Explaining change to a 4 year old is hard. Jakob can understand that change is coming, but much like me, since he doesn’t know what the unknown looks like, he experiences the same frustration. This morning, he remembered how when he was “a baby” we had a white car and lived in our blue house. But now that he is a big boy we have a different car.
I explained to him that when we go back to Canada we wouldn’t be living in our blue house anymore. He had no problem with that because we are going to live at Grandma’s house. To which I replied, “We may live at Grandma’s house for a little while but we can’t have Soren (our dog) at her house so we will have to find a new house.”
My optimistic boy logically suggested that if we couldn’t live at Grandma’s house with Soren then we should live at Mark and Tat’s house (the friends that are keeping Soren for the year). When he is being so reasonable it is hard to break the news that, no, Mark and Tat’s house is too small for us to live there and we would find a new house.
This is when the frustration started to show and in his very big boy, Jakob way he said,
“We will live at Grandma’s house for a long time or live at Mark and Tat’s house, THAT IS YOUR CHOICE!”
Many people say that kids are resilient and while I am glad we are doing these big life moves now, while they are young, it is still hard. How do I explain that he will live in a new house, possibly, in a new town (something I have not even broached), he will go to a new school with new friends and life will be entirely different from anything he has ever known in his short little life?
Oh my dear Jakob, I know how you feel.
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