How Do We Move Our Family Without Damaging Our Kids?

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Reena Ninan:
Episode 169, How Do I Move Without Damaging My Kids?
It’s that time of the year where I just can see summer. I can see summer, but the month of May, there is so much happening. I just need to get to Summer, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
In schools, we call it A Hundred Days of May.

Reena Ninan:
Ooh, I like that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Because it just feels like that. It goes on and on and on and on. Everybody’s desperate for Summer.

Reena Ninan:
Is that what it is? We can see the finish line that it makes it even longer?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. And then you know how there’s all that stuff thrown in. There’s the concerts and the extras and the whatever. I mean it’s great and also I think everybody’s just trying to check every box to get out the door.

Reena Ninan:
Absolutely right. Absolutely right.
One of the things that several of our listeners brought to our attention is this time of year also moving happens big moves, some expected, some not. We know there’s been a lot of transition for so many families over the past few years, so we wanted to take up this note about moving this email that we got.
“Dear Dr. Lisa and Reena,
This summer, my husband and I and our three kids are moving to another state. My husband’s been offered an exciting new job. I’ll continue working remotely, and we’ll be closer to both sides of our extended family. My kids are 13, 11, and 8. They are all having a difficult time with the news. My 13-year-old girl will be a freshman at a new high school in the fall, so I understand why she’s so upset. She’s also worried that her current friends will forget her and that she won’t make any new friends. My 11-year-old has gotten very close to a few great kids and thought that this would be our forever home. My youngest, a boy in second grade and obviously in a different developmental age, was shocked and devastated too. He initially did beg us to change our minds. Since then, he’s been mostly fine, on the surface at least. I remember my friends being everything in the tween and teen years. How can I help my kids through this transition? Does moving at a young age have implications for life that we might not realize? Are there creative and special things that we could do to say goodbye? Since this move will be a loss and a grieving process for them, I’m inclined to share with them some of my feelings, what I’ll miss and what I’m excited about, but I don’t want to overwhelm them. Please help us with this process. We are so grateful for your approach to parenting.”
A lot to dig into here. I guess, where exactly do you think the parents should start?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, here’s a question I actually have for you. Reena, did you move as a kid?

Reena Ninan:
No. We were lucky enough to sort of live in the same, we did move houses, but it was all in the same school district, so it never really mattered.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I moved a ton as a kid. Really? Yeah, so I was born in Denver, lived there until I was six, moved to London for a year and a half and then moved from London to Chicago for three years and then moved back to Denver, but a different part of Denver and a different, I was much older, and so it was basically starting again.

Reena Ninan:
Were you just devastated every time? How did you cope with your moving so much?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I coped, I think fine, but I sort of feel like I need to give full disclosure about being a kid who moved a ton and that has without question informed how I think about questions like this. So just to lay my cards on the table, it was disruptive. I think there’s a lot families can do to make it better for kids, but one of the questions in the letter is like, what does this mean for kids’ development? Okay, Reena, what it meant for me is that going to college was a non-issue. I was like, oh yeah, I’m just moving again. The idea of starting over and beginning again and having to create a whole new universe and a whole new set of friends. By the time I was going to college, I had done that multiple times and I think you’ll hear military kids will say this, that they are just so good at transitioning and so military kids and not exactly, but my experience sort of on the high end of how much moving is happening for kids as they are growing up, but at that high end, most people’s experiences, I think at least mine and as people talk about it, is you get really good at making transitions.
You just adapt to it.

Reena Ninan:
Military kids are such a great example, but I also feel like there’s a fabulous community of support as you’re moving.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s true.

Reena Ninan:
And people going through the same thing where often when you’re just by yourself and you’re picking up and moving, I think one of the big things that parents worry about, is this going to be scarring, especially in the teen years, are they not going to make any friends? Are they going to be loners? What would your advice be if parents realize they’re on the cusp of something that could be fabulous for their family, but their kids aren’t taking it that way and it’s hard to see that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so first thing to know is that moving falls into the range of things that happen in family life. This is not some outer limit should be avoided at all costs aspect of human beings. I mean it’s natural that sometimes we move and sometimes we have to pick up and start again. And you’re right, start again in communities where we may be the only ones starting again, maybe unlike a military community, and so kids are coming into settings where there are established friendships or things like that that may be harder to break into. The key thing that adults need to know under these conditions is that it’s about us helping our kids through it, being sensitive to their experience, being aware of the ways in which it’s hard. That’s what makes a difference. And, we can get our kids through almost anything, even things that are not sort of more natural to family life, if we are plugged in, tuned in, loving and attentive as this letter writer obviously is.

