School Transitions among Military Adolescents: A Qualitative Study of Stress and Coping.

Abstract. The research on highly mobile military adolescents has produced mixed findings. Whereas early descriptive studies reported that adolescents experiencing multiple residential moves exhibited symptoms of what was termed military family syndrome, more recent quantitative studies have found few negative effects after controlling for prior status. However, most of the extant research has been conducted during peacetime, and thus may not generalize to today's mobile military students, whose parents are facing deployment at increasing rates. The current study used qualitative methods to (a) describe the transition-related stressors experienced by mobile military students; (b) describe the efforts employed to help these students cope with their stress; and (c) identify strategies that schools can use to ease the transition process for mobile military students, as reported through 11 focus groups conducted with military students, their parents, and school staff. The findings suggest that the move-related stressors experienced by mobile military students affected their adjustment to the new school environment. Recommendations for supporting mobile military students are provided. ********** As a result of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 2005, it is anticipated that approximately 100,000 family members stationed overseas will be relocated to military bases within the United States by 2010; furthermore, thousands of other military families currently residing within the United States will be relocated to other bases (Institute of Land Warfare, 2005; National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, 2005; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2005). Consequently, an estimated 32,000 school-aged children will join the already 1.2 million students in U.S. public schools whose parents are in the military. Complicating these relocations and the pressures associated with reintegration into U.S. public schools from living overseas is the reality that significant numbers of these students are separated from at least one parent because of overseas deployment (Drummet, Coleman, & Cable, 2003; Huebner, Mancini, Wilcox, Grass, & Grass, 2007). In fact, over 1 million U.S. troops have been deployed to active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan since the attacks on September 11, 2001 (Department of Veteran Affairs, 2005). The increased risk of deployment likely exacerbates the stress already experienced by these mobile military students (Mmari, Roche, Sudhinaraset, & Blum, 2009). Family stress theory is a useful framework for understanding the influence of these types of life stressors on military families' adaptation to frequent relocations and the threat of deployment (Drummet et al., 2003; Hill, 1949; Huebner et al., 2007; Lavee, McCubbin, & Olson, 1987; McCubbin et al., 1980; Patterson, 2002). Each family member's perceptions of and reactions to life stressors affect the entire family's ability to adapt during periods of crisis or transition. Of particular concern are the adolescents in military families, because they must adapt to normative developmental stressors (e.g., puberty, formation of peer relationships, parent/child relationships, increasing academic demands; Compas, Connor-Smith, Saltzman, Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001), as well as cope with the stress of frequent military-related relocations (Kelley, Finkel, & Ashby, 2003), which in turn may negatively affect their adjustment to the new school environment. These family stress theories, together with the broader literature on stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), suggest that the accumulation or "pileup" of life stressors and demands faced by today's highly mobile military families--who are also at greater risk for experiencing a deployment than in recent history--may affect their ability to cope with these stressors, and in turn result in maladjustment (McCubbin & Patterson, 1982). Mobile military students are school-aged youth who have been relocated as a result of a military-related move that necessitated a school change. …