Preparing Kids for a Move
In today’s episode, Jim discusses how he’s preparing the kids for a move
During this episode we’ll discuss:
Jim discusses his current and future housing situations
How Jim is preparing the kids for the move
Any concerns Jim has for the girls with the move
How the move is likely to affect each girl given their age differences
Recommendations for preparing kids for a move
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TRANSCRIPT
[music]
Dave: In today's episode we're discussing how to prepare kids for a big move. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Papa est Fatigué Podcast, the podcast for dads by dads. If you've been a frequent listener to the podcast, you may know that Jim and I know each other because our daughters are friends and they go to the same school. Jim and his family have recently decided to move away, which is sad for us, which entails moving cities and schools. He's been prepping the kids in the house and we thought it'd be a good time to check in and see how things are going. Quickly, here's my deal. I'm Dave. I have a seven-year-old girl, actually an eight-year-old girl now, and a four-year-old boy.
Jim: I'm Jim. I got a seven-year-old girl and a five-year-old girl and we're moving.
Dave: [chuckles] Yes. Apparently, in doing the research, you are not alone. Typically about 10% of children ages 1 to 14 move in any given year, and at least one-third of that group, the move entails switching schools. I'm doing more research about this. I had always thought, "Well, a move is a move," but really the research shows that when you're moving, and in particular, when you're moving schools, there is an impact on the child no matter how old that child is.
I just found this quote that I thought was interesting. It's from Rebekah Levine Coley, who is a professor of Psychology at Boston College. She said, "Moves during both early and middle childhood can be associated with at least temporary decreases in children's social skills and increases in emotional and behavioral problems." I think when you sit down and think about it, that is not necessarily shocking news, but it is good to see and to think about as you're going through this process. It doesn't mean that all children are going to be similarly impacted but, again, it's just, I think something interesting to keep in mind.
Jim, before we get into how you're prepping the kids for this move, I love to get a sense of what your background is in terms of, did you move a lot as a child?
Jim: I think around here, there's a sort of rhythm that I've seen my friends and other families, and I think, probably, you would as well, where a couple meet, they get married, then they buy the house and they buy the house in the school district before the kid even starts schoo,l before they even start kindergarten, which I think, in hindsight, is the way to go. In my family, that's what happened. I moved at kindergarten, so I had some preschool years, not a big deal. I can't even remember. I think I had one friend that I remember from the block and then I started kindergarten.
Then I was in kindergarten until almost at the end of high school, in the same house from kindergarten until the end of high school. It was pretty stable for me. Then my brother was younger. It didn't affect him. My sister was- so she went into third grade. I do remember being somewhat aware of her transition, and that my parents, they went to great effort to let my sister and her best friend from our old town stay in touch. It was a several-hour drive. The parents would drive halfway, hand off the kids and they’d come stay with us for a couple of days or go stay there for a couple of days.
I know that it had a bigger impact on her, but other than that, same, we didn't move until I was done with high school. I don't think it really affected my family other than that third-grade episode with my sister.
Dave: Like you, we moved- I guess we moved when I was in fifth grade, but we didn't change schools. I think that really is the key part because when you're not changing schools, it's like, "Oh, cool. You're in this new house." Well, maybe you've upgraded, maybe you haven't, but I think there still is that sense of some level of normalcy because you still have your friends intact. Jim, if you want to talk a little bit about maybe your current housing situation and then what your future housing situation's going to be like.
Jim: My family lives in an apartment. It's part of a duplex in an urban area and we're on the second floor. We've got a pretty big backyard by city standards, but it's hard to get to. You got to go down a winding staircase in the side of the house or you got to go through the garage to get there. We really didn't spend a lot of time in the backyard and it really never felt like our yard. It felt more like our neighbor's yard. We didn't use it a lot, but we had a lot of open space. We have a lot of open space around us in parks and nature space, and we can walk everywhere.