Reena Ninan:
Can we go through the ages? It’s really interesting. These are, I feel like three, the teen tween, and sort of elementary age groups. Can you just tell us starting off with the high schooler, what really helps in this moment? Because very scary.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It is scary.
Okay. So as much as this kid is anxious about starting over, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have this wonderful juncture of starting in the ninth grade that there’s a lot of times there’s some fluidity in ninth grades, new kids coming into a school. It’s not necessarily that kids go in lockstep from eighth to ninth grade even while staying in the same community. And I think for the parent to think about it, I think there’s some actually real benefits to sort of a reset button at points in development.
I live in a community where a lot of kids stay in the same schools or staying school districts from K through 12.
And when I moved here I was like, oh my gosh, that’s so weird, but what about the dumb thing you did in kindergarten? Everybody still knows where I had the benefit of every few years. I just started in a new community and my past was my past. And so not that the parents should try to say it to the kid this way and I’ll say why. But I think in the parents’ mind, they can take some comfort in the knowledge that there’s something to be said for getting to start fresh as you begin ninth grade that you are your own person. Whatever you did or didn’t like about your middle school experience, now that’s in another state far away and you do get to begin again. So I think that there’s value in that.
That said, and I would say this across the board for all of the kids, we’re going to focus on the highlights and the positives for the parent to feel reassured. I think we want to be really careful about trying to sell these things to our kids. I think that when our kids are expressing their worries and anxieties, and I’m thinking especially here about the 8-year-old, I think when parents are like, “It’s got to be great!” Usually what I’ve seen in my experience is that entrenches the kid in their position of like, “You don’t understand!”

Reena Ninan:
They feel there’s a lack of empathy.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly.

Reena Ninan:
Despite how positive you are. You just don’t get me right now.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You don’t get it right and the parents, but it’s a better school and they’ve got better lunch and you’re going to walk fewer places and have more… kids are like, you are not tuning in to how I feel about this.
So what I would say across the board is be very, very careful about trying to do the hard sell and in fact, I believe in low balling it. I believe in saying even to the ninth grader where I think timing is actually pretty great for starting over. I think it is helpful to say, “Of course you’re anxious and you know what you’re giving up. You don’t know what you’re getting, but maybe some of it’ll be okay.” Right? Something like that measured can actually keep the door open to the kid being into it.

Reena Ninan:
So tell me a little bit more about low balling it. Because I get it that you can set these expectations and have them lower and then have them happier that they surpassed them. Is that a good strategy?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think it can be. I think it can be, and I think the way we want to picture this is there might be a part of the kid that’s excited, a part of the kid that’s interested in the novelty of the move and the kid themselves is torn. Part of them wants to stay in the familiar and the known and part of them may be excited about these new possibilities. And what you want is to make space for both of those parts of your kid to come to the fore. If you pick up the like, “But it’s going to be great!” They then feel like an equal measure. They have to put up the, “But I’m losing all this stuff!” Whereas if you stay a little more neutral and are like, “Yeah, I get it, that it’s a lot to give up and you don’t know what you’re getting and some of what you’re getting in the end may be okay.” It lets the kid hold both sides at the same time of both being anxious about leaving and excited maybe about what’s coming.

Reena Ninan:
So tone matters.
Walk me through the middle schooler and the elementary schooler, what they might be going through.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Middle school’s hard because kids are working so hard to establish their friendship groups and are so often anxious about who they’re connected to and it’s because they’re loosening their ties to us at home. What’s cool about high schoolers, and I’m thinking about this one, she’ll also be able to stay in touch with all her old friends often through digital technology and keep that backup social group and have a new social group, and she likely has a pretty well established group. It sounds like she does, whereas a lot of middle schoolers, especially post pandemic, they’re still kind of in flux and they’re still on uneven ground when it comes to their social lives. And so I can really feel for this kid who’s like, “I’m losing something and I’m walking into a middle school.” I mean, being a brand new kid in a middle school, as much as it means you get to leave your elementary school experience behind, I can sure understand why there may be a lot of anxieties about starting again at that age.

