My kids (9, 7 & 3) transitioned really easily to the new house. I think it helped that I GC'd the build and I homeschool them so they frequently had to come with me to the home during construction. We also let them pick out their own paint colors and the older two painted their own room - with a little help :)

By the time we moved in we had already spent so much time here that it kind of felt like home from the get go. The oldest (and only girl) declared it home right away and never looked back. My middle child and most sensitive one was occasionally sad and mentioned missing the old place and that the new one just didn't feel like home yet but I think that went away after a couple of months.

Luckily they have made several new friends as the new neighborhood is full of kids. Our old place was in a small town with most elderly neighbors. They are so close to their new friends that I think if we tried to move them away from here it would be a much more difficult transition.

Good luck on your move and hope all goes well for the kids!!

My situation is the same as alymarie. We homeschool and we gc'd the build so the girls were very acquainted with the house!! They really thought of it as home from the first day. The hardest part was their getting used to sleeping in rooms that were "new."

Another homeschooled family here. We've been building our home, so the kids have been a part of it all along. We moved from our last home into a 30 yr old, single wide, 2 bedrm, mobile home. That's the move I thought they'd have trouble with, but even our youngest (then 23 months) transitioned very smoothly. I'm thinking that moving into the new house that we've seen take shape before our eyes, right across the driveway from this comparatively crummy hovel, will be pretty easy. I actually, though, think we might miss some of the togetherness we've been forced into when each person will have room to spread into their own spaces again. Though I'm certainly ready to get out of here, it's been a valuable experience for our family. I'm sure a lot of "remember whens..." will come out of it!

This is a great question! Just wondering myself! Does anyone have younger kids--like in the 2-6 yo range? How about the master bedroom on a different floor than the kids?
Our kids have been out to the site quite a bit and we have talked with them extensively about their bedroom, but I wonder if we are going to be dealing with nightmares/terrors, etc. with the upcoming move...

My experience wasn't quite as smooth as the above accounts. We moved into our house when the kids were 11, 8, 7 and 4. The youngest talked about missing our old house for a long time. I'm not sure how much of that was her actually missing it and how much was her personality, which tends to be melodramatic. We had lived in a rental for about 8 months prior to the completion, so she was pretty young to really miss the old house. Maybe she forgot how much she fought over sharing a room with her sister. LOL

My 11 yo had a really hard time. The old neighborhood had a gang of kids whose relationships and roles were well established and she didn't have anybody her age in the new neighborhood. In hindsight I think she was depressed for about 6 months after the move. It was so hard and I felt so guilty. We didn't leave our town and she still got to see her friends, but still... Gosh, I feel bad just typing about it. She did ultimately make the adjustment and 3 years later she's very happy, but it took awhile.

Our 8 kids are 3-19. The 3 yr old has slept next to us since he was born, but claims to be excited about having big-boy bed in a room with his brothers...We'll see. I hope he's old enough that it will work as he and we dream it will. During the night, there is only a bathroom between us, so I hope that will make him feel secure enough.

I am actually more worried about getting back to a normal routine for bedtimes. With this place so small, the younger kids are used to everyone staying up til the same hour, and not having to be in their rooms before others are in with them. Our 7 yr old gives us a problem now if she is asked to go to bed and be in the room alone, even though in this place her room is only 20 ft away from where the rest of us are watching TV. I don't know how we'll get her to bed on time with a room 'clear upstairs,' while the sisters who share her room will still be hanging out on the main floor. I think we'll just try to have a good tuck-in routine, then encourage at least one of her sisters to go to bed and read when she is supposed to be going to sleep. Probably will need a similar plan for the younger boys until everyone gets used to things.

Anyway, I'm obviously not there yet, and it's those who have been through it that you hope to hear from...So I'll become an observer on this thread now... ;-)

fishpants, I forgot to comment on your upstairs/downstairs question. Youngest DD was 4 when we moved (or five? Gee it goes fast...) and she shared a room with her older sister until the first night in the new house. Our master is downstairs and clear across the house from the stairs, kids are upstairs. Honestly, I think I had a harder time with the kids being upstairs than they did! It felt really strange for awhile, like they were far away. Even if you don't use a baby monitor it might not hurt to borrow one and just set it in the hallway upstairs until you're comfortable that the kids are okay. Hopefully moving your kids upstairs will be like my experience... much harder on me than on any of them. :)

Mine were 12 and 14 and adjusted great. My 12 yo daughter missed her best friend from the neighborhood for a while. But thats it. We live in the boonies so I have to make an extra effort to get their friends here but it's worth it.

