Helping Teens Cope With A Move

Posted on 28/04/2015

As anyone with a family can tell you, moving does not just affect one person it affects everyone in a person’s life, such as their family, their neighbors and even their pets. Younger children can usually get pretty excited about moving into a new place but teenagers have a harder time accepting that they will be moving, leaving the place they have adapted to for some certain amount of time. For teenagers it seems that their whole life will be changing and they will be helpless to stop it, so how do you help to make them accept the move as a good thing? Well there are a few ways to do this.

Let teens know that you will be moving way in advance, so that they can get prepared, spend some time with their friends and it doesn’t come as a surprise to them later down the line. If teens are surprised with such a big decision, especially if it a long distance move, they will get scared and not have time to think about the positive sides of things. It is important to give teens a proper amount of time, so that they may talk about it and gradually accept it or even get excited about it. This may not be such an issue if the teen has been telling you for a while now that they want to move from where they are, but most of the time this is not the case.

Getting them involved with the move is important too. If it is possible bring them to the new home and go with them to explore the new scenery. Take a little bit of time to search the area with you so that they can find things they like about the new place they will be living. If they have no idea what the new place has to do or the kind of people they will be able to meet then they will never be excited about packing up and making such a big change to their life, whether they have a choice or not. Just surprising a teen with “we are moving to this place, at this spot on the map” will not let them know anything. They will see it as “it may be so much worse, I have everything here” but taking them to check it out they will be able to see it for themselves.

Remember that most teens have a good amount of friends and may even have started dating, and as people know a teen in a relationship can see an end as an end to the world. This is one of the main reason teens are hesitant to even think about moving. Try to take the time to talk to teens about what’s going on in their life if you don’t exactly know what is going on. This will let them know that you want them to understand and that you understand their concern. All in all it will take time for a teen to adjust and accept a move, just take the time it takes and don’t surprise them at the last moment.