Moving Children

Moving with children definitely deserves some careful planning.  Here are some great resources I want to share with you.  If you have additional thoughts or resources please leave them in a comment at the bottom of this post!

Introducing and processing the move together:

Understanding Children, a publication from Iowa State University

Preparing your Child for a Move, Kid’s Health, Reviewed by Dr. Jennifer Shroff Pendley

Moving is Tough for Kids, by Dr. Nancy Darling

Children and Family Moves published by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

PBS Supersisters offer six tips

Education:

Brief Explanations of traditional school alternatives that you might consider for your children in your new home

A few good tips from 123 movers

Military Families:

Military Children and PCS

Care.com

http://www.militarychild.org

Long Car Trips Between Homes

Tips from Tsh Oxenreider-Who believes a passport is one of the world’s greatest textbooks

Ideas from Make and Takes

Baby Center

Brilliant Ideas From Parents All Over the Country, #3 is My Personal Fave.

Helpful Write-up by a Collection of Authors–  I especially appreciated their links

Insights from The Mother of All Trips

In addition to these resources my family found a few other ideas to be helpful.

1.  While you pack, if there is someone you trust who loves your children, set up childcare.  I found three hours per morning for two weeks before the take-off date allowed me to do a lot of packing and running errands without the girls.  We still had enough time together the rest of the day to keep a pretty normal schedule.

2.  Can’t bring the pets?  Be honest about saying goodbye to pets and allowing them to grieve the loss of that companionship.  If you think it would help, take them to visit the pet’s new home before moving.

3.  Pray for your children!  Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.”  Matthew 19:14.  He cares about the desires of their hearts as much as he cares about ours.  I’m praying that we’ll have a cherry tree, and chickens in our next home for my oldest daughter.  Right now we’re renting so it’s not an option!

Let children help pack

Cook something delicious in the new kitchen

Find the nearest park

Live like the locals- ISU football game!

Find a local toy store

Found it! It’s a combination baby/child/maternity consignment store.

Discover museums, botanical gardens, or other special attractions in your new home.  Reiman Gardens in Ames is a favorite of ours and it’s just a couple blocks from our house!

Uprooted, with guest writer and plant pathologist, Dr. Matt Bakker

Corn seedling

Being uprooted from a loved community is heart wrenching, but also provides some important information.  My husband has studied plant roots for the past several years and I find there are some interesting parallels between plant roots and our own roots – the people, homes, and events that establish us where we are and shape us as we grow.  Here are Matt’s words on roots:

“Although often out of sight and out of mind, roots are crucial to plant health. First consider just how many roots there are! It can be difficult to imagine, from the surface, what lies beneath the ground and surprising just how much root material there really is underneath some plants.  Regardless of depth or width, roots do the important work of anchoring plants in place.

Also, the pull of evaporation at leaf surfaces draws water up from soil, through roots. With that water comes essential nutrients dissolved in the soil solution. Roots secrete chemicals to liberate nutrients from soil, actively pump chemicals from the soil to the plant interior, and host a myriad of microscopic organisms that play a role in plant health.

Potato roots and tubers

Roots have such a profound influence on soil that scientists have created the term ‘rhizosphere’ to distinguish from all other soil that part of the soil that is under the influence of a living plant root. Roots of most plants host intimate fungal partners that serve as vast extensions of root surface area. Legumes and a few other plants have the ability to converse with microbial partners in soil, exchanging signals that invite infection and build custom housing for bacteria whose unique enzymes can transform nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into chemical forms that the plant can use. In payment for this service, the plant offers sugars – built from carbon dioxide and sunlight up in the leaves, but transported down to feed life in the soil. Roots defend against pathogens and disease.

Roots provide a retreat, and power for re-growth when disaster strikes (think prairie fire or bison teeth).” – Matt Bakker

I love to think back on where I’ve been and delight in the way God has shaped me to be more dependent on Him since the beginning of my marriage to Matt and our first move together, the day after our wedding, in 2004.  Our four homes have been a place of retreat and power for regrowth.

Image credit: http://www.123rf.com/photo_11136363_silhouettes-of-tree-with-its-roots.html’>cla78/123RF Stock Photo