This Old House

Moving is a strain on everyone for different reasons. For your children, it's a milestone that might reflect sadness and grief.

Feb 07, 2025

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My seven-year-old struggled to adjust to sleeping in our new house, which we bought 2 1/2 years ago. Frankly, we all did — to an extent — as we got used to the new noises: the air conditioning was louder1, the stairs creaked a little differently, light through the windows cast new shadows, and everything looked different in the dark when she woke up at night. It messed her up.

(It also didn’t help that we spent our first night in the house on a Wednesday and promptly left for a week’s vacation on a Friday, including one night in a hotel on the way down and seven nights in a vacation house, before returning home for good. The kid slept in three places — all foreign to her — in the space of 10 days.)

She got used to it, but very early on told us that she hated the new house and wanted to go back to our old place. Though it sat vacant, waiting for us to prepare it for the market, there was no chance of us returning to the yellow and white colonial. She has since made friends with the army of children her age in the neighborhood — something our old street lacked — and has pretty much forgotten her attachment to our 100-year-old ~~wreck~~ former home that sits about six miles away.

Well, pretty much. Every so often, when she runs low on ammunition during a temper tantrum and wants to punch back at us, she tells us this house is stupid. Or that she hates it. Or that she wants to move back to the old house.

It was, after all, the only house that she and her older sister had ever known. The one we brought them home to from the hospital after they were born, and where they learned to walk, celebrated holidays and were isolated during Covid. It was familiar. It was ours.

This house? It was someone else’s.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that my wife and I went through a little bit of imposter syndrome during the first year we lived here. The house is larger and more expensive than I think either of us had thought we could buy. Our housing tract is decidedly upper middle class, quiet, and very much a neighborhood. It took us a bit before we felt like we fit into the puzzle here. But, we didn’t miss what we had left.

We didn’t miss playing chicken with the 15+ year old water heater2 (CHA-ching), appliances on the verge of slowly deteriorating foundation and front porch (CHA-CHING), and the garage that was slowly pancaking (CHA! CHING!); all of which would have required a second mortgage to repair. We didn’t miss showering in the basement because the upstairs bathroom was just a tub3. Nor do we miss not having insulation, the occasional bat appearance or deteriorating lead drain pipes4.

It’s often the topic of discussion with our old next-door neighbors, whom we had dinner with recently. We have each been by the block to see what’s happening. Their house looks like no one lives there; mine hosts a menagerie of crap — old lawnmowers, mismatched lawn furniture and decor — in the yard. They mentioned that their kids want to visit the house and see if the new owners would let them in, but thought the hasty repairs made before they closed might draw some uncomfortable questions. And, like us, they too had moved on.

But, kids don’t, at least not easily.

I moved once, when I was four years old, after my sister was born. We vacated our little ranch house for a larger colonial about five miles away. I don’t remember much about that era of my life, but I don’t think it had a tremendous impact on me. The house where I’m writing this right now is only the sixth address I’ve ever had — including my PO Box in college5.

My wife, on the other hand, lived in the same house from birth until we moved into our first place.

Neither one of us have a lot of experience on this front, but then again, neither of us had much experience as parents when we brought our oldest home from the hospital. You do the best you can to not break them and screw it up too much. What we do have is a bit of privilege; we never had to move as children. We were never evicted or had our house condemned. Neither my wife, sister or I were in the foster system, and our parents were never divorced.

And these things can impact a child’s emotional development. An Australian study6 concluded that moving twice or more before the age of 9 can result in social withdrawal and depression later in childhood. The study adjusted for the number of moves as well as socioeconomic factors, which heavily influence both the research and the current moment in our lives. The median home sale price in the United States peaked at more than $479,000 in 2022, more than double than what it was 10 years before. The median monthly rent in September 2024 was $1,600+, which is flat year over year, but up nearly $300 since 2019. While we have seen wage growth over the past few years, it has lagged well behind the cost of rents.

Of course, economics are not the only reason one moves. Upward mobility, outgrowing a home and job transfers all contribute. Still, these are adult problems that impact kids granularly.

Disney and Pixar paid service to these feelings with the film Inside Out, a film about a kid whose family relocated to San Francisco from the Midwest, but it was ostensibly about adolescence and emotions with the move as a trigger. There is a measure of grief felt by children, even though if it doesn’t follow traditional pathway.

And, look, there’s nothing you can do to stop them from grieving. They’re going to miss their old bedroom and the path they carved from it to yours when they wanted to snuggle. The cabinet with snacks is going to move and, with it, their routine of accessing them. The swings you spent hours pushing them on likely didn’t make the move. Acknowledging these feelings of sadness is the first step. Relating to them that you might miss things too7 builds a bridge of understanding.

