spent all of my youth in the same town in the same house. Now I’m considering moving for a better job. My kids (ages 4 and 10) and I have moved to different houses before, but always in the same town. All of their friends and extended family live here. I’m just wondering how easy it is to adjust, as I have no experience with it. I know all kids are different, and mine are pretty outgoing. I’m just looking for a general opinion…
Kid are extraordinarily adaptive. Moving is a stressor, for sure, but not all that traumatic and a normal part of life. Don’t make it seem like a big deal, and it won’t be. They will take their cues from you as to how they should think about it.
I was 10 the only time we moved (about an hour away) and had no issues at all. We were also homeschooled, so we didn’t have to deal with changing schools or any of that sort of thing.
To represent the opposite view: we moved when I was in 4th grade, so about 10. I hated it. I hated the new school. I hated all the kids. I “got sick” about three days a week for awhile, until my mom, who worked, explained to me that she could not keep coming to get me and I had to stay in school. I still hated it but didn’t “get sick” any more. Also, my cat was moved with us but she ran off and I never saw her again. I would say that I stayed miserable pretty much until high school at which time everyone changed schools and I felt like I got a level playing field at last.
I still don’t handle change very well, though, so maybe it’s just me.
Sure, some people, especially the very sensitive, don’t like change and don’t handle it well, if they’re not supported and helped through it. But it doesn’t have to be traumatic and ruin their lives. That sounds like there’d be some other issues going on, there.
When I was young, I moved to an area where many people did not speak English well, where the culture was very different from what I was used to, and where I was ridiculed as a result. I never fully recovered.
Your 4 yo will probably do fine; the 10 yo might be old enough to have developed close friends and a place in school so it might be more difficult. We moved once when my son was 4 and again when he was 8. He adjusted just fine. These were cross-country moves, not just across town. We parents were excited about moving and treated it as an adventure and a good thing for us as a family, so my son took those cues from us and went with the flow. He’s adaptable and happy. It worked out fine for us. Later when he was in high school and we were talking about moving he was dead set against it, and by then he had a full vote in family decisions.
Explain to the them the why and when - well in advance. Help them collect contact info (addresses, e-mail addys, etc) for all their friends. Help them collect some momentos of the ‘old place’ including photos (some with them in it!).
Generally, IME, younger kids accept it well, older kids get worried and stressed, and teens handle it pretty well.
(Moved a lot as a kid, hanve moved my kids a few times)
My husband was moved across country by his parents twice as a youngster - once from Calgary to Kitchener, ON, the next time back to Calgary. I’m not sure he’s gotten over it yet, either. He’s not a change-lover; I don’t know if he hated moving because of that, or if traumatic moving turned him into that.
It occurs to me that I was moved as a kid twice, too, but it traumatized me so much that I didn’t even remember. 
My only advice would be not to move during the summer. If you moved during the school year they’ll be introduced to the class as the new kid and there’s always at least one person willing to show them around and be, at least at first, the friend.
If it’s at the beginning of a school year they’re just another kid who’s lost and knows no one.
I went to two elementary schools, two junior highs and four high schools.
I moved at ages 3, 4, 8, 10, and 12. Before that, I was in and out of foster homes/an orphanage, and after that, although my parents did not move, I made a radical change from public middle school to a completely different private high school environment.
My son, who is now 12, moved at 13 months (which you might think would be too young to matter, but he was very engaged with his surroundings so I’m sure he noticed a huge difference), 4 years, and 9 years. He also made a change to a radically different school at age 11.
We’re both a bit odd, but I don’t think the moves have anything to do with that.
Seriously, I can’t imagine that moving once or twice is the end of the world. Kids are pretty resilient.
We moved when I was in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. I really hated it because you had to start over again at new schools every time. If you have to move, you have to move, but it is a big deal to kids, especially when it happens frequently and you’re old enough to have friends and classmates. We moved into our house a week before 5th grade started, and it was April before I dared to try to make friends - I felt very unsettled after three moves in three years, and didn’t trust my parents when they said we wouldn’t move again.
I attended eight different schools between K-12. I hated, hated, hated moving every single time. I think this was largely because my social skills were weak, and I tended to regard each friend I had as a miracle and was sure I’d never have another. That said, I am one of six kids and some of them really did not seem to be adversely affected by all the moving.
