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Moving Often has No Effect on Children -- or Does It?
I've seen a lot of mentions on the Web about people moving to be with family or for a new job; and many of these people throw in a comment about their kids not being affected by moving around a lot. I'd like to share my thoughts on this. My father worked for a company that moved him to a couple of different places during my childhood; and when the company wasn't sending him elsewhence, my family still moved a lot, trying to find a house for 6 that we could afford. Their opinion on the matter was that it didn't really matter how often we moved, as long as we were "settled" by the time the kids were in high school. As a consequence, I went to 5 different grade schools in the 7 years before Junior High. The routine went something like this: I got to a new school, where I knew no one, had no clue about the social structure, and the classes were working on material I hadn't even touched in my old school. (Did you know that different school districts, or even different schools in the same district, teach different things in different grades? That's how I got out of learning multiplication tables and the names of all the states -- School A will teach them next year, and School B taught them last year. This is not necessarily a good thing.) It takes months to get rid of the labels tacked on you when you're the New Kid, just as it takes months to learn your way around the social structure that everyone else has known since Kindergarten. You finally get it right, make a couple of friends; you start a new school year where you finally know what's going on -- and your parents announce another move. Time to go through it all over again. Needless to say, my self-esteem was unmeasurably low, I had major depression that followed me into adulthood, and it took me decades to figure out that I'm OK just as I am. If you're going to be moving, think about your kids, and the environment you're forcing them to leave. If I could just make a couple of suggestions:
1) Try to move during the summer. Every time we moved I got yanked out of my environment in October-November and then shoved into a new and different one almost immediately. At least if you move in July your children will have a chance to make friends and suss out the neighborhood before school starts.
2) If you can, stake out the neighborhood a bit before the move. See what the kids do out in their yards, what they're wearing; do a little research so that the kids don't stick out like sore thumbs on their first day. (Of course, if you're moving from Oregon to Illinois, this might be a little difficult . . .)
3) If your kids say they need new clothes, try to help them out. When I was in Illinois, in a farming community, jeans were not allowed at school -- they were chore clothes. So Mom bought all the latest fashions for the new year. Then we moved to a city suburb in Oregon -- where all the kids were in jeans and T-shirts, and I stood out like a sore thumb. Mom's reaction? "We already spent money on your school clothes; make do with what you have." So I wound up being the only kid in argyle and culottes that year -- and I suffered immensely for it. It's possible that a couple new shirts or pairs of pants will make the difference in your child's socialization. Really. If you take the time to think about the impact a move will have on your kids, and block for it, they'll thank you for it later in life!
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Contributor's Note
I know that a lot of kids move around all the time without a problem; but I can't be the only person who went through what I did. A little forethought and understanding can make all the difference!
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PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Popular Delusions
resources & toys for geeks, nerds, weirdos
www.populardelusions.net
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This intel was contributed by LJF Wolffe
LJF Wolffe
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May, 2012
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