How To Reduce Stress When Moving With Kids
Even though moving can be complicated, we all find ourselves having to relocate at one time or another, especially when we’re still young. This is a reality confirmed by the United States Census Bureau, which reports that “At age 18, a person can expect to move another 9.1 times in their remaining lifetime, but by age 45, the expected number of moves is only 2.7.” What this implies is that people are more likely to move when their children are still young.
The good news is that as challenging as moving can be for the kids, you can do a lot to reduce the stress. This article focuses on how you can reduce stress when moving with children. It starts by exploring why moving can be stressful for children and how moving can affect a child in the long run. The article also provides advice on things you should avoid when moving with children. Then, it looks at how you can help the kids adjust after the move.
Does Moving Affect Kids?
We start with the assumption that moving can stress kids. But how accurate is this assumption? According to scientific studies, this is a very accurate guess.
Based on a study published by the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, Foteini Tseliou, Aideen Maguire, Michael Donnelly, and Dermot O’Reilly conclude that there is a “close relationship between address change in early years and later poor mental health.”
Tseliou and colleagues add that “Residential mobility may be a useful marker for children at risk of poorer mental health in adolescence and early adulthood.”
Shigehiro Oishi from the University of Virginia and Ulrich Schimmack from the University of Toronto Mississauga conducted a study where they “tested the relation between residential mobility and well-being in a sample of 7,108 American adults who were followed for 10 years.”
From their study published by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Oishi and Schimmack concluded that “The more residential moves participants had experienced as children, the lower the levels of well-being as adults.” The two scholars arrived at another interesting observation: the negative association between well-being and the number of residential moves was apparent among introverts, but not extroverts.
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