For a while, I was walking the girls to their school and their daycare that was nearby. There's a little commercial center where you can get the necessities and groceries and things like that. It was a very pedestrian, very close-knit kind of arrangement. There are other neighbors in the neighborhood that have kids the same age, and so we're close with those families. We climb over the fence into their yard and play. It's a very intimate-- I don't know how to describe it. It's just, it feels small in a way. It feels like everything's compact. We can walk to the grocery store, see our kids, see the neighbors' kids, go to the parks, and things like that. It's a very compact sort of thing.
It is very different from moving to the suburbs. I've probably told this joke before. What do you buy a five-year-old for their fifth birthday? You buy them a house in the suburbs. That's what we did. I think we were one of the few families that held out as long as we had. I can understand why it's a big change. We've got the big backyard. The girls are going to have their own room, which is great. There's lots of open space nearby, but it's all driving. In a way, it feels very isolated. There are some neighbors nearby that have children the same age, and I imagine we'll end up being close with those families and then the girls will end up making friends with them.
Aside from that, let's say five-house radius, three-house radius of our places, everything else is going to be in the car. It's going to be a different way of living that I think we're all just going to have to get used to.
Dave: The other component to this move in addition to the actual house is going to be changing schools. Can you talk a little bit about how-- Your oldest, again, is seven, your youngest is five, obviously your oldest is in a school, but is your youngest in a daycare? Can you talk a little bit about that and what you think the transition might be for them?
Jim: For the younger one, I'm not so concerned about. She had been in a preschool and then we had the year of COVID, so she was just in a daycare with a couple of other kids. She's recently started another preschool, but she doesn't have any-- It's not like she's been with a class of kids for two or three years. At that age, relationships are pretty transitory. She's got a couple of good friends that she's known for years, for two years or half her life or something but we haven't seen those people a lot during pandemic so they haven't had a lot of play dates so she's not--
First, at that age, I don't think they have a real strong social scene, I guess. [chuckles] Also, it's just the nature of that age, everything's a little bit more transitory. She's going to be starting kindergarten. She's been in a transient fluid situation with the preschool and the daycare and all that so I think she's going to land-- Kindergarten is going to be new, but it's going to be new for everybody. It's her first big year, big kid's school. It feels like a regular transition from preschool to the beginning of school.
For the older one, she'll be going into third grade and she's been with her classmates for four years now. A lot of them, as the cohorts have advanced from one grade to the next, she's ended up with a lot of the same kids. She's got some longstanding relationships. My feeling is that it's going to be more difficult for her for a couple of reasons. One, that my impression, and I'm not speaking as a psychologist or anyway like that, but my impression is that that's second grade to third grade or maybe in fourth grade, it feels like the kids are figuring out some social dynamics. It's just getting more complicated.
When kids are younger, "Do you want to play with me? Great. Let's play. Now, we're friends." As kids get older, it feels like it's more nuanced. I think that's, it's going to be difficult to transition in that developmental stage, I suppose. Then second, it's all brand-new. She's going to be walking into a class with kids that have been together for three or four years. I think the saving grace this year is that those kids have all been in remote school. When they come back to in-person school in the fall, and then my daughter can just slide in there as one of the other kids that haven't been around in a year.
We've learned that there's probably three or four kids that are also going to be new in third grade so she won't be the only new kid there. My wife tells a story about a kid that joined her class in third grade, and to this day she still refers to him as the new kid. [chuckles] He was the new kid at school in third grade. I don't think she's going to have that experience.
Dave: One of the things that I like to do at our school, especially because like you said, the kids have been together for so long, is a lot of times when you look at the incoming class, I'll see, "Oh, hey, I don't recognize this name." If I don't, I'll see if they're new. If they are new, I'll be like, "Hey, do you guys want a play date? It's a little bit of a softer landing for your child because my daughter has been here for whatever four or five years at this point. It's always nice to have somebody who they know." Let's say, I think we've successfully done that, I guess what, two out of the five years.
