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Relocation

Helping families to cope with moving

Relocation

01/11/2011Helping families to cope with moving

Moving your family, moving home or moving abroad, especially if this happens frequently, is highly daunting for children. Here are a few tips on how parents can help kids through the trauma.

Commuter assignments and creating a life for the spouse

Leon and Alice Walker and their three daughters have been on the move for 20 years now. Within that time they have moved from England to Scotland and back again, to America, to Norway (twice) and now to Jakarta.

"I never call England home," she says. "As far as the family is concerned home is where we are now."

It is easy to say that home should be where your nuclear family finds itself, rather than the country named on the front of your passport. Yet achieving this requires a positive attitude and hard work.

We suffer loss, insecurity and grief every time we move from one country to another. Leaving behind a group of friends, familiar places and routines is similar to bereavement. It's surprising any of us survive more than one posting, when you think of the list of problems we are forced to encounter every time we move on.

Kathy Hewitt is an Australian clinical social worker. Katherine (Kit) Prendergast is a licensed clinical social worker from the United States. They met by chance in Norway and, for a year or so when their paths crossed, channelled their energy into running workshops for parents on the subject of moving with children.

"If there is one key word to surviving the transition and turning it into a positive experience, that word is support. Support is what you leave behind and need so badly. Yet, with thought, you can ensure that you take a fair amount of that support along with you," says Kit.

"Try to pack lots of photographs of family and friends. They will remind the children that they have made friends before and will make them again," says Kathy, who goes on to suggest that you encourage your children to send postcards to all the people they miss so badly at first. You could pass pre-addressed cards to classmates before you depart. Try to let your children leave in the knowledge that they will not be forgotten.

Kit and Kathy's lecture has been of tremendous help to parents who find their children growing more upset with every move. Most course delegates tend to be women, but a growing number of fathers want to discover what traumas go on at home while they trudge back and forth to a familiar work environment.

Possessions are vitally important to adults as well as children. It is not very good for morale if you choose not to take your accumulation of souvenirs from posting to posting.

Kit suggests that you ask your children to write down, or draw, the things that they need in their lives. Don't expect them to put you, as their parent, on the paper – they take you for granted. If they include football, vow to find out about football teams as soon as you arrive. If they draw their cuddly toys, make sure they accompany you on the plane not the sea freight. Ensure you have the addresses of their important people and that you have taken their photographs.

Saying goodbye can be hard for everyone, but there is no value in deciding to do without friends at your next posting. If you learn to live without friends your children will follow your example. Friendships develop vitally important social skills, after all.

Direct your energies into maintaining old friendships. Thanks to e-mail it almost feels as if you can take your friends with you. E-mail is such a convenient method for communication that it has never been so easy, nor so cheap, to stay in touch.

Joanna Parfitt / Expatica

Joanna Parfitt is editor of Woman Abroad, a magazine for English-speaking expatriate women.