I would talk to her about it ahead of time, and also share any sad feelings you may have about it. We went through something very similar - we live in an area with larger lots and for most of my kids' early years the lot next to us was vacant and full of trees. All of the neighborhood kids loved to play there and my kids have many fond memories of forts they built, bugs they found, games they played there etc. Then a few summers ago the lot was sold and a house was built on it - not just any house, but a house that took up the entire lot and was built by people who had very little concern about leaving as many trees as possible. We knew that it would happen for several months prior the trees being taken down, and my kids all felt very sad and upset about it. Waiting for it to happen only made them more sad (me too!). The day the trees came down was horrible for me to listen to, and I am forever grateful it happened while my children were in school, because the cracking noise of the trees breaking and the noise of the bulldozer moving were all loud enough to hear through the walls of our house.
Anyway, I think the way we handled it worked as best as can be. Our youngest dd was probably 5 at the time, and she was very very upset about it happening. So the morning that we knew the trees would go down, we walked through the lot with the kids, and we talked about how it would be sad but that we would always remember it. Then I had my youngest dd (who was in tears), pick out a new "favorite tree" in our yard to be her special tree, and I took her picture next to the tree. I also took her picture next to a tree that was going to be cut down that she was particularly upset about. When she was sad about the trees being cut, she would take out the pictures and look at them - that didn't last for a long time, but she did it a lot the first week and then a few times over the next few months.
My ds was also very upset, but he was a little older. He kept a piece of bark from one of the trees after they were cut down, and he spent some time on his own walking through the lot and checking things out each day when he came home from school for a few weeks. There was something different that had changed each day for awhile, and he was able to deal with his feelings by just tracking those changes. Later on when the house went up, we were also able to get our younger dd focused on the interesting parts of seeing what was new being put into place and that helped take her focus off of what was lost.
I think saying goodbye is a really good idea, and letting her take a souvenir to keep as a physical reminder is also a good idea. If you have time, or if your dd would enjoy it, another thing you could perhaps do together is to create a small scrapbook or write a short story about your hikes there that she can keep to help remember, and then focus also on finding new hikes to explore.
polarbear
Last edited by polarbear; 04/01/13 11:08 AM.