I remember one child in particular, she came in, it was kindergarten, and our daughters were inseparable at the beginning. I think certainly for that other girl, when she came into the school already having a "best friend" that's how she was referring to my daughter. This year also we had a play date with the girl who's new to the school and right now our girls are kind of joined at the hip. I think it's kind of a nice way and it doesn't always have to be right like the incumbent child that is invited, but certainly if you're the new kid, to go, "Hey, we live nearby. I don't know if you're going also to the school's pull by neighborhood?" where you'd be like "Okay, we live just down the corner. Can we have a play date before school starts to just get that introduction," and so that one-on-one time where they're not overwhelmed with, what are 20 other kids in their class, but to know, "Hey, I know that kid in my class. We've had some play dates before". I think that's kind of a nice sort of runway into the beginning of the school year and then a way to kind of get kids ramped up.
Jim: I think with the marvel of this day and age is that there's a Facebook group for families in that neighborhood or Facebook group for the families at that school. My wife in particular has been able to use that to make some connections and to have some relationships start already and so we're planning on having some play dates over the summer, both with the other kids that are going to be new to the class. Then also for some of the existing kids, there are the families that have the same daughters at the same ages, so eight and five or nine and six or something. We'll try to get together with them and as you said, just show up on the first day of school and there's at least one familiar face, or hopefully two or three familiar faces. That doesn't feel quite so overwhelming.
Dave: Can you talk a little bit about, in terms of the move, how far are you moving roughly, current location. If you do-- It sounds like you started reaching out to some of the families at the school but outside of that, do you guys already have any friends or family in the new area you're going to? Give us a little bit of background on that.
Jim: We're moving about 40 minutes from where we are now, which doesn't feel very far. That's probably about how long it would take just to get to the other side of town now. There's something about leaving the city and they call it-- What do they call them in the East coast, the bridge and tunnel crew. There's something about the bridges and tunnels that's just makes it psychologically so much more daunting than just a 40-minute drive. It feels like an adventure. You're going over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house. It feels like much further than it is. It's going to be--
I've got some friends over there. They're adult friends, and adult friends, people that I know, let's say, people I play sports with, things like that. Those are people I could talk to him once a year and still consider them my friends. We don't have a real tight social situation over there. We do have one of my wife's friends from high school. Her family recently moved over there. They've got kids that are kind of the similar age. At least we've got that, but other than that, we're just landing a new territory.
Dave: How are you preparing the kids for this move? I think there's sort of three stages to the move, right? There's this sort of the lead up to the move. There's the actual moving day or week or however long it takes you to get settled in and unpacked and everything. Then there's the post phase where, "Okay, now we're settled in," but you're starting to kind of ramp up for school.
Jim: My Wife and I borrowed on a lot of the other parenting practices that we've used since early on and it'd be like taking a big trip or starting a new school or whatever. The anticipation of a big event, we just talked about it. We've talked about it a lot. We've involved the children in the conversations. We've had, my wife and I, had very open and public conversations in front of the kids. We've had them involved in those sorts of decisions and just tried to just talk it out. We had wanted to give a structure. We didn't really know when we were moving. We had made the decision we're going to move. Like I say, we just kept talking about it, even though we really didn't know what the particulars were.
We've taken a couple of trips or we took a couple of trips over there for the weekend and looked around and just try to get familiar just to see what the environment feels like, what the air's like and the weather's a little bit different. There's a lot of greenery. It's not so much in the city. Try to just make it familiar and make the new something that's going to be more familiar when we land there. We've been very clear about a timeline. In researching for this article, there's a couple of tips that I'm going to start using.
We've got a calendar with timeline. Calendars are a little bit hard for kids to understand, but at least we talk about it frequently. We talk about the timeline in front of the calendar. There's this week, this week, is when we're going to start to pack, whatever. We talk about it on the car ride to school all the time. Through repetition, they know we're going to start packing here, we're going to have a couple of special events, moving trucks are going to show up. Then we're going to be here, we're going to unpack, and have, as you said, there's the beginning and the after the move, just kind of show the landscape of what that's going to look like. Then we just, again, just repeat it over and over again, just lots of communication.
Dave: I'm curious. How did your oldest react when you told her? Presumably, there's some mixed emotions there for her. Just kind of what-- Could you see it sort of unraveling issues? I mean, were you like, we're going to move, you get a new bedroom," and she's like excited, and she's like, "Oh, but what happens to my friends?" How did that process all play out?
