Moving house and telling the children

[MissyH]

would really appreciate thoughts on this one. For the last 4 months my husband has been working away from home in the week (by the coast - we are in the middle of the country) and it had been our thought that if the new job went well we would move. the job is going well - we have sold our house and found one to buy. We have a sensitive soul of a 6 1/2 year old son who is in Class 1 - v bright and you can't pull the wool over his eyes... and a 3.5 year old who is due to start school in September. When do we tell them that we are moving and how do we sell it to them? Am dreading it - particularly for our eldest as I think he will find it very hard... although they have both missed their Daddy a lot when he is away...(we are likely to get a place at the school we like for the youngest, but another hurdle will be trying to get our eldest in there as well as it is massively oversubscribed. we are trying to time completion for the end of the summer term)

Any thoughts on how to handle this are welcome

Thank you!

[TheNurseryCryme]

We took ours to visit the area and showed them all the best bits - parks playgrounds pub lunch ice cream man etc. All the time whilst dropping hints about how nice it would be to live there. Then nothing more was mentioned until the logistics of booking removal companies. At some point in time they just post of realised and accepted it without us specifically saying it.
Buying school uniform and taking it in for show and tell worked really well as the teachers could then 'big it up' as well.

Our 2 were the same ages.

[weegiemum]

We moved from the Outer Hebrides to Glasgow with a 6.5, 4.5 and 2.8 year old.

As it was such a distance (ferry trips or flights) I flew down on my own and viewed houses to rent initially. Then we managed a trip there, drove past the house we were going to rent, the school they would go to (well, dd1 into p2 - we had the place - ds into nursery for a year, dd2 into nursery following year, school nursery). Took them to the park, museum, out for lunch, basically bigged it up for them!!

We later moved within the city in order to buy a house, but they all love it here.

[MissyH]

thankyou weegiemum and The NurseryCryme... much appreciated to have the thoughts of people who have done it think we may hold off for now.. would at least like to get contracts exchanged and start fighting for a school place first.... we are planning to visit Daddy this weekend so will start the big up