To think moving as a teenager was traumatic

[Fizzyducklings]

When I was a young teen we moved from a small town where I’d grown up. It was all I knew, I had lots of great friends I’d grown up with. I lived in an amazing estate where we would call for each other and spend hours playing outside. My best friend lived across the road. I was a very happy, confident child.
One day, I came in from school, my brother had been crying. DM turned to me and said not to make a big deal of it like he had but we were moving to a city, it was devastating.
We moved a few months later. I was bullied in my new school and it took months before I made any friends. My parents never let me visit my friends from home (with no traffic it’s a 30 min drive away!!!) My siblings got to go as they were older and would get the bus - I was not allowed to go with them. I lost touch with all my friends from home over the years except my best friend who I managed to keep in touch with, although we drifted and only see each other once every few years now.

It came up in conversation today and my DM said it wasn’t traumatising and I was fine. I said I wasn’t fine but it’s in the past now so no point in falling out over it now. But looking back through the lens of an adult and a mother myself I could just never imagine going about such a big move like this in such a harsh way. I have social anxiety and used to use alcohol as a means to cope with it and be confident around people, I often wonder how I would have turned out if we didn’t move at such a sensitive time…

I understand that people suffer much worse and it’s very much a first world problem but I think it’s wrong for my mum to just dismiss it and not acknowledge how it would have been difficult. AIBU?

And op...your mum handled it very bafly.

I was moved within this country and aabroad whilst a child, and this was pre-internet,mso only phone and letter-writing as a means of communication.
Yes, it's upsetting, but it happens to hundreds of kids every day.

I think it’s a bit odd that your mum wouldn’t allow you to keep in touch with your friends and to prevent your dad from taking you to your friend’s birthday party.

Was she concerned about your friends influence on you? Was she worried that you were being led down a wrong path? Because apart from that I just don’t understand why she would do that. Has she ever said anything to you about her not approving of your choice of friends?

And I am so sorry that you were bullied. It is traumatising.

You could have been bullied at whatever secondary school you went to even without moving, teenagers often being poisonous little shits. Sadly there's no guarantee your earlier friendships would have continued, either. I was at two kindergartens and three primary schools and one secondary school, and would dearly loved to have escaped the bullying (including low-level sexual assault) there - but it didn't traumatise me. Distress, enrage, yes, but it didn't make me socially anxious, much less turn to alcohol. I was just greatly relieved to get away from the place and spend my last year of school at an arts course with the first bunch of nice kids I'd ever known.

I had similar experience, moved at 14 where I had really settled with friends. We had moved around a lot prior to this but this was the longest we had lived anywhere and when I was told we were leaving I was devastated. We moved to place where I didn’t fit in. I just hated it, no one liked sport, no one liked to study and the girls were just mean girls, being a teen is hard enough.
Those belittling your feelings - well lucky them for being different people who can handle it or having parents that were able to get them through it etc. I didn’t find it easy…and that’s that!

We moved twice at the beginning and in the middle of my teens.

It wasn't easy but I think I was always an introvert which didn't help. Difficult, stressful yes. Traumatic no.

I'm guilty of NRTFT so have you considered what specifically makes you feel traumatised ??

I moved a school a fair few times, I found it really difficult to make friends, but this was because I was socially awkward and fat basically. I had friends when I was younger because we had always been friends, I hadn’t had to ever make new friends before that and by god it was difficult. I think I would have struggled eventually anyway. But yes going from a feeling of comfort to bullying and isolation is really horrible. I sometimes feel a bit jealous of people who grew up in the same place and are still best friends with the primary school mates.

I will have to move my DD at some point but I keep exposing her to situations where she has to make new friends in new settings to build her social muscles. It’s life and it is difficult. I hope it’s enough.

I was a forces child, also moved countries many times and boarding school at some point.