Jim: Well, we were over there today and on the drive back my daughter said that her wishes came true which is really sweet to hear as a parent. She's always wanted a house like her cousins or like her grandmother's house, which are suburban homes, with a-- They don't have a downstairs neighbors and they've got a big backyard. She's really happy about that. She said she's excited to be in a quiet town, which is a sophisticated thing for a seven-year-old to say. She likes the quiet countryside, I guess. Her reaction was, obviously, much more nuanced. There's a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. We talked about that. We talked about the fear and anxiety by talking about the move and about how just making it familiar and routine and discussing things very openly.
Then she's obviously got the grief and she's also excited, and she said, she gets her own room. We've got some place structure set up in the backyard. She's pretty excited about that. I don't know how to say it other than it's just a whole rainbow of emotions and really, I'm just trying to pay attention and honor each of those as they come up and encourage the excitement, underscore all the fun and happy things are going to happen, be very sympathetic and give her the time and space to grieve.
I think for, well, I can't generalize, but I think that what happens is that when grief comes up, it touches on other things, other grief so it ends up- it may not be exactly about that thing. It may be about something a little bit sideways to that thing, like leaving their friends or leaving their school that they're familiar with and things like that.
Dave: Yes. I know the girls have already planned for their first sleepover. [chuckles]
Jim: Yes. [chuckles]
Dave: I'm not sure if they pass that by you yet.
Jim: Yes. Now they've got plans. They've got plans.
Dave: You touched a little bit on it, but I'm wondering, I guess, what if anything are you worried about as it relates to the kids in this move?
Jim: I am worried, well, two things. First, I'm worried about acclimating to the new school and I think we did talk about that pretty well. The younger one is going to be fine. The older one is going to have to navigate the transition that we talked about. I'm also an, to the point about the sleepover, I want to be realistic about these relationships and part of it is encouraging and being very assured. I have been giving a lot of assurances that those friendships are going to last and there's going to be- they can stay connected, but also realistically I don't know if they will and so I want to make every effort to encourage those relationships to continue, but I also want to be sensitive to the fact that maybe they won't. Like I said, I just don't wanna make false promises.
Maybe that's not so much a parenting issue as much as a personal issue but I'm not going to tell them that they're friends for life because they may not be, but they are good friends now and we'll continue those friendships for the foreseeable future, I suppose.
Dave: Based on their personalities. Do you have any specific concerns? I think as you point out for the younger one, even if she had sort of an attached personality, the relationships kind of come and go at this point. I think for the younger ones it's, "I'm friends with whoever's right in front of me right now." They don't have that sort of the temporality of it all. For the older one, again, are based on who she is as a person, how she's developing, are there any things that you say, "Well, she's X and so we're going to have to pay particular attention to this or [inaudible 00:19:12]."
Jim: The older one is an introvert like I am so I'm familiar with that. People mistake introvert for being shy or withdrawn, and she really isn't. By being introvert it just means that it takes more recovery time. For more social activity, there's gotta be some more self-care and quiet time to sort of recover from those events. I feel exactly the same way. My wife is an extrovert. We'll go to a party and she'll come home just lit up and her eyes all sparkly because she just had a great time and I am just tired, just drained. I mean, I had a great time but I got to have a little recovery time. We're going to have to be sensitive about that. I think it's going to take a lot of mental energy, as it will for me. I got to figure out new places. I got to get a new auto mechanic, figure out how to get around town, and those are all things that are just going to be-- Everything's going to be uncomfortable and a little weird for a while. I think that's going to take a lot of mental energy on top of being an introvert and trying to make new friends and socialize. I'm planning on giving them a lot of attention, making sure that she's got enough quiet space and support to just recover, and hopefully, find out what she needs and be able to give it to her. Again, like you said, with the younger one, I'm not worried about at all. Just to her personality is- she's fine. She'll jump in just be fine.
