Recently I moved home with my kids, so I wanted to share my thoughts and experience with you. The keyword of my blog post title is ‘home’. I didn’t write house, or flat, because ‘home’ is not material, it is a psychological conception of belonging. 

The idea of ‘home’ is important to all of us but for children home is rooted to their literal and psychological sense of safety. Home is (hopefully) the place where they can be who they are, it is their space of love, support, and self-discovery. 

‘Home’ is bound intrinsically to a child’s sense of identity.

​Home is the place in which children develop their environmental attachments. A parent or caregiver has only to think of the time they did a big clean of their living space, decluttered, reorganised objects and perhaps furniture, and then excitedly brought their children home from nursery or school only to be met with a child’s distress as things were not in the right place, or a child’s outrage and incredulity that it looked completely different and was no longer ‘home’.

Have you ever tried the cornflour and water experiment with your kids?
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It’s really weird! If you put the cornflour and water mixture in your hand, it runs through your fingers but if you poke it, it goes hard. Then it goes runny again (it’s called a non-Newtonian fluid, just in case you’re interested).
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I was playing this with my kids the other day and it struck me – this is what it can feel like after we have moved home. We poke the mixture – we make the change, we move home. And we might think that everything will feel more solid afterwards. We’ll have everything we dreamt of. We feel like everything is more ‘together’. We’ll feel happier. Our kids will feel happier. Life will be better. We’ll fulfil our dreams.
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