Tuesday's NoPubl - Moving part 2

  When I left you for father's day sweetness, I was writing about moving.  I was talking about how to help the kids over the hump.  We'll begin where I left off.

. . .

• If it's not too far, or the expense is not prohibitive, let them invite an old friend to visit.  My experience is that they spend hours telling the old friend how great the new place is - even though they were planning to run away and go back to the old.
• This brings me to another point.  If you think your child yearns so desperately for the old place that you think they might run away, capitulate and arrange a stay for them at the house of a friend.  When that runs stale with too little privacy and too many new rules from their friend's parents, they can come back with honor.  
• If you wait until they run away, then you have to wait until they are ready to negotiate.  (Providing that they reach a safe haven.)  A teen has a hard time admitting that he/she has made a mistake and needs to return home.  The teen prefers to forge ahead until things get better - or until things are so bad he/she is forced to admit failure.  Even then, a teen would rather think it was your fault.  Don't take it personally.

Women need friends too.  So, now you are in the new town - again - and the house looks bare even with the packing box end tables and your husband is at work (making new acquaintances) and the kids are in school (or in the case of little ones, happily outside playing in their new yard), making new friends, and there you are staring at the soaps and worried to death you'll become like them.  You find yourself leaving the TV on even when you're out in the yard just so it isn't deathly quiet when you come back in.  I see two choices:

1. Get out and find some friends.
2. Go back to work.

I put going back to work second for a reason.  The people you meet at work are usually friendly, but not always friends.  Going back to work for the sole purpose of being near people just doesn't always fill the bill.

Note:   I found myself at a luncheon put on by the local welcome wagon.  After lunch there was a fashion show where they tried to convince the older attendees that they could and should wear fashionable, younger-looking clothing (all of it pencil thin, of course). At that time, I realized I didn't want to be there, I didn't like the people I was meeting, and what I really wanted to do was go back to work.  I love working.

Still, I stayed at home until I knew where my teens liked to go and who their friends were and only then went to work.

  Marilynne