On this week’s ‘Parenting’ segment, one parent asked how to break the news to their children that they will be moving house.

“We plan to move very soon,” the letter writer told Moncrieff.

“The move will be to a new area and will require a school change for my nine-year-old and six-year-old when they’re going into third and senior infants' class in September.

“We need a location a little bit quieter with access to a green where I can have my eldest – who's diagnosed ADHD - play outside the house and we all feel safe in doing so.

“There’s so much uncertainty with this process and so much to lose in their eyes – I just don’t know how to deliver it with a positive messaging from their perspective.”

The letter writer said the new house will not be bigger or newer, but that the children’s new school will be more suited to them, and they will still live close enough to keep in touch with old friends.

“I’m waiting for the last possible moment to tell them, but we need to start moving as we have an offer on the house,” they said.

Sad girl moving to new home with her family. Image: Lev Dolgachov / Alamy. 29 February 2020

Family psychotherapist Joanna Fortune questioned the decision to wait until the last second to tell the kids about the move.

“I feel like that ‘wait until the last possible moment’ isn’t helping,” she said.

“It’s actually building the stress for these parents to a crescendo point of, ‘We really have to do it’ - but you’ve waited and waited.

“In fairness to your children, they now do need - and deserve - to know.

“We’re already at Easter so if they’re not going to be returning to the same school next year they need that time to wind down, to bring closure, to say goodbye to everybody, all of that.

“Children just need time to get their head around things and to adjust and adapt.”

Language to use

Joanna said that when the time does come to break the news, this parent should be careful not to leave anything up to interpretation.

“This decision has clearly been wrestled with by these parents and it has been made, so you are presenting to your children a certainty, not a suggestion, not an idea,” she said.

“It is a plan, so you have to also integrate that into how you structure the conversation.

"You don’t want to give them any ‘Oh, well, we don’t want to do it,’ and they think we’re still debating this.

“It’s done, so you’re presenting it as a fait accompli; you want to say it gently, by all means, but firmly.

“You want to use sentences that are not open for interpretation or negotiation, that is not ambivalent language.”

According to Joanna, the children could react well in the moment but may change their tune after they process what a move would really mean.

Main image: Rear view of young family embracing each other and looking at new house bought by them. Image: Dmitriy Shironosov / Alamy. 3 July 2020