Reena Ninan:
And the elementary school child who in this letter appears to be doing well, despite protesting at first. Are they good at explaining how they’re feeling at a moment? Is it masked? I sense a little bit of doubt from the parent here that are they really processing this okay?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, no, it sounds like there’s sort of an immediate like no, no say it’s not true, and then the kid has sort of adapted.
So I think it’s an interesting equation to think through about that kid getting sort of vocally upset and I think it sometimes happens in families where one kid does the emotional work for all the kids or from some of the other kids. So I do wonder actually if part of what this little guy was doing, maybe because he’s less guarded or had more kind of immediate access to his emotions is if he was expressing for everybody like, wait, stop, say it isn’t true. And because he was taking up that space and doing the work, the older kids sort of stand back and let him do it.

Reena Ninan:
So you’ve done this emotional work and processing it. How do you know if that child is okay?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That’s a tough one, right? Because it sounds from the letter, maybe it’s quieted, and so then the question is, is the kid over it or has it gone underground? That’s the concern that a parent would have in this moment, and my advice is wait and watch. It may be that he had his big experience, shared a lot of distress, took care of it for a lot of people in being open about his distress and then sort of got past it is ready to move on, got through and out of that feeling and is looking forward to what’s next. Or it may be that he feels like he’s got to be a “good guy” and on the team and is sort of setting his distress to the side.
So I would watch for what you’re seeing and if the parent feels like he’s being way too cheery about this or where did it go? It doesn’t make sense that he is as upbeat about the move as he is or seems to not mind it as much as he does. One thing a parent can do, and this works especially well with a younger kid, is to say something like, “Usually when kids move, they have mixed feelings. Part of them is excited about what’s ahead and part of them is really sad about what they’re saying goodbye to.” So just putting it on the table for the kid to pick it up.

Reena Ninan:
That’s an entry point by asking them about that?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah. And I love the construction of “Often kids feel…” Because you’re not saying, “Listen buddy, come on, let’s be honest. Aren’t you sad about this?” I mean, you’re not cigarette and lamp in their face trying to get them to confess that they feel bad. But you are saying, often kids feel this and you’re the one introducing it. And then where it can go from there is that some kids are like, “Eh, actually I’m really okay about it.” That opens the conversation. Some kids will say, “Well actually now that you’re mentioning it, I’m really feeling worried about missing the pool we go to missing…” Who knows what will be on their minds. And some kids will feel enough comfort from the parent voicing it. Some kids will just feel like, okay, you get it. You’re saying it in your words. I don’t want to engage it any further than that, but you’re letting me know that you are tuned into the fact that this is hard for me and wordlessly will feel some relief.

Reena Ninan:
I like that language that you use by just saying “Often kids feel,” as an entry point to get in. That’s really good.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, we call it displacement is actually the technique in psychotherapy. And it’s funny with little kids who I haven’t cared for in my practice forever. We’ll often use toys and animals. I have a huge collection of plastic toy animals and it would be like, here’s the grumpy lion and here’s the cub who’s moving, and we’ll do it that way. And you can have a very rich conversation as long as you keep it off of the kid.

Reena Ninan:
Often kids feel. I’m going to steal that. I like that. I like that a lot.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It works. And again, the reason it works, the goal of helping kids manage emotions is to get him into language. That’s what verbalization does. It takes a feeling, puts it into words, and as soon as a feeling is in words, first of all, it’s less intense and it’s shared and it’s understood. And it’s great if the kid can be the one using the language of saying, “I feel sad about leaving. I’m worried I’m going to miss my friends.” All of that language. It’s not a too far second best if the parent is the one using the language on behalf of the kid. Sometimes kids feel sad. Sometimes kids feel worried about missing their friends. As long as the feelings are getting into words somehow, somewhere, things are going in the right direction.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what are the don’ts when you’re moving? Absolutely. Do not do this.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So number one, back to do not be like, “It’s going to be great!” Don’t take that side of things. You’re asking for your kid to entrench themselves and how not great it is.
I think another don’t is, don’t be unduly alarmed when your kids express distress. They should be sad about moving. It would actually be weird if kids were like, “Thank God we’re moving. We’ve been wanting to get out of this town for years!” We don’t want that reaction. So it’s expectable, it’s healthy. If a kid’s like, oh, I feel sad, I’m going to miss this. I’m not sure. I feel scared of what’s ahead back to how I love to define mental health. It’s not about having a sense of feeling good all the time. It’s about having feelings that fit the situation and managing them well. So I think when parents are anxious that they’re going to harm their kids with a move and then when kids are saying, oh gosh, this isn’t what I want, or I’m really worried or sad, I think it would be easy in that anxiety for a parent to think, oh my gosh, what are we doing? This is not okay. You’re having a negative emotion. This is a bad thing. No, negative emotions are part of life. What matters is just the kids handle them well.

