If you moved house frequently as a child

[Nosleepforthismum]

How do you feel about it now and what’s your relationship like with your parents?

My DH and I are nearing the end of a big renovation with lots of upheaval and two temporary sets of accommodation in the last 5 months before moving back home. We have two kids (2 & 1). It’s been stressful but also weirdly enjoyable and we’ll have made some decent money on the house when we come to sell.

I can’t help but feel like I want to keep going and sell up in a years time and do it all again (and maybe again after that). We’d be able to be mortgage free and financially we’d be able to set our kids up for life if we keep going while they are little. My DH is a builder and would work in between jobs to reduce the impact on family life but the kids would move house fairly frequently (every 2-3 years) and would spend some of that time living on a part building site.

A family member has expressed her horror we were considering this and thinks the children will be negatively impacted if we go down this route. Lots of “money doesn’t buy you happiness” chat but my overriding feeling that getting financial security is will be far more beneficial in the long run. The only thing I do agree on is not moving schools. Once they are at school they will not be moved.

Just wondered if anyone had experienced this with their parents and how it’s impacted on your life? Good and bad.

Noooo. Echo everyone else, moving schools is the key factor. Also remember that primary aged kids feel distance differently - to you it might be a few miles and you maintain the same friends, to them it's a different school with no phones to contact their old mates.

I moved house and school approx every 2 years for various reasons. As an adult, I see that we always stayed within the same county and same main area, but as a child, it might as well have been Timbuktu.

I struggled with self confidence and friendships as a child. I am doing everything to ensure I put stability first for my children.

It’s not the moving house per se, it’s the respect for your children as people.
Don’t cull their toys in the move so when they unpack in the new house, old toys ‘must have got lost’, do it properly before you move, with their consent.
Move within the same area so they maintain friendships, family connections if you have them, and schools.
Don’t make them keep changing schools, it’s really shit.
You know that tired trope of how resilient children are? They’re not, they just don’t have any choice about anything much.

Not me but a colleague told me as a child the moved a lot and he enjoyed it but his brother hated it do I guess it comes down to the child's character and wider circumstances

I moved house several times because my parents were renting and the landlord would give notice (surely not an uncommon scenario). Moving house (while retaining school and connection to friends) never bothered me, but the time I moved schools did.

Like a pp, I went to 5 schools by the age of 10, 6 house moves. I didnt feel unsettled, but the relationships I had with peers werent healthy - children I met were all friends amongst themselves, but just friendly classmates to me - probably my perception not theirs. That feeling didnt leave until my 30's. Probably different if all your peers are also frequent movers, and definitely different if no change of school.

Also, primary education massively disrupted (moved from Scottish system to English system and back again), which wasnt a disaster for me but left my sibling with some literacy issues (she has a PhD, so not an intelligence thing).

When I was a kid, we moved a lot due to my father's career. I didn't mind it in the least. It was fun looking for new houses with my mom and one year, I was leaving a particularly toxic group of friends, so it saved me socially. When I was older teen, we stayed put and they lived in that house until DM passed away.

But I had really good parents who were loving and upbeat about the moves...not that there wasn't loads of stress...I remember my mom crying once when we had to move and she had my baby sister who just wouldn't potty train. I was a bit sad about one move as I was leaving a good friend, but he and I stayed in touch by being pen pals, which was kinda fun. But my mom was really good about making sure our new bedrooms were decorated with cute things and all our toys came along with as well as our same beds/dresser.

I'm middle aged now and have always look backed on my childhood with a lot of happiness.

I read somewhere that if you were moved often as a child you either feel at home everywhere or nowhere. I'm definitely in the nowhere camp and was determined not to move my DC. But if you are moving within the same area so they can stay at the same schools/groups etc it different to being shifted 100s of miles like I was so I sounded different which made me feel like a permanent outsider.

We used to move a lot. Big distance moves so no continuity of schools. I went to secondary in a new area not knowing anyone, which was awful.

I got to choose a new duvet cover for each new house. Lots of my things got chucked each time.

I remember my mum telling me in one place we were moving to that they would be letting out my new bedroom. As a "joke". God knows what possessed her. I was incredibly distressed at the time, as if leaving my friends and a school I loved wasn't bad enough and can still recall it vividly now.

As an adult I can make new friends, build rapport and adapt to change very quickly, but am quite restless and have no sense of long term home. I've made sure the dcs have had total stability and love that they have lifelong friendships and I'm long term friends with a lot of their friends' parents.

I think this is most certainly true. I'm in the 'comfortable anywhere' camp. I settle into new places quite easily. I can change routines and am generally flexible. I travel a lot...in fact I crave it desperately at times because DH is more of a homebody so travel fixes my itch.

But, maybe my parents were this way naturally and that's just our shared DNA. They moved a lot and liked it. Pretty sure my dad has always had an itch to be on the move since he was young.

