Let children participate in designing or furnishing their room. Help children keep in touch with friends from the previous neighborhood through telephone, letters, e-mail, and personal visits. Frequent moves or even a single move can be especially hard on children and adolescents. Studies show children who move frequently are more likely to have problems at school. Moves are even more difficult if accompanied by other significant changes in the child's life, such as a death, divorce, loss of family income, or a need to change schools.
Moves interrupt friendships.
To a new child at school, it may at first seem that everyone else has a best friend or is securely involved with a group of peers. The child must get used to a different schedule and curriculum, and may be ahead in certain subjects and behind in others. This situation may make the child stressed, anxious or bored. Children in kindergarten or first grade may be particularly vulnerable to a family move because developmentally they are just in the process of separating from their parents and adjusting to new authority figures in social relationships. The older the child, the more difficult he or she will have with the move because of the increasing importance of the peer group.