Reena Ninan:
I think saying that sometimes to your kid can make such a difference. For so long I thought, you’ve always got to be high. You’ve always got to be up, up, up. And if you’re not up, something is wrong. And it wasn’t really until recently, really when we started doing this podcast that I realized, no, you don’t need to always be up. And if you’re not even in the middle, it’s okay too. That feeling that range is important.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Absolutely. And so a kid comes to you and says, I’m really sad about the move. You can say, well, of course you are. We’ve lived here, you’ve lived here your whole life. You’ve got a lot of memories tied to this place. You can actually, I’ll see you and I’ll raise you. You’re sad. Of course you’re sad. There are things we can do to help you feel better, but sad is the right reaction, right? That’s what I would say. Don’t try to chase the feeling away. Don’t feel unduly guilty about the fact that the kid is having a negative reaction. I think that we want to send the message, always in parenting, that our kids are going to have painful emotions and they can handle them. And the way we send that message is we make it clear that we can handle they’re painful emotions too.

Reena Ninan:
We talked a little bit earlier, but just overall, Lisa, is this kind of disruption lasting? Is it bad? Is there anything that the parent should keep in mind when you know, this is a big disruption?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think it can be, but I think a lot of what it comes down to is how the parent handles it and things that are well within the parent’s control. So I do think if it is done very abruptly, if there’s very little attention to the kids’ experience, if it’s done and by abruptly I mean it’s like, oh, guess what? We’re moving tomorrow. I think it’s really nice to have runway. I think it’s really nice to be able to prepare and plan for leaving.
I think as long as adults are attentive to the kid’s experience, care about what it feels like for them, go make a point of trying to soften the experience while being very emotionally attuned to their kid. It doesn’t have to be problematic at all and could in fact build resilience and adaptability and an appreciation for novelty in the kid. It can be handled badly through abrupt or unfeeling approaches from the adults involved. And yeah, I think that that could leave a mark.

Reena Ninan:
The parent here is asking, they want to share some of their emotions they’re going through, but they just realize it might be too much at this moment. What’s your advice?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I do think there’s value in parents normalizing negative emotions even around choices they themselves are making. So I think the parent can say, I feel sad too. We feel ambivalent about this move on balance. We think it’s a good thing. That’s why we’re making it. I think the only time I would be hesitant about an adult sharing their emotions with their kid is if it feels out of control.

Reena Ninan:
So if parents, if I’m sobbing and I just can’t, if you, and it’s like, oh my god, mom.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s scary to kids. I mean they want to see us have feelings within some bounds that feel reassuring to them that the parent is really still okay. If the parent is not okay, if they are having so much anger or so much sadness that it really, they seem sort of highly dysregulated. I’m not saying they can’t have those feelings. I would hope that they could try to have those feelings where they could get some support and manage them so that when they’re with their kids, they can express emotion in a more contained way.

Reena Ninan:
A real light bulb moment for me was reading your latest book, the Emotional Lives of Teenagers, where you talk about dads and you show the research why it is so important that dads talk about their emotions too.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And we’re thinking about this 8-year-old who happens to be a boy and if this is a heterosexual couple, making the move. One thing I would say for sure is we don’t want all the feelings work to be coming from the mom. It can happen in the division of labor and families. We see this in the research. Moms are the ones who talk about feelings and that can entrench for boys the idea that feelings are a girl thing. So if this is a heterosexual couple and there’s a mom and dad involved, I think that this is a great time. Again, I’m making puns these days for the dad to do some of the heavy lifting around the move and talk very openly about his own feelings about moving. And of course as adults we have lots of feelings about moving. So it’s a choice moment. It’s a perfect moment and do that especially in front of his son.

Reena Ninan:
So what I think I’m hearing from you saying this episode is that you don’t want to be over the top. You want to be real with them, meet them where they’re at so they don’t go the opposite direction. You don’t want to lose your emotions no matter what you’re feeling. You want to be in control of how you’re feeling, but also sharing what you’re going through could help the situation as well.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Absolutely. And then there are other things we can do that make a big difference. Kids can handle anything, almost anything, if they have warning and preparation.

Reena Ninan:
You said this about funerals too,

Dr. Lisa Damour:
A hundred percent.