Dave: Are you finding then that you're having either more conversations with the older one or different conversations with the older one or when you guys talk about the move, you talk as a family? Do you find that the older one just needs a little bit more time to work through her emotions?
Jim: She probably does just being older and having more complexity and more nuance to her experience. I think that she does need reassurance. She'll ask me questions, "Tell me again, what's going to happen. Tell me again what's going to happen on moving day, what's going to happen to grandma," things like that. I tend to give her more reassurances with the family conversations, which would include conversations with the younger one. We just talked about what's going to happen and, "Here's the timeline," and we keep repeating it. The older one, I think just needs some little more assurances.
Dave: In terms of the transition for school- again, we're focusing a lot on the oldest because I think she's the one that's mostly impacted. I read somewhere that teachers generally expect new kids to acclimate in about six weeks. Based on your oldest and her social EQ or IQ, I guess, do you think that she'll be within that timeframe and you're like, "That seems about right."? Obviously, you won't really know until you're there, but do you think that still be through the grieving process, and it'll be all exciting, and she can acclimate, be a little bit faster? Are you concerned about that at all or are you just like, "She'll get there when she gets there."?
Jim: I think she will be acclimated by six weeks. I'm pretty sure of that. If I had to guess, I'd say, by the end of the second week, she'll be pretty comfortable, by the end of the third week, I think she'll be fine. That's just my intuition. I'm not actually sure. I've never experienced this move or seen anyone else do it so maybe it takes a little bit longer. The only parallel I can think of is, I guess, her first preschool so when she's in pre-K four. It was six weeks. It was almost exactly six weeks where she started school and it was hard to drop her off and she'd be crying, and by six weeks, no problem. I think that seems like a reasonable window and I think she'll make it in this time.
Dave: We've got a few recommendations to recap what we've talked about and certainly we've touched a lot on these, but a few things that we found, communication, and you've talked a lot about keeping the kids in the loop, making sure that you're talking about it early and often. You talked about honoring the experience and not just trying to feel, "Oh, you'll make friends. It'll be fine."
Jim: "Don't worry about it."
Dave: "Don't stress. You're going to be okay," but really making sure that you're supporting them, I guess, in what they're going through and that all their emotions are valid.
Jim: Yes, exactly, validating.
Dave: Then that planning, calendaring, and the explaining process getting them ready for what's about to happen next. The communication was one. The other thing we saw was packing and unpacking their bedrooms-- Sorry, packing their bedroom last and unpacking it first. I'm curious, how you guys are handling the packing situation. Have you guys started packing already and are you going to go with that first-last, or what are you guys think of there?
Jim: We started decluttering, which was a helpful early transition. It's kind of a soft sell on the way into packing and moving. We went through and got rid of a lot of the old toys and some old clothes and just started psychologically preparing for the idea that we're going to be packing. We're probably going to chuck a lot of stuff when we move anyway. First, pairing things down and then we had each of the girls pack a special box. They took all their most precious things, their favorite stuffy, and their wallet with their tooth fairy money in it, things like that. They packed it up in a box and we took it up to grandma's house. It's going to stay at grandma's house until we move.
My guess is that it helped in a representation of what we're doing so they can put all their metaphorical hopes and fears in this box and know that it's going to be safe, and then they'll recollect it at the other side and unpack it in their room. The bedroom, unpack that first, get them settled and get their special stuff in there, and then put up some familiar stuff as soon as we can, things that they know about. From there we got our calendar that we put up on the wall, family photos, things like that, things that will make it feel familiar.
Dave: One other point we saw was trying to maintain a regular schedule for meals at bedtime, familiarity. The familiarity can be both in terms of your schedule, but it can be, again, how you surround yourself in the bedroom and putting up those objects that they identify with. Some other points for preschoolers, talk about what's happening and fill them in when it's obvious. You guys have certainly done that, let your child help with the packing.
