One night my two grown Sons and I were sitting around (probably over a beer
) and we started talking about how some Parents have to play all these games when a family is making a move to another State to get the kids to accept the move. ( When my kids were young we moved quite a bit, because when some company offered me a few thousand more a year, we were gone.)
Anyway, my Son said that the way I approached it was to say "Get in the car, we're moving !", and while we all laughed at it, there was a ring of truth to it. We just did what we had to do to make a good living, and the kids simply went along with the program. We didn't kiss their butts a whole lot about it.
My Wife and I did approach it in a unified, positive manner, and we did everything we could to make the kids feel it was an adventure and something that would benefit us all. Aside from that, we didn't play any games or coddle them too much about it, they were eating our food and living under our roof, so they had to accept what was happening. They did benefit from the moves, because they got to see a lot of things other kids hadn't, and when they were in school they were able to tell stories about all the places they had lived and things they had seen.
But as they got into their teens we put down roots because they were starting to have girlfriends and friends, and we didn't feel right about tearing them away from those attachments.
Don
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