Is Moving A Lot as a child traumatic?

Articles and studies I have read report school and behavioral difficulties and some emotional issues in children who move. Parental divorce is a factor in most studies I read. No literature I could find talks about the impacts of moving many times during childhood.

Behavioral problems were one effect cited. This was true of me during adolescence. I began to cut school in my sophomore year because I hated the school. I took a bus that traveled through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. I couldn't bear the idea of taking another day of school. I got off the bus and spent the days wandering around the park.

There has not been a whole lot of research done on the effects of moving on children. None of the studies I have come across have taken a multi-dimensional and longitudinal approach, which would provide the most valuable data.

In light of the dearth of literature, I am going to present my take on the subject, and use my personal experience to list factors and examples for you.

My family moved 21 times by the time I graduated from high school. The longest we stayed in any one place was two years. Once, we stayed only two weeks, then moved back to where we just left! I never met anyone who moved as much as we did.

Moving too much can be traumatic for many reasons. My parents and I moved to Anchorage, Alaska when I was fourteen, I was hit by severe depression that lasted for the rest of my school career. Prior to that I was a good student, and confident that I would succeed in life. In Anchorage I lost interest and neglected my schoolwork. I hated school, whereas before that I loved it.

There are pros and cons to moving, at least there were in my experience -- more cons than pros. For my sisters and me, our frequent changes of residence felt most often painful and at times traumatic.

On the other hand, we got to learn about many different places, and became more resilient and resourceful in some ways. We definitely became more tolerant of differences in people and lifestyles than we might have been otherwise.

A positive effect moving so much was that it gave us first-hand perspectives on different social mores from place to place. For me, the experience made me more independent and buffered me from the often cruel dynamics of adolescent cliques. I found compatible friends who were not in cliques.

We were fortunate in that our parents made good incomes, so we usually lived in middle class homes in nice neighborhoods. Once, though, Mom, Dad, and I lived in a transient hotel in San Francisco!

My guess is that when the family moves to a poorer neighborhood than the one they left it has a negative impact.

I know from experience that if the move is to a town or city or neighborhood the child does not like, it makes for a difficult adjustment.

We moved from a neighborhood I loved where I had lots of friends and was popular. I was devastated. The junior high in the new neighborhood meant I was going to a rival school than my old friends did. Plus, I hated the school because the kids were petty and cruel at times. My adjustment was extremely difficult and depressing. I was glad when we moved from there.

Moves to a place a child does not like can make for physical symptoms. In the example I gave earlier when I found going to school unbearable, I became so depressed and angry that I developed daily severe headaches from the stress.

Age is an important factor in how difficult the moving might be. Even very young children react to the stress and upheaval of moving, but I think most of the effects on them are temporary. But, if the child loses important relationships in the change of residence, this may have more far-reaching impacts.

When a child closes in on becoming a teenager, fitting in with peers and having a sense of belonging is that much more crucial. The loss of friends may become excruciatingly painful. This can lead to anger, depression, increased cynicism, and less adaptive or problematic behavior.

Moving is easier on children with more adaptable temperaments. A socially outgoing child is likely to have an easier time of it than a more introverted child. A more introverted child may withdraw emotionally and become shy and depressed. This happened to me.

A child who does well in school is likely to adjust more quickly to changing schools, and less likely to have their academic progress impeded. A child who is well-behaved and otherwise attractive will be more easily accepted by teachers and students alike.

A child who has a lot of interests and is involved in extracurricular activities often has an easier time of it when it comes to moving. A child who plays a team sport can transfer that built-in sense of belonging by joining a team in the next school. A child who works on the school paper can similarly transfer that experience.

Our moving prevented me from joining sports teams. As a freshman in high school, I intended to participate in track and field. We moved just when it was starting.

The emotional context of the family's move is crucial to a child's experience. If parents are stressed, which they generally are simply due to the move, this adds to the negative side of the experience of moving. If the parents are divorcing or conflictual, that compounds the trauma. How available the parents are to support and prepare children before, during, and after moving is a big factor in a child's adjustment.

The quality of a child's relationship with his or her parent or parents has profound impacts upon the child's development in general, and also in relation to the impacts of moving. Are the relationships warm and nurturing? Wonderful. If they are not, the child who already feels at a distance from his or her parents will have fewer internal resources to draw upon. This will make him or her more vulnerable in and less trusting of the world at large. Moving will likely be much more difficult.

The clearer and more rational the reasons for moving, the better. Children need to feel that their worlds make sense. They need to trust that the adults in their lives consider things rationally and make decisions based on good reasons. In my family, my parents made the decision to move based upon my father's wanderlust and rationales. These often made no sense because he worked in the same firm for years, yet we moved to different towns and cities.

Children also need to feel that their needs are considered important. They need to feel that adults can be trusted to consider their welfare. Do the parents talk to the child about feelings? Do they explain the moves in relation to these? Do they help the child find ways to cope and to make friends?

Unpredictable or ill-timed moves may interfere with the child's school year. This is particularly difficult and disruptive for him or her. My parents often decided to move before the end of a school year. Not only did we not get to finish the semester with our friends and familiar teachers, but with six or so weeks left in the school year, had to start a new school at that point.