I'd agree I have no roots, no place to call home, but it wasnt usually traumatic. I have a solid confidence in myself that no matter what happens, I will cope just fine.
I had no choice but to make friends somehow, so I went the faking confidence way. Wherever I moved to I just faked a happy go lucky persona. I discovered it worked better for making friends. I'm naturally a hermit so it was so damn hard. But it paid off back then.

For OP, maybe therapy of some sort, I'm not doubting that the move led to being bullied and drinking, but there comes a time that you have to acknowledge the damage done but move past it. As a child, sure, blame the move, as an adult, deal with it now. This might be the moment to finally deal with the trauma, since you are here posting about it. Might mean it's time.

If a family has to move, for financial reasons, then they have to move. Giving everyone a shite quality of life, to not upset teenagers is ridiculous. They should be involved in the discussion, absolutely, and be fully aware of the reasons behind it, but I'm wouldn't scupper a whole family for a teenager.

I’m similar, in the sense that I don’t have roots in any one place, but I like that tbh. Home is wherever I make it, I’m not tied by geography. I wouldn’t want to feel tied by geography.

————

I emigrated as a child without being traumatized by it, but I imagine a lot of that has to do with personality. Culturally, emigration wasn’t unusual (my parents themselves are from different countries), and I’ve always been confident and able to roll with the proverbial punches. Probably it also helped that I wasn’t the only child in my new school that was from another country, there were a few of us in the same position.

But, what’s right for one person isn’t going to be right for another. That my experience wasn’t traumatic, doesn’t mean that yours wasn’t. You’re entitled to your own feelings about it, no matter what anyone else thinks you should feel.

What it sounds like, to me anyway, is that you want your mother to acknowledge the impact it had on you. It sounds like she knows, but isn’t willing to have that conversation. You’re going to have to find a way to try and come to terms with it, without that.

I think it's strange to have so little attachment to your friends that this would bother you so little.

My dad offered to drive me to a friends birthday party and she wouldn’t let me go, there was not reason for it other then she just didn’t want me to go.

She was probably worried about you not settling in to the new area if you maintained contact. We did a similar move (before high school) and whilst 30 mins isn't long it's not really maintainable for children/teens social lives. It took 2 years of tooing and froing our eldest to said village before he moved on to new friends, I was so worried I was doing the wrong thing not encouraging him to separate and concentrate on our new area. It all worked out (he was younger, and I think I was kinder!) but just to try help give your mum's perspective perhaps. I think the way through this stuff will be trying to understand why she did what she did (and your dad, can't all be her?) I'm sure it was misguided and not with malice. It's hard though, when parents don't recognise a mistake when all you want is some empathy and an apology but they get defensive, I've experienced similar.

If you can't visit it doesn't matter if it is 20 mins away or Australia.

OP My parents did that too, only we also lost contact with relatives too.

People who coped well with moves are lucky enough to have the right personalities to cope with the change. My older sister thrived with the move but it was traumatic for me. As a result my sister has moved 4 times with her kids and I have stayed in the same place. I will never do that to my kids and suspect her kids don’t find it as easy as she makes out!

It's not about the move, people do that every day. It's about the dismissive attitude of your parents and the bullying. You must have felt so lonely and unsupported, and that can have a longlasting effect. Love and feeling supported by parents is a free, priceless gift they give us and I remember that as a mum myself.
Even now they're gone, how they were with me meant I could even handle their deaths and life after them.

@Moonshiners mainly cos it was pointless and for all this fuss how many of you have good friends, I mean really good friends not Facebook or LinkedIn friends, from that age group….

Thanks for the responses. It’s interesting reading opinions stating that the difficulty of such an event is based on distance or amount of times it’s happened. The distance is irrelevant as I was cut off completely and had no way to visit and maintain relationships. If anything the fact that we were within reach makes it more upsetting as it was needless to lose touch, and if DM wanted to be near her family fine, but she could have gained that whilst also supporting me in keeping in touch with precious friends whom I’d known all my life.