Since we live so far out I've found that we spend more quality time with the kids. We walk the forest together, they work in the yard with us, throw baseball etc. etc. I think it's actually brought my son and daughter closer.

They love our new home and seem to be proud of it in there own little way. They are taking good care of it. :)

Ours are 8,9 & 12 (2 boys are youngest & DD is oldest)- our 2 recently inherited kids are 12 & 13 (niece & nephew). We moved from an apt. complex that we were @ for 3 yrs. & they had a ton of friends that they just knew they were going to miss tremendously when we moved. We've been in the new house for 3 wks. now & no one has mentioned anything about missing old neighborhood friends. We were lucky that they didn't have to change schools. It's been crazy busy getting all settled in, etc. & we've all been kept busy w/ school, homework & extracurriculars.

They've never had this much space before & tend to play 'hide & go seek' in the house or spin & dance in our Living Room that is currently unfurnished (we have a Keeping Room - like a Living Room, just a tad smaller, that's furnished. Well, 2 days ago, our nephew ran into or got shoved into the 1/2 bath's porcelain pedestal sink, which got knocked a loose a bit & moved ~ 1/4" over. He tried to lie about it also! Boy was DH & I mad! I don't think they'll be playing too much more like that. But otherwise, everyone's adjusting just fine. Our boys have always shared a room so they're ecstatic about having their own space & full sized beds. Now we'll really get to see who out of the 2 keeps they're room clean. We have them cleaning their bathrooms every Saturday, keeping the showers clean, keeping their rooms clean & making their beds every a.m., etc.

We're all getting settled into a rountine & every thing is working out just fine.

I'll be interested to see how my kids do with the upcoming move. My oldest 2 are the only ones who have ever moved, we've lived in our current house since doubling the number of children we have! My girls still talk about the "old neighborhood" and they miss it, we had great neighbors and tons of kids. Nearly all of them have moved away, but in a child's mind, things stay the same. Of course, they still say they miss our old van too, the one with no heat or air conditioning and 200,000 miles. Go figure....

The new neighborhood already holds friends for them and they will be much closer to their school friends than where we are now, so hopefully that will help. I've done all I can to make their rooms special and let them choose paint and decorations. We are down there a lot, so hopefully it will be smooth.

Amy

Our 9 yo, 4th grade dd's transition to the new house has been a bit of a struggle and it has caught us off guard. A little background: we moved from a 1000sf house in the boonies of Vermont to a 900 sf half assed winterized camp in the boonies of NY 3 years ago, when DD was in the first month of 1st grade. She missed one friend (who was not a neighbor, so she only saw her at school or occasionally on weekends), but seemed to do well. Last fall we tore down the camp and built a house, which we moved into in late July. During the winter we lived in another 900ish sf rental about 1/2 mile up the road, so we were at the site daily. She adapted seamlessly to the new school, camp we tore down and the rental house, which is why we were so surprised at what happened when we moved into the new house.

Although she loves showing off her room to guests and being in there with us, she dreads being upstairs alone and for the first time ever, insists on having the nightlight in her room on all night. She keeps asking if we have ghosts in the house (sigh). We think part of it is that we now have a 2 story house, and she gets put to bed then we go downstairs, whereas we used to be just outside her door. We also more than doubled the size of our house to 2100sf, and I think the size of the house and the fact that she can't always see and hear us are factors.

It does seem to be getting better, but it's been a little frustrating with the frequent "What was that?! It's a ghost!" exclaminations when, say, an acorn falls on the roof when we're tucking her in. We're hoping that with the advent of shorter days that she'll get used to being in her room when it's dark outside, we'll see. She spent the summer immersed in Harry Potter and Golden Compass books and that I think the content, i.e. magic et al, has stimulated her already-plenty-active imagination.

sandyponder

We had been doing just fine up until now. One DD just turned 6 and has the room directly across the hall from us. She LOVES her new room and her Princess Canopy netting. She even put herself to bed a few times she loves it so much. Other DD is 7 and has the room all the way to the end of a very long hallway. Her room is HUGE and she loved how we decorated it in her favorite horse theme. But all of the sudden after 7 weeks, she's starting to get scared at night. It's much darker outside now, she's realizing how far away she is from us, her room is kind of cold because it's over the garage. So, I've been trying to keep her more bundled up and really giving her some sweet thoughts for her to dream about before turning off the lights. It works sometimes.

I think my kids will do ok. We are at the site daily. There's already 1 friend that lives there, another 2 that will move in about a month behind us and another 3 coming in the year after that. They already are quite the gang running around so I expect it to be a smooth transition. My kids already sleep across the house from us, so while it will be a further "across" space it won't be something that's totally new.