How to Encourage Thankfulness When Moving

It’s one of those times that you dread as a parent—telling your children that you’re moving to a new city. Whether you’re moving 200 or 2000 miles away, you know that your children will have to say goodbye to cherished friends and places and start over. Here are some thoughts on how to encourage thankfulness in your children during the moving process.

• Encourage them to think about the good times that they have experienced in the city where you live now. Then have them do some online research to look for similar opportunities in the new city.
• If they’re younger, have them tell you bedtime stories about things they’ve enjoyed doing in your city. Then you do the online research and print pictures of places in the new city where they can go to have similar experiences.
• Have them make a list of things they’d like to try in that new city, and commit to doing one a month during your first year there. This has the added benefit of ensuring that you have some family activities lined up—and since your children made the list, it should be much easier to get them to go along with it!
• Purchase some of our children’s stationery and invite them to write a thank you note to each of their friends, neighbors and mentors. Remind them that it will be a chance to remember the good times, rather than focusing on their grief and anxiety about moving.
• Order some of our calling cards, with your children’s names and new address, and have your children enclose one in each thank you note, so that everyone knows how to keep in touch.
• For that BFF that your child is certain he or she cannot live without, teach your child the concept of a pen pal. Have your child give a package of our stationery to that BFF to encourage continued communication.
• Once you have moved, encourage your child to take those calling cards to school, church and sports practice, to share with the new friends that she or he is making.
• Keep up the bedtime stories routine in the new city, so that your children are reminded daily to find something to be thankful about in their new home.

Moving is stressful for all concerned. We hope that these tips will help you with the moving process, and also give you, as parents, reminders of the importance of being thankful.