When my older sister was about to graduate from a high school she loved, my parents decided to move to another city. My sister was so upset, she arranged to live with a friend until after her graduation. My father became angry about her not complying with his wishes and their relationship suffered. My sister was extremely hurt by Dad's attitude and lack of consideration for her needs.

When we moved in an inappropriate time of the school year, it was deeply disturbing to me. It is difficult enough to be the new kid at the beginning or middle of a year, but to join classes at the end is extremely problematic. I once was torn away from my freshman year in high school, moved to a different state, and became a ninth grader in a junior high school. I felt demoted, and the kids had no interest in making friends because they were busy with end of the year preparations.

The suddenness of a move affects how a child experiences it. The less preparation time, the more precipitous the move, the harder it is for a child to adapt emotionally. For one thing, the context is more hurried and stressful. For another, it makes a child feel his or her own needs have not been considered. In my family, we knew about the next move when Mom said, "We're moving in two weeks. Start packing."

We had little time to say goodbye to our friends and teachers, especially because we were busy packing our belongings and helping with the move. And, more importantly, it seemed clear to us that our needs were not considered.

There were many times when we changed location, but did not have a home to move into. This made for many problems. We stayed in motels or hotels or inadequate places. Once my parents and I moved into a transient hotel in San Francisco. Not knowing where we were going to live meant that we could not enroll in school until we did have one.

This often meant missing weeks of school. School districts have their own sets of curriculum. It was hard enough to adapt to that. Missing school compounded the problem.

Our belongings had to be put into storage when we had no place to live yet. My father often became annoyed about the addition expense, and did not pay the rent; this resulted in our losing precious possessions.

Once or twice when our things were in storage, my parents inexplicably decided they would take out only essential furniture. In a flat we lived in in San Francisco, we had only our beds and dining table and chairs, plus a card table and folding chairs. What might have been a comfortable flat felt cold and unfriendly to me.

Moving is expensive! My parents often became financially strapped for a time, especially when my mother had yet to find a new job. When parents are financially strapped, the level of stress skyrockets, causing children even more difficulties in adjusting to a new place.

Family ties and support are important factors. Is there extended family who can provide caregiving and emotional support during the transition? Does the child know that there is a network of people out there who support and love him or her? Our few living relatives resided in distant locations, and we hardly ever saw them. Some we didn't even know because of estrangement. We felt less secure and alone in that way.

Institutional supports may go a long way to ease transitions for kids. The children of military families who move from base to base share that lifestyle with their peers. Other kids understand their feelings.

Branches of the military also have built-in structures to assist families to make the adjustment to new locations. For us, there was no structure or support. Other people rarely got it when we tried to talk about what moving so much was like.

As I mentioned, my sisters and I had neither extended family, nor institutional support. This lack left us feeling adrift in the world, with no true sense of belonging anywhere, and yearnings to do so. My sister said, "We were satellites revolving around our parents." It did feel like that.

The element of how many times the family moves is huge. A patient once talked about how traumatic it was for him to move once. The more frequent the moving, the more likely the child will have an adverse reaction. Everyone needs to have some feeling of control and stability in their life. The child of highly mobile parents wonders if he or she ever will.

Family relationships may become disturbed. A child naturally feels angry with parents for creating their lack of security via having little control and stability. This especially affects a teenager intensely. I gave my mother hell as a teenager. I blamed her for not putting her foot down, at least sometimes, when Dad wanted to move.

Developmentally, adolescence is the time when kids move toward independence from parents so that they can transition into adulthood knowing they can take care of themselves. With too much moving, the teen's struggle is impeded by all the emotions that go along with it. The impacts continue into adulthood.

Adolescence is the time that children consolidate a sense of identity. This process is highly influenced by their relationships with other kids and adults. If those relationships do not have a chance to develop because of the transience of the family, the teenager may have a very hard time with their identity.

Each child's experience is different, of course. Some children are more resilient, have good relationships with their parents, and don't feel too much emotional distress from moving. But I think this is rare. I believe that most children in highly mobile families find it very difficult to cope with heightened feelings of anxiety, alienation, depression, and hopelessness.

As a child of highly mobile parents, I know firsthand how it affected me and my sisters. We moved on the average of once a year. Once, we left a place only to return in two weeks!

By the time I was three, my family had moved five times. At age 16, my parents and I made our 21st move. I attended fourteen schools by the time I graduated high school.

The manner in which we moved was a definite added element because we got little warning of the moves, and they were most often done for seemingly nonsensical reasons. We often moved to different places, even though Dad kept the same job for years!

We girls learned about an impending move when Mom said, “We’re moving in two weeks. Start packing.”

Sometimes we left most of our belongs in storage, and had only our dining table and chairs, our beds, and a folding chair or two, maybe a card table in our flat or house.

We were also fortunate that our parents stayed married and generally were respectful, loving, and took good care of us.

Neither of my parents was particularly socially-adept. Dad tended to be shy when meeting new people. He was quiet and highly intelligent, and had little in common with many of my friends’ parents. He was not interested in sports, for example, and so chose not to engage in office small talk or neighborhood activities.

As a consequence of my parents’ making few friends, it was more difficult for me to make friends with other kids’ mothers. That meant I was not included in their family events as much as I might have been otherwise.

Our highly mobile life presented many challenges, and fewer benefits. For my sisters and me, the moving combined with our parents' personalities blended in our experience to create complex emotional issues.