Our Childrens' Hearts

We are now two days away from the biggest move of our 4-year-old's life. He was 21-months-old when we moved into our current home. Although this new home will be his fifth since he was born, this is the only one he remembers living in.

We started to notice some difficult behaviour in him last week. He was sometimes angry, and at other times anxious. When I sat down with him to talk, he made statements like, "I will miss my friends", "I will miss this house" and "I feel angry". 

Levi is the most like me, in terms of outward appearance, but also character and personality. One of the traits that we share is that we don't like change. We enjoy adventures, exploring, creativity, new experiences, but we both need and crave a stable home life. 

For myself, growing up, I had the opposite of stability. I have lived in more than 20 homes in my life. My family moved very often, usually every 1 - 2 years. There was no real reason for moving so often. I am not entirely sure why we did. I learnt to manage and to cope, but as an adult, I can process it better now and can see how the instability led to a lot of different behaviours in me. 

For example, I was constantly collecting things. I like to save and hoard things because they were constants. Granted, there was also the creative component of that, in that I saw beauty and usefulness in almost everything.

Levi is quite similar. He loves collections. He knows all his toys and notices if any go missing. 

As a parent during a major life change like moving house, it can be easy in the busyness of packing, etc. to forget that we are responsible to carry, care for and help with the processing of our children's emotions. They do not have the same ability to analyse what they are feeling and to respond appropriately. Change is inevitable, but how we deal with it helps us to transition well. 

So we sit with him. We engage. We give him space to talk. We don't tell him he is silly. We acknowledge his pain. We let him talk about what scares him. Often just the act of looking into his eyes and reiterating his emotions is enough to bring peace to his heart.