Moving and the resilience of children
The summer between 1st and 2nd grades I moved from a house with a constantly flooding basement, a hill covered in ivy, in an OK school district to a beautiful home behind a park with a playground with no basement to flood and one of the best school districts around. It was still hard.
At my old house I had my friends. I knew where my things were. I had a lake at the bottom of the hill. Despite the fact that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of my Kindergarten or 1st grade teachers I can distinctly remember watching fireworks at the lake with my cousin and trick or treating with my best friend across the street to the old lady up the hill that gave out pennies (seriously kids, the olds used to love giving out pennies in the 80's).
My new house would have none of that.
This is the baggage that I brought with last weekend, when my family moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey. We had finally outgrown the apartment we had bought in preparation for L’s birth and in the following six years had been priced completely out of NYC. We went out and found a great house in a great town and a commute that wouldn’t absolutely kill us.
But I saw so many parallels to my childhood move that I was seriously worried about how L would take it.
We were leaving an apartment with a basement that flooded, her best friend in the building next door and Prospect Park for leafy New Jersey and a house where we finally wouldn’t have to share a bedroom, could make as much damn noise as we wanted to with park with a playground behind the house.
I knew we were doing the right thing.
The school district is one of the best in the state. The neighbors we had met while we were renovating the house seemed great. Most importantly L seemed super excited. But I was still worried. New house. New school. New friends. New babysitter. That’s a lot of new for a five year old.
People kept telling me moving is traumatic for kids. So we would all constantly ask L things like “Are you excited to be moving?”, or “It’s OK to be scared or sad about moving.” But every time she would say she was excited to move, couldn’t wait for her new princess room or to see the new friends across the street.
Finally, we moved.
A full day of moving was helped by having my parents come to help entertain L but the next two days were all us. Thankfully my wife is an absolute genius. She set L up with an awesome camp in town that started four days after we moved so she had a (hopefully) super fun, friend making experience all set for her. Much, much better than the forced labor camp/new kid garden my school had set up for me back in 1988.
Camp started two days ago and yesterday my wife got an email update. “L is a pleasure and is having a blast.” She made an aluminum foil Olympic torch and a seagull hat (it’s exactly what it sounds like) and has already made two solid friends. We got an amazing report from the first day with the new babysitter and no parents as well — “It’s so great to have a child who listens and is polite.”
I’d say it’s safe to assume that L is handling the transition pretty damn well. Kids can be resilient little monsters. That’s not to say that she can’t still be a beast and that there haven’t been some issues of acting out and back talk. But I think most of that can be attributed to us trying to slowly reel back some of the extra leeway that we gave her as a way to help us get through the slog of packing and prepping for the move. Extra iPad time may have helped us pack, but we’re paying for it now. But that too will pass.
Maybe the person I was trying to reassure was actually myself. Because while I’m still struggling with changing my user location on Twitter (yup it still says Brooklyn) my kiddo is happily running through sprinklers and stomping on the floor.