I do think that free long distance (and email/facebook) would have changed everything for me. Even in the early 90s, you practically got dressed up to call long distance and I had to watch the clock carefully so as not to talk a minute too long. It made my old friends feel very far away. Today, I could have been calling them every day after school, and having friends I could still talk to would have made negotiating new social situations much easier. Instead, I spent hours writing 30 page letters about how miserable I was.
Depends a lot on where you’re moving to. In 4th grade age 9 we moved to a brand new tract. Everybody in the neighborhood was just moving in. And we all went to a newly built school. So all the kids were new kids to each other, not just me. Which made it pretty much a non-event.
If the new place is a small town with little turnover, both you and the kids will be outsiders for years, if not life. If the new place is yet another posting in the military, you’ll both be part of the community the second week.
Depends a lot on where you’re moving from. If every weekend where you are now includes some involvement with that extended family, well that’s gonna be a big hole in their new life. Likewise if it was a small town where they rarely saw anything more than the 5 square blocks surrounded by miles of agriculture.
We moved a good distance across the suburbs of a big city. So while all the details were different, there was still the familiarity of similar architecture, similar stores (a Safeway is pretty much a Safeway), and we were used to ranging several miles on bikes or 20+ miles riding in the car. So it felt different, but not foreign. The overall similarity kept it from being scary.
etc.
I was seven when we moved. Shortly before we moved, I was taken to the new house, shown around, saw my new bedroom.
On the day we moved, there were neighbourhood kids out playing in the street, and my mum basically shoved me out the door and told me to go and play with them.
I guess kids don’t play in the street much these days, so maybe you could pop around to your new neighbours and find out who has kids around the same age and ask if your kid could come play with them on moving in day? That way they are out of your hair whilst you are unpacking boxes. It might feel like a lot to ask, but if you think about it, you’d probably be happy to do the same if someone new was moving in next to you, wouldn’t you?
At school, the teacher asked someone to be my buddy, and that girl turned out to be my best friend for many years.
Depends on the kid and their age. I went through a few different neighborhoods/school systems in the same general areas, and moved half the country away 3 times between ages 7 and 14.
Moving wasn’t my favorite thing when I was little but I don’t remember it being a huge deal. The last major move we made, when I was 13-14, was hellish for me (I had a lot of very close friendships) and triggered a major depression that lasted for many years. For me, it wasn’t a bullying/outsider issue, and I always made new friends quickly - I just mourned the loss of my old friendships very intensely. I still don’t feel that I have ever bonded with anyone the way I did with those girls (we’re friends on facebook now and chat occasionally, but it’s not the same).
My father moved something like 40 times during his childhood as his dad was in the Navy, but it was never a big problem for him and he couldn’t understand why I was so upset and resentful about it.
Anyway I don’t have children yet but I’m determined that once I do, I’m not going to transplant them. Easy for me to say because I don’t have a career.
This is so true!
I moved a number of times in my childhood - generally bouncing back between here and the UK. My clearest memory is of the move we made when I was eleven. I loved it! I was pretty much stuck in a box, socially, at school at that time, so going to a new place gave me a chance to re-invent myself in some ways. Also, as a foreigner I was kind of exotic, which gave me attention, which was also good. But not TOO exotic - same language, similar heritage.
I’m happy now to be pretty much fixed in my town of birth for the forseeable future, but I never regretted all the moving around I did as a kid.
We moved every 2-3 years when I was little, four times, until I was 10 and my dad changed jobs and my parents stayed put. This includes one international move that I was really too young to remember, and another move that was in the middle of a school year.
Moving in the middle of the school year sucked donkey balls. All the other kids have their little groups set up already. It’s a bit easier to be “the new kid” when everyone else is adjusting to changes, too - different classroom, teachers, grade level expectations, etc. - and a lot harder when you’re the only change happening.
Other than that, it’s not that big of a deal. Sure, kids miss their friends and all, but IME little kids’ friendships are malleable and not that permanent anyway to begin with. If you act more like it’s a fun and exciting new adventure - and make sure your kids can keep in touch with their former friends as much as they want - then they’ll treat it as such. If you treat it like some scary thing and a Big Honking Deal - and a permanent exile from their former home - then they’ll approach it that way. As the parent, a lot of it is up to you.
Doubt they’ll be traumatized, though.