Visuals are helpful. Preschoolers, it's hard for them to be able to imagine what that's going to be like so if you have visuals-- Actually, in the article, I read they were saying, "We use Google photos a lot or maps," to show, "Here's what it's going to look like down the street." Obviously, a little bit different from where you guys are because you can actually go out there. They can actually see it, they can experience it. Have you guys done stuff like, "Oh, let's go find the closest, whatever pizza parlor to where we live," and just getting that lay of the land and showing the kids where that is?
Jim: Yes, a little bit. I think the most important thing we did was go to visit their school. When we were first over there looking for a place to live, we went and visited a lot of the schools in a lot of the different neighborhoods just to see what they're like and to try to make it familiar for the girls. There was one that they really liked, and just by chance, we ended up getting a house in that neighborhood. They already know what their school looks like. We've been there. After we've spent the day over there, we'd go over and they'd play on the playground. Now we know where the classrooms are going to be so they're familiar in that way. I think that, and then, as you said, just driving around and knowing where the grocery store is and things like that. I think they're starting to get more familiar with it as I am.
Dave: I guess one of the big changes for them will be going from an urban school to a suburban school. Also, things will not be as vertical [chuckles] because it will be a lot more spread out, like one floor versus, "Here we're in a building of seven stories." I'm sure it'd be nice and, obviously, a lot more greenery, I assume, than where they are right now. There's going to be nice transitions. Other things we read for school-age children transition, find ways to say goodbye for closure. How have you guys started to address this? I think you probably have a few ways that you're working with them to close that loop there.
Jim: It's a fine line between, "Are we going to continue these relationships or these are going away relationships? Are we having a going away play date or a going-away party or how are we exactly going to frame these sorts of things?" but going to see that person for one last time. I let them make that decision when we go see those people. Maybe they say, "See you. I wanted to let you know I'm moving," or maybe it's, "I'm moving. Can we stay in touch?" For those that I think they do want to stay in touch with, there's something I've read about for pen pal kits, which sounds cute. They put a little bag together with pens and papers and stamps and like, "Hey, let's stay in touch," which I think is a nice gesture.
Then email accounts, which my daughters aren't using email yet, but that's something that's a good-- Maybe the adults can supervise an email account. For those relationships that are going to continue, we're already planning play dates on the other side so they've got something to look forward to. They know that they will see that friend after the move, whether it's here or there, which I think gives them a little bit sense of stability.
Dave: I wonder do you think that it would be easier if you guys were moving somewhere that wasn't so close? As we talk about this closure in a sense of like, "Are we calling this relationship over or not," because they're close enough to be able to say, "Oh, I want to go see that person but at the same time, it might feel far away." Whereas if you moved across the country, there's a natural sense of closure like, "We're not going to be able to see this kid at least for, whatever, a year until we go back and see some family that lives in that old neighborhood."
Do you think that it might be easier, I guess, in this particular situation, for your oldest, where you would say, "Look, hey, we're moving across the country and you're not going to be able to see this person," or being in this weird middle ground is worse than that?
Jim: I think it's the latter. You were talking about your relationship with your friends when you moved. You were at the same school, same classmates, you just went to a different house. That's, obviously, one end of the spectrum. The other is the cross country move, which is, obviously, a clean break that they may not see each other again. You're right in that we're stuck in this middle ground where we are close enough to maintain those relationships, but it's just far enough away to be inconvenient and that's going to end up being--
I can say with adult friends or family friends, it's fine. We get together once a year, maybe play golf every six months or something. It's not a big deal, but for the kids, six months is a long time. That's what? 15% of her life or whatever it is at this point. [chuckles] Being able to bridge that, I think, is going to be-- We'll see how it goes. It's going to be something that we'll have to pay some attention to.
Dave: A couple other points that we saw, make the new familiar. You had talked about that, about going to see the school and establishing some of those routines. Is there anything else that you maybe haven't mentioned about getting that familiar sets that you wanted to touch on?
Jim: We talked about the play dates in getting to know some of the kids earlier. I think that's helpful for making it familiar. We did visit the school. Then we've made several trips, several day trips over theres so it's not-- When we do go over there, it feels like we're going to the other place that we live. It doesn't feel like an adventure to a foreign place so I think we are making good strides and making that familiar.
