Special Guest Blog by Kent Removals & Storage
Moving house can be a trying, emotional time for adults. For your kids, moving home can be exceptionally difficult. They might not fully understand what is going on, or why they have to say goodbye to the only family home they’ve ever known and loved.
Luckily, there are tried and tested ways to make moving house a little easier for your kids (and yourself). Kent Removals and Storage has been helping Australian families move for over 70-years. We’ve picked up a few tips and tricks along the way that make moving with kids much simpler.
Routine, Routine, Routine
Kids love routine and they may not be as happy about the big change of moving as you are. With that in mind, it’s important that parents try to keep the rest of their children’s lives as normal as possible. That means trying to minimise the number of school days they miss, as well as getting them along to as many of the extracurricular and social activities that they usually look forward to.
Give Yourself Plenty of Time
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can move your family home in the same time as it took you to move before you had kids. It’s going to take longer. So, you need to factor this into your preparation time. As a general rule, you need to double preparation and packing time for each child you have.
Acclimatise
Your kids will handle the move a lot better if they know where they’re going. If you’re moving interstate, or moving overseas it’s especially important that you give your kids a tour of where they’ll be going to school, local sporting clubs, and a few fun places that they can look forward to. If they have some sense of familiarity when they first arrive in their home, it will make the process a lot less unsettling for them.
Demonstrate Good Behaviours
Stressed parents make for badly behaved kids. If you stay calm and focus on the job at hand, then your kids will their take cues from you—they’re more likely to remain calm throughout moving day.
Relax On The Parenting
Moving day is the type of day where you let the kids play on the iPad for as long as they want and eat lollies for lunch. It’s not the day for strict parenting. As long as they aren’t in danger or getting in the way of your removalists, just let them be so you can get on with the move.
Give Them a Job
Kids love feeling as though they’re part of the move and they tend to respond well to a bit of responsibility. If you give them ownership over a few small jobs not only will they be helping to progress the move it will keep them out of your hair so you get the bigger stuff done.
Can You Get a Babysitter?
The best tip is to try and find a babysitter. As mentioned, moving with kids isn’t impossible but it also isn’t easy so if you want to make things easy call in a few favours and get someone to look after them on the big day.
For even more help on moving make sure you visit Kent’s Moving Tips and Tools page where you’ll find pages of expert information designed to make moving day a breeze.
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