Moving to a new country can be exciting but nerve wracking add in children and it can feel overwhelming to say the least, today I want to share all the advice and tips I have to move overseas after having just made an overseas move for myself with my two young daughters.
Mid January I moved from New Zealand back to Australia, some of you may know that I was actually born in Australia and lived over here until 2011 so for me this was about returning home but for my kids it was moving countries for the first time and while my youngest had no idea what was going on as she was only 3 months old my eldest had a range of emotions and it was honestly quite tough on her at times.
My first bit of advice is to just talk about the move, explain why you’re moving and what to expect in an age-appropriate way so that they can better understand what is going on, talk about all the positives with the move that would interest them from new experiences to making new friends and let them express their feelings and emotions they may not be happy straight away but that’s ok, let them ask any questions they need too.
Something I did early on was fill out as much of the registration forms for things like doctors as I could before I was even in the country that way when I had the information I was missing I could just quickly fill it in and then take it in so we could be enrolled fast just in case we needed a doctor at any stage.
A lot goes into a move so you will need to remember to tie up lose ends but also make sure you have the documentation you need to take with you easy and handy, I took a filing folder in my carry on which held every possible thing I could think I would need like our birth certificates, Plunket books passports and other things, if you have school aged kids you might need to bring school records to give to the new school but I’m not really sure on that one.
Now that general information is out of the way, dealing with the actual move is what I want to touch on last, I had personally planned for worst case senemio which was both girls screaming all through air port and plane ride but thankfully that didn’t happen.
I made sure I had my youngest dummy and plenty of nappies on hand for the flight and for my eldest I brought lollipops for take off and landing, things to do on the plane, noise cancelling headphones for if the noise got to much.
My youngest slept take off and a good portion of flight time but she honestly hated being seated in the plane and I kind of wish I had brought my baby wrap on board not packed in my checked as it would had made things so much easier.
My eldest struggled in the airport, we had to put her headphones on pretty early on and had to carry her a lot through customs because she was getting freaked out by all the people, once on the plane she went right to sleep waking occasionally to see what was going on before going back to sleep she did watch a little bit of a movie but for the most part she slept.
Once in Australia and first part of customs was done I set up my double pram and had both girls in it to make doing everything else easier.
My biggest advice is try and find ways to make it exciting for kids but know they can still be scared but at the end of the day when the adjust you won’t regret it at all.
If you have made an overseas move before with kids let me know what you wish you knew or what helped you in the comments to help other parents planning to do the same.
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