Dave: One question I had, again, in doing the research, one of the things they talked, because we glossed over your youngest mostly because she's probably going to have the easiest transition here, but one thing that was funny was they were talking about, again, because of the age of the child, oftentimes younger kids can have questions like, "Okay, if we're going to move to the new house, do we get to keep the old house? What's happening with [crosstalk]"
Jim: What's going to happen to their stuff?
Dave: Right. "How does that work? Do I have to leave all my things at this old house?" Has she asked you any kind of questions like that, where it opens you up to the thought process of a five-year-old as they're acquiring all these skills about the world around them?
Jim: Yes, exactly. I think we've had those conversations where, exactly, "What's going to happen to our stuff when we move?"
[laughter]
It's coming with us. That's how it works. Then the other place there are still some of the other family’s things there early on, and same question, like, "What are we going to do with this stuff?" "Well, it's not ours. It won't be here." As you said, it's interesting to see the world through a five-year-old's eyes. The idea of paying rent, how do you explain that to a five-year-old? It just doesn't make any sense, like, "The place we are now is not-- We don't own this. We pay somebody else money to stay here." That's a difficult thing to explain.
Dave: Great. Well, the last one, which is similar along the lines, the sort of the mental pieces is, they say, "Don't take things personally." The example of a child saying, “Hey, I don't want to move. I hate you. You're a terrible parent.” That clearly, I don't think is going to happen to you. I know your kids.
Jim: I hope not.
Dave: We won't know until, I suppose, the day that the truck comes and they start packing everything up, but it feels like she'll have a good transition. You guys have been doing all this stuff. We were talking about this a little bit before the podcast sort of the intentional parenting, it's identifying the things that you think are going to be problems and then getting in front of them and nipping at the bud so that there aren't any big surprises when the truck comes and they know what's going to happen and they know where the stuff is going.
I think what will be interesting is that sort of, once your current place is packed up, that last moment where the kids are like, all the furniture is gone and-- I guess, to bring in a little bit of pop culture right now, it's that Friends moment because they just had the reunion. You've grown up with this place, this is all they've known, the couch belongs here, the TV belongs here, this is where we eat, and then all of a sudden, before they even know it, the place is going to be empty. Will that bring-- Is that the part where now, "Okay, it's real," and now, the emotion gets ramped up.
I'm sure, even for adults, that's an emotional moment to say, "Okay, this is the thing." I'm wondering, what will happen for your oldest-- My guess is with your youngest- because I remember this, when we moved into our new house, we went from a condo to a single-family home. In my parent's place, there's this hallway that runs the length of the house. The previous owners had a dog, and we found a ball. I remember the first day we were in there, my brother and I found the ball and we were playing soccer in the hallway because we never had this long strip of space.
My guess is that your youngest will just be running around like, "Hey, it's a playground. Everything's gone. Look at this," but the emotions that will come up I think in the three older people will be, that's probably the hardest piece, that drive-over, and then everything changes. Once you get to your place and everything's unpacked, the process of unpacking.
Jim: What I'm anticipating is, particularly for the younger one, is just a sudden awakening of how ephemeral everything can be, her whole world, meaning, our house and everything in it can just be swept up and taken away. It's going to go somewhere else but just that sense of, "Wow, that can happen," that the whole world be folded up and moved somewhere else. I’ll be paying attention to see how she handles that.
Dave: Moving is so much more complicated than just the nuts and bolts tackling stuff that you think of. I certainly didn't until I really started to research the topic. It just didn't occur to me that there was all this stuff. Some of it is a little bit more obvious than others, but there's just so much wrapped up into that move. I think, again, because you're midway between moves because you haven't gone to another state or somewhere where it's like, "Okay, we're just going to cut it off here," which makes it maybe that much more complicated, in particular, for your oldest to kinda go, "My friends are just- they're just over there," but in fact, when it comes down to the end of the day, out of managing the weekend and figuring out, well, now, all of a sudden, you have soccer practice and we can't go to go see your friend like we could before and so, yes, it's quite a thing to tackle.
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