Reena Ninan:
a few seasons ago, that why it was so important to tell them what they will expect.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Exactly. So, minimize surprises.
So as soon as you have a sense of, here’s when the moving truck is coming, if a moving truck is coming or here’s where we’re going to stay as we make the move, just keeping kids in the loop about the details makes a big difference. The move itself was a shock of its own. Any sort of other shocks that can be turned into not shocks because kids know what’s happening, definitely do that. And then another thing the parent asked about, is there something we could do to make it better? It was some way that we can address it. I think especially with these age kids involve them in this question, how do you want to remember our house? Or what do you want to do? What would you like to take with you? Do you want to go take photos of every room and make a album of the house that you grew up in?

Reena Ninan:
I like that.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, but throw that idea out. But they’ll be like, “No, we want to…” I mean, and who knows what they’re going to come up with, but if it’s within reason, again, what you’re doing is you’re giving them some, say, some control in a situation that’s not actually going the way that they themselves had thought it would. So any way that we can hand that over to them by involving them and making choices about how to soften this or hold onto this can go a long way.

Reena Ninan:
This was great, and I know it’s coming from someone who’s moved quite bit, Lisa. What is your, because you’ve survived and you’re thriving, not just survived, but I also wonder now knowing you, I did not realize you had that many moves. I knew you moved a couple of times, but moving that often, I also feel like anything that’s thrown your way, you’re like ninja chop. You can do it without even realizing it. I wonder if that helps people who move become more able to deal with conflict.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, it’s interesting. I think there’s just this issue of coping, right?

Reena Ninan:
Coping.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s not the challenges, it’s our coping. The challenges are a done deal. Everybody’s going to have their own. It’s a question of coping and I don’t know, I feel like I just got lucky in that my coping was adequate to what was thrown my way. But I think that’s how we want to think about these situations. Kids are going to face challenges. We’re going to have disruptions in family life. It’s not the challenge, it’s the coping and helping our kids cope well.

Reena Ninan:
Giving them that coping skill. What helps? Is it talking it through? How do you help them establish good coping?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I mean, this is such a beautiful moment, right? In family life, they’re going to need it.
So on the list of good coping, talking about their feelings distracting themselves from time to time when they don’t want to think about it. I’m wondering if that’s what the 8-year-old boy is up to right now. He’s like, I don’t want to think about this right now. Okay, for a little while, that’s fine. Comforting themselves. Problem solving is a form of coping. So the high schooler who’s like, you know what? I need to know that next summer I’m coming back and visiting my friends. That is coping, that is problem solving as part of coping. That’s what we want to see.
Mostly it’s what we don’t want to see. We don’t want to see kids who are horrible to other people because they’re so upset about the move. We don’t want to see kids who are horrible to themselves because they are so upset about the move. We don’t want to see our older teenagers look at substances as a way to try to get relief from their distress. As long as kids are coping in ways that bring relief and do no harm, they’re getting it right.

Reena Ninan:
So Lisa, what do you have for us for Parenting To Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Reena, there are times in parenting where we make a choice that works well for the adults, that it is actually not the choice the kids want. And we can run into friction with our kids about it. And I have learned over the years that the best thing to do is to acknowledge that. And so I think in a situation like this, if the kids are having a really hard time with it, rather than being defensive about it, the parent might say, “Listen, we’re making this decision because it works well for us and because we think it will work well for you, but we understand that this is not the call you would make and that we’re the ones who are making it and that you may be upset with us about it. We still think it’s worth it, but we get it.” Owning that, claiming that, not being defensive about that, I think helps kids move forward. I think it also models for them the ways that we want to handle themselves in their own conflicts and their own lives. When things get tricky going forward.

Reena Ninan:
Being transparent, laying it all out there and not trying to pull the wool over their eyes on something can buy you a lot of street cred is right?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s the street cred. That is it, right? I mean, that’s the thing. Kids will feel in response to that. Like, okay, you are making us move, but at least you’re being honest with us about it,

Reena Ninan:
And that’s worth a lot.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s worth your relationship. That is what keeps us in good working relationship with our kids. You’re not just flexing and telling me, this is going to be great. You are acknowledging this is hard and you’re acknowledging this is your call, and kids respect that and appreciate that.

Reena Ninan:
You know what I love about this episode? Most of the people listening today probably aren’t in the process of moving, but there were so many fabulous threads in here that we could incorporate into daily family life that can make a difference on so many other levels.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I hope so. I hope so.

Reena Ninan:
Absolutely. I absolutely believe it.
Well, I’m counting down the days for summer. We’ve got a few…

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Aren’t we all?

Reena Ninan:
…a few more weeks left to get us for the school year, but this has been great. Thank you so much, Lisa. I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.