Contra Costa Preschool Directory & Kindergartens

Handling the Stress of a Family Move

by

Dr. Lawrence Kutner

Moving to a new home can be traumatic for both parents and children. I’m acutely aware of this since, during the first ten years of my younger son’s life, we lived in Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, California and Switzerland!

Parents, who often feel appropriately stressed-out themselves with both the moving preparations and the prospects of many changes in their jobs and lives, may miss or misinterpret some of the signs of their children’s distress. In fact, the potential for problems within both generations increases when the move is due to a death, divorce, remarriage, or significant change in finances.

One family I spoke with when I was writing a column on moving for the New York Times described their children’s behaviors like this: Weeks before his family even started packing, the five-year-old boy began running aimlessly around the house. When he was with adults, he would try to capture all their attention. His twelve-year-old sister, however, showed no obvious anxiety and even told her parents that she looked forward to the move from Oklahoma to Illinois because it was "a neat thing to do." She acted as if she had everything under control. But as the moving day approached, she became more obstinate when her parents or teachers asked her to do something. She began overreacting to ordinary events. A sad song on the radio or a curt word from her parents triggered her hears.

After the move, and despite his family’s patient and repeated explanations that the family now lived in this new place, the boy spent several months telling them that he wanted to go home, meaning back to Oklahoma. The girl’s school grades dropped during the next semester, as did her self-esteem. Within four months, however, all those problems cleared up, and the family was back to normal.

The stress of moving to a new home, whether it is down the block or across the country, is felt most acutely by those who did not make the decision to move. Generally, the family members who have the least control over where they live, and are therefore most likely to react poorly to a move, are the children. Many parents worry either too much or too little about the effects of a move on their children. Studies have shown that a certain amount of emotional turmoil or depression is normal and may even be beneficial.

The increased activity that the young boy showed before the move may have been triggered as much by biology as by psychology. Studies of preschoolers done by Dr. Tiffany Field, a psychologist with the department of pediatrics at the University of Miami Medical School, have found that those children who were about to move or change schools typically went through a period of agitation and then depression. They had a more difficult time falling sleep, woke up more during the night, showed changes in their blood chemistries, and were more likely to get upper respiratory infections. That pattern is very telling, for it is similar to the responses of monkeys that are separated from their mothers. Dr. Field and other researchers think that the depression that usually follows the period of agitation among both highly stressed monkeys and children may be adaptive since it prevents them from becoming exhausted and, in the case of the children, allows them to cope with the stress of the move.

For older children, the key issues appear to be how well and how quickly they adjust to their new school. Studies show that most children have relatively few problems making this transition. Those who have the most difficulty are usually children who also had trouble at their old school. In general, it appears that boys have more trouble adjusting to a move than girls do. Junior high school students have more difficulty than any other age group. Children who move from small elementary schools to large junior high schools appear particularly vulnerable to problems.

Usually a few weeks or even a few months of lowered grades or complaints about not fitting in after a move are nothing to worry about. If a child is still having difficulty adjusting to a new school after six months, that’s probably a sign of a more serious problem that requires professional help.

So what can you do if there’s a move in your future? Here are some suggestions:

• As moving day approaches, reassure toddlers and even preschoolers that they will be coming along with their parents on the move. A surprising number of young children see their family’s possessions being boxed, sold, or thrown out, and wonder if they will suffer the same fate.
  

• Put off redecorating your children’s new rooms for a few months unless they ask you to. Having the old furniture arrangement is like taking a security blanket. It eases the transition to the many other new things they are facing.
  

• Pay attention to the ways the design of your new home influences how you spend time with your children. The increased privacy of a larger house can sometimes make it harder for children to adjust. The new home may not have the same type of central family gathering place, such as a combination kitchen and dining area, as the old one. You may not realize you’re not spending as much time together as a family as you used to.
  

This problem may be compounded if family members have different schedules from those they had before, so that it’s more difficult to eat dinner together. For the first few months after a move it’s often useful to schedule family meetings or other all-family events as a way of maintaining lines of communication.

• Ask the school to arrange for a "buddy" in the same grade who can show each of your children around the school for the first week or so. This gives your children a kind of temporary membership in a social group and alleviates a lot of stress while they try to figure out where they fit in.
  

• If it’s at all possible for one of the parents to delay returning to work for a few weeks, do so. Knowing that Mom or Dad will be at home if she or he is needed may make some of the changes your children face appear less threatening.
  

• Following a divorce or the death of a spouse some parents move for emotional rather than financial reasons. In those situations, if you can at all keep from moving, don’t move. It’s often too much for the children to cope with. The children may need to keep some of the memories you’re trying to leave behind.
  

Back to Top