When would you tell kids about move

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At that age I would wait until summer starts. You don’t want them thinking about it unnecessarily and there’s nothing they can do. They also don’t really have a concept of months or distances. Tell them in June for an August move.

The six year old should have the opportunity to say goodbye to school friends that he won’t see again., so definitely before the end of the school year.

I’m the. 2nd PP. I just want to add that you shouldn’t underestimate your child’s attachment to their current friends. My DD still cried at times in first grade about a friend she missed from preschool. If she hadn’t known that she would be changing schools and had the opportunity to say goodbye, she would have felt pretty betrayed by us.

My 6 year old son brings up a pre school friend who moved half way through the last year of pre school. He wonders if he is ok and says he misses him. DS has4-5 boys that he plays with regularly, loves Cub Scouts and baseball. He is active and has friends but still brings up his friend who moved when he was 4.

I still know the name of the little girl I used to play with a lot when we moved when I was 6. The relationships your kids have right now are important and they will miss those friends. Maybe contact the parents and see if the kids could occasionally send an email or facetime in the future. It might seem weird but it is amazing how strongly kids bond. THose bonds can shift and change as the kids get older but when the relationship ends because a child moves it seems to stay with some kids for a while.

[Anonymous]

I know I’m late to this thread but here is my military spouse perspective. We move a lot. We have been in the DMVA for less than a year and now we are moving back to a Europe already this summer. I tell my kids (6&8) before anyone else. We socialize the idea very early and talk a lot about both the positives and negatives. My 8 year old needs time to process things and there is so much work that goes into the move that they would figure it out and feel betrayed by us. Our experience is that his anxiety does not worsen as we get closer but instead comes in fits and starts until he starts to accept the circumstances and then he begins to be excited about the new place.