best friend moving??

[MommyDOK]

How do I help my 4 year old cope w/ the girl across the street moving? We spend lots of time w/ them and they are RIGHT across the street. Dd is going to be devestated.

[emmasmommy]

We have the same situation right now with my 4 yo. Her best friend since she was 2 is moving across the country. She already knows and was sad when we told her. Her solution was for us to move to the same place too. But then we told her about all her other friends she would miss, so she gave up that idea. We told her that she could send birthday and Christmas cards and emails to her friend, and she was OK with that, but is still sad about him moving.

[LauraLoo]

We are on the opposite side -- my soon to be 6 yo. just moved away from 2 best friends that he has had since he was almost 3.

I'm not sure how either of his best friends parents' dealt with it, but I know that both of the friends knew. I know that first instinct would tell you to maybe start limiting play with the friend so that the move would be less important when the time comes. But I tried to do the opposite - increase chances for playing so he had plenty of chances to say little good-byes. I took a lot of pictures and made a little photo album for my ds of all the familiar faces and places. It has been a source of comfort for him when he gets a little lonely. On your side, however, I would start to look for "substitute" friends to fill the void. Also -- there has to be books at the library about friends moving away. I'd ask your librarian for a suggestion.

My ds is a little older, so phone conversations and letters are a possibility and even emails. He hasn't suggested any of these yet and it's been a month since we've moved. He has talked about his friends and today he did a little pretend game outside where he was looking for one of them as part of the play. It's hard on both sides - for the one who's moving and the one who is left behind.

[hergrace]

Like PP, I am on the opposite side of this issue having just moved across country with ds. We kept our routines with seeing friends exactly the same until we actually left. I'm not quite sure how that was for the kids we were leaving, but it was great for ds.

What my friends have told me is that their kids miss ds most when they are doing things that they used to do with ds. So, you might want to think about some substitute activities to do when your dd would have played with the girl across the street.

My sense from ds's friends parents is that talking about how the kids feel does help. And talking about why the other family moved might help.