We Moved To Horizon West / Winter Garden
This message is for all the newbies out there. Welcome! Having recently moved to the area with my family of five, I am sure we can relate on many different levels.
Moving to a new area with your family can be so overwhelming. The list for a wife and mother is never-ending. Moms out there — you deserve a spa day. If you moved across state lines, I have even greater compassion for you. It’s not for the faint of heart.
If you’re like me, you hope to never see another box or roll of bubble wrap again. The logistics are not even the tip of the iceberg.
Walking into your child’s new school with teachers you don’t know, in an area that is not the same as where you came from, is daunting. You begin to wonder if you made the right decision. Will my kids be okay here? Will these teachers be as loving and supportive as the teachers from our old hometown? Are we really going to be okay?
Our family’s first few weeks in Winter Garden were a huge adjustment for our three children. We had spent the last three years living in the sweet town of Spring Hill, TN. In Spring Hill, the kids play outside in each other’s backyard and you can hear your neighbors calling out dinnertime from the backdoor of their porch. It’s a tight-knit community.
Winter Garden is a different story. Did I mention my two boys are both in middle school? Not exactly an amazing time to start a new school. In Tennessee, our boys went to a school with around 1,000 students, while here their school has over 1,800 students. The sheer size of the school alone was intimidating and overwhelming. We were really concerned. They were telling us about the fights at their new school and feeling out of place in their environment. The first few weeks, they begged me to homeschool them. I get it. Just think about being a brand-new kid in a huge school with no friends, no one to sit with at lunch, hoping you don’t get lost on the way to class because your school is huge and completely unfamiliar.
It was the thought of trying to teach middle school math to my boys that really ramped up my nerves! We knew we had to do something. We texted and emailed all our friends and asked them to pray for all three of our children. We prayed, too. We felt to encourage the boys to make one friend a day. Only one. What looked like defeat turned into a victory for them. The very next day after we shared this advice with the kids, our oldest son came home and told us about a friend he had made that day. They continued to make one friend a day the first few months in their new school.
If you are new to the area and trying to integrate your kids into the very crowded schools here, try asking them to make one friend a day. It is an attainable goal and before long they will start to feel at home. Maybe you feel like our kids as well– new and overwhelmed. Make one friend a day! There’s the grocery store, the coffee shop or work. After all, home isn’t really a place, it’s people. So welcome home, friend! You are going to love it here!