Leaving a home might mean a new school or new friends. These are important comforts for a child whose brain is developing. They’re pretty important to adults too. We moved just around the same time our next door neighbors bought a new house and I’ll be honest, I miss having them live next door as we became an extended family to each other. Validate these feelings for them, and yourself, as being important. Remind yourself, and them, that they will meet new people and develop new routines.

Not all of it is different. In fact, much of what your kids will experience in a new house will be exactly the same. And, for a visual learner, a same/different chart might help ease that stress. Yes, their address will change and they will have a new bedroom, but maybe they’ll have the same couch to curl up on as a peaceful oasis. Maybe the living room will have the same fireplace and, at the holidays, they’ll put up the same decorations.

Like death, the experience also varies by age. For a five- or six-year-old, there’s already a lot of change in their lives. Parents aren’t the only authority figure in their lives; now they have teachers and principals and bus drivers. Bringing them to a new setting adds another wrench into this process of taking control of the world around them. According to the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, it’s also the age when children tend to separate from their parents from dependency for every need and a move can cause a delay or regression.

Elementary school kids might find some excitement in the move, but be very concerned about assimilating into a new social group. Pre-teens and teenagers might protest the move by attempting to convince you to stay with relatives or friends in town. These older groups might be burying some feelings, stoking the fires of anxiety around the move that might manifest themselves in depression, changes in appetite, drops in grades and — of course — behavior or mood swings.

As I said earlier, sleep disturbances were the big factor for my little. It took about a month for her to make it through the night without multiple interruptions: not being able to fall asleep, the ceiling fan making a noise, nightmares…you name it.

The experts agree that, regardless of age, there are three things you can do to make the move easier on your kids:

Preparing for the move. As soon as you are able, have a conversation. Explain the whys, wheres and hows of the move. Bring props like pictures or articles about where you’re moving. If it’s cross-town, bring them to a visit with your real estate agent8.

Through a weird series of events, we talked to our realtor at 5 p.m. on a Friday evening and she scheduled a visit to the house we bought a couple of hours later. My oldest was at gymnastics and we ended up bringing my youngest to the visit. She did the walk through, played with some toys in the basement playroom while we talked, and picked out her room that evening. Getting the buy-in from her was part of the battle won.

This might feel like a negotiation and it sort of is. You’re going to do some give and take (see the next entry) to gain their buy-in. Just be sure you don’t overplay your hand and promise something you can’t deliver on. You’re probably not getting a pool immediately, and if you don’t want a dog, don’t dangle it out there as a bribe.

There are going to be a lot of unknowns in this move for your kid. Helping to reduce them will ease their transition, and let you focus on your own anxiety of the unknowns ahead9.
Let them say goodbye. Don’t deny them the last chance for closure with the house. Even if it’s empty of furniture and stuff, it’s still full of their memories. Let them have a few minutes to themselves in their bedroom, play area or family gathering space. It’s helps them to remember what they’re taking with them and achieve a sense of closure at what they’re leaving behind.
Let them design their bedroom. Bedrooms are a child’s sanctuary and safe space. It’s where they’re going to go when they’re punished, where they hide from the world, and where they talk with their friends. Give them some freedom to decorate and design the space to fit their needs, within reason (of course).

Furniture is furniture and my oldest had a roundabout plan on what she wanted to go where. The one thing she wasn’t crazy about was the paint color on the walls. Frankly, there were some odd choices throughout the house, so we took her to The Home Depot and let her pick out some paint swatches. She settled on a color10 and we had the room repainted. Another bridge to helping them cope is giving a measure of control.
Let them help pack. This will drive any Type A personality crazy, but getting them to help pack their stuff is an important way to involve them in the move. They get control of what goes in which box, so they know what they’re bringing. If you’re feeling brave enough to draft them into service for the rest of the house, it gives them a little bit of sweat equity in seeing a successful move.

We put our able-bodied 14-year-old to work during the move, having her help with packing and the loading and unloading of the truck. It gave her an adult role in the process, while also saving some strain on our backs. She was able to offer useful thoughts on where things should go and why, more than just the vibes-based teenager input we often get.

So, what happened after the move? On the day after closing, I came to the house to bring a few things over. The little girl who lives next door11 spotted me, came up to me and asked, “Where are your kids?” Right to the point. She is now a fixture in our house, as are the eight or nine other kids on our block around the same age as my youngest. They ride the bus together each day, go trick-or-treating together, exchange Christmas gifts, and fight like siblings with one another.

They’re going to be alright. There will be challenges along the way — it’s change and no one likes to abandon the familiar for the unknown — but children are this magical mix of fragility and resiliency. It takes some work by us, as parents, to facilitate the process and guide them along the way, but they do get there.

This Old House

Moving is a strain on everyone for different reasons. For your children, it's a milestone that might reflect sadness and grief.

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