Holiday comings and goings

At this time of year friends who used to live here come back to visit with their kids, friends pack up to leave, either permanently or temporarily, and friends reappear in time for the new school year after an absence living elsewhere.

I find it interesting to see how their children deal with the upheaval. I remember a moment of terror during my own childhood when it was suggested that we might move to Dundee. I cowered at the thought of going to a new school where I would sound funny and it would be really cold. My own daughter has announced that she wants to live in our house "forever". She finds even the idea of moving down the road deeply traumatic despite her desire for a bigger garden filled with lavish guinea pig accommodation.

Some children just don't seem bothered. My daughter was quite indignant when one of her classmates left to move to Australia last month because the girl failed to cry, unlike all those she was leaving behind, including most of their mothers. The fact that the departed one has an Australian mother and granny plus cousins and aunts, has often been there on holiday, will be living near the beach in a bigger house, presumably with masses of room for guinea pigs in the garden (or the equivalent marsupial), so presumably will feel very at home very soon, made no difference to my daughter's view of the situation.

The young visitors who seem to get the most out of the toing and froing are those who go for two to three years and come back at least once a year to visit. Their visits are a social whirl of picnics and sleepovers, and often they go into school for a day or two to rejoin their former class. They also keep in touch via their mums' Facebook efforts. I've seen several returnees slip back into the swing of things so effortlessly that it's made me wish we'd bunked off somewhere warmer for a couple of years.

The unknown timescale and destination are unsettling. One family left quite suddenly last Autumn. Their first destination was the East Coast, but it was likely to be the West Coast after the first year, or possibly they might come back again, or maybe they would go somewhere else (the husband is a change management consultant!) My friend reported that her eight year old daughter was at first very homesick for England, and then entered a state of existential crisis about where "home" was which she is only gradually emerging from now it has been decided that they are not moving on again but are staying in the same place on the East Coast.

Another friend took her children to live in Cambridge five years ago when they were eight and four. They often asked to go home (meaning the house they had sold here) for the first few months but gradually adjusted. On occasional return visits they claimed not to remember anything or anyone very much. Now they have unexpectedly come back to live here aged thirteen and nine and it feels like starting again as they haven't kept in touch with many people. (Of course you always bump into people who say "Haven't seen you for a while, what have you been up to?")

So the key to moving with children seems to be either to convince them that they are going on a series of giant holidays punctuated by yearly deja-vue trips back to school and pals, and will be returning, or to convince them that they have never been at home where you are but are now going home. Sorted!