I can imagine being moved several times to be so unsettling of course, but I don’t think it’s fair to say as it was only one move then so be it. That logic could be applied to anything then - we could never be allowed to be upset about anything as someone will always have it worse than us.

It’s sad reading others experiences of how difficult past moves were and how it can have lasting impacts.

Really for the most part I have made peace with it now, but it just came up recently as I actually visited the town to see my friend for the first time in years and that’s what got me really thinking about it all again. My friend’s DM actually brought it up and said how traumatising it was and she remembers it like it was yesterday. I have a good relationship with my DM now but at that time it destroyed our relationship for years. My dad of course was also in it, but it was a case of what she says goes and he kept quiet.

And yes I’m sure there was an element of DM thinking cutting off contact may help me to settle in quicker to our new life and move on but it had the opposite effect really.

I was lucky to be friends with a great bunch, and funnily enough the group I got in with in the city had more issues but then again we were older teens - so it wasn’t that DM felt I was around any bad influences in our home town. However she did fall out with some of my friends mums and she felt they had almost bullied her so I think she projected that on their DC (my friends) and didn’t want me to keep in touch IYSWIM.

But it can be about the move. I wasn’t bullied and my parents were very supportive but moving still ruined things for me. I am an introvert and struggled to make friends so ended up compromising who I was to fit in. Being a teenager is so hard without adding in extra hurdles to make it more challenging. My parents moved me right at a crucial point of schooling and development. It was a thoughtless thing to do to a child.

It doesn’t matter how near it is if there’s no opportunity to see your old friends. It might as well have been a 3 hour drive away.

This is why we would never have moved our DC unless absolutely necessary - I.e. to get a job after redundancy. DH was moved as a child and hated it. They moved back a year later - but he’s said he would never do that to his kids.

@SheliasGnome Sorry you went through that, something to think about as parents. I think some moves have to happen though don't they for work reasons, and sometimes it might end up somewhere a teenager would be happier. but if it can be avoided during those teenage years and they are settled then it should be.

I could have written this myself. Yes it was traumatic and shaped the rest of my life. I had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and was probably showing autistic traits with ADHD. At 13 my dad died and within a few months we moved to a different location miles away. I lost my home, my friends, my school, everything I was familiar with. My childhood was torn apart over night. Then I was in a new school where I knew nobody and didn't fit in and was desperately lonely, became aware i was experiencing suicidal feelings and being bullied relentlessly. My mum was then hospitalised for 6 months with me not knowing if she would live, leaving me sent to live with my grandmother. Life was never the same. For years I kept getting a train back just to look at the old house because I just wanted to go home and couldn't because it wasn't my home anymore. Mum did what she thought was right and I get why she did it, but it wasn't right for me and if I could go back now, I would have wanted to stay there. For me it was a traumatic experience that moulded the rest of my life. I still struggle with change and making friends. I was left with a lifetime of what ifs. What if we had just stayed there? Would my life have been different? Would I have been happier? What if mum had not been in such a rush to move? Would I have not been so isolated and cut off from everyone and everything I knew? It is something that has never left me and anyone who can say they wouldn't consider that traumatic has been very blessed in life.

Be kind to yourself OP. I hear exactly what you are saying and I'm so sorry this has been your experience too xx

Come on OP.

I'd been in 4 primary schools by the time I was 6.

Not much better for secondary.

I think there's a limit to what you can blame parents for.

Well for me I have several. I left my hometown at 18 but my parents still live here. Coincidentally I'm here now and this weekend I have seen two friends from primary school, and went for a meal were about six mates I used to hang out with who I first met at 11. I then watched the football with someone I've known since being a baby. I see these people probably about four or five times a year and they mean loads to me.
One of my friends lost his Mum last year and about 8 of us went to the funeral. We are all 50ish and been friends for nearly 40 years. He only has a small family (couple of cousins) and I very much feel as if we are his second family.

I was made to emigrate when I was 12 and it really messed me up tbh, I know some kids would have bene fine with it but I was a shy child with no confidence, it really didn't do me any favours