I moved 11 times by the age of 10, 17 times by age 20 if you count two boarding schools. Had lived in the four corners of England and overseas by 10 as part of that. 23 moves in total by age 44. Even if you knock off the schools (which were for 2 and 5 years) it is still quite a lot I suppose

I don’t feel as if it has affected me much, apart from a similar situation to a PP above - I can’t answer the question “where are you from”?, which I don’t mind much, but I suppose does make me a little bit sad. Another benefit is I quite often have something in common with people from all over the place!

Dad was in the Army, I lived in 5 houses before I was 5, they then managed with only one house move after that and my school wasn’t moved. I have not moved for the last 20 years to ensure my kids have the stability I didn’t have. No judgement on you, OP, you need to balance what’s right for you as a family; but my experience was as a young child it very much upset me to keep moving and lose that sense of having a permanent home, and I personally think living in a building project would be even more disruptive. It probably makes some kids more resilient and some kids more fragile, and you probably won’t know until it’s done.

I moved a lot as a child to different geographical locations. I found it very unsettling but I think if you stay in the same area and they go to the same school, it will be fine.

We moved every 1-2 years as a kid to different countries and regions. I loved it and yes whilst it was always sad to leave friends behind I always enjoyed making new ones, starring a new school etc. A downside is that I do find i get very itchy feet if I stay in one place or job too long which has meant I don't really stick with anything and am always looking for the next thing I can train to be and am always needing to rearrange the furniture/redecorate etc due to boredom. To put it into perspective I have moved house 32 times in my life (I am 39 now) and have had numerous jobs/qualifications and I just get bored easily I do think that this is because I'm just so used to moving onto the next thing. I would say that whenever we moved we moved into decent housing which didn't need much doing to it so it always felt homely pretty much straight away (you get used to packing and unpacking quickly) if your kids are essentially going to be living on a building site for years on end that may be different. I think it also depends on the kids personalities whilst I loved it my brother hated it and he has been living in the same house now for 20 odd years so he definitely doesn't have the moving bug like I do.

Also getting into schools was much much easier back then my parents just used to go and have a quick meeting with the head and be offered a place there and then.....would never happen like that now

One of the things I find difficult is when people ask me where I'm from and I tell them where I live now - but my accent is not from here so they tend to say "where are you from originally?" Or "where did you grow up" and I really don't have an answer because there were so many places.

When dh and I bought our first house, quite young (it was the 90s!) I really didn't put much thought into it because I just couldn't imagine living there more than a year or two. Then we lived ten years in a house I hated because I didn't want to move again.

Same here about the accent, mines a real mix and different accents come out in a broader way if I'm speaking to people from the different places I've lived...it freaks my husband out a bit 😂

I moved about 5 times between 0 and 11 because Dad was in the prison service and would get posted - I moved from Nottingham to Kent to Yorkshire to Newcastle to Wiltshire.

My parents decided they wanted us to stay put throughout my secondary education so I would have some roots in one place. I am very grateful they did.

I lived in about 7 houses before I was 16 and my parents moved again shortly after I left for uni.

I honestly envy anyone who has a stable childhood home where their parents still live. It's eased now I am 40+ but the envy was stronger as a young adult. I felt so adrift without a base.

I often find my memories of my childhood confused - struggling to place events with the right locations. It's disorienting.

And it made it hard to settle anywhere as an adult, for a long time. I'd live somewhere about 3 years and get an itch to leave. One I couldn't explain and wasn't that happy with. Just a sense my time was up in my current home.

Sorry OP if that's not what you wanted to hear.

Sounds an excellent idea. Kids are resilient.

Almost exactly this. With stable parents and financial security it's probably very different!

My parents divorced when I was little and between them I moved house 16 times by the time I was 16. I stayed at the same school but had to travel quite far to get to it so never got to walk with friends or join clubs nearby. I have a good relationship with my parents but I did hate moving, I never felt like a bedroom was ‘mine’ and I never felt settled anywhere because I knew we’d be moving again soon. I was always really envious of friends who had the same house all their childhood.

Totally understand what pos have said about the 'where did you grow up?' question.

And the not keeping childhood friends point.

At the age of 50 I'm never fully confident which vowel sounds are going to come out of mouth! I sometimes surprise myself.

My Dad kept moving every few years for his career/he was bored.
I hated it. Moving school was never great. Moving away from my grandparents broke my heart.
As an adult, I can see how intensely selfish my Dad especially was in his decisions.
I've lived in the same house for 20 years.

We moved every two years & it has impacted massively. Being shy it was so hard always being the outsider & having no shared history . I hated it . Friendship groups were already formed & trying to make friends was awful . Even now I feel like an outsider all the time . Moving so often was I think the thing that has shaped me most as an adult .