Who here moved a lot as a kid?

Didn't bug me. Once we settled in one spot (age 9) I frequently wished we could move again--nothing like a fresh start!

We moved a lot (I went to 13 schools before I graduated high school, and the last 5 years were all in the same place), but I don't know that it bothered me beyond hating to leave my friends.

A lot of our moves resulted from financial disasters. I felt like I was building sand castles and waves would come crashing from nowhere and wash them away. Maybe if we moved from nice place to nice place it would've been different. As it is I still find it hard to trust what's going on around me. When's the rug gonna get pulled? Not so much I can't function, but enough that it bugs me.

we moved a fair bit which was mostly due to 6 month/1 year leases on houses and my moms break ups and make ups. i really liked it. new neighbourhoods to explore. new people to be friends with. when we werent moving too far i used to ask to at least move schools, which i was granted once, not because i was having any social problems at the old school but i just liked everything to be new. i even changed my name that time.

I did, yes and no respectively. I don't have any friends I see or can reach anymore that I met before college.

We moved crosscountry several times, between Mississippi (where my parents are both from) and California (where my dad moved around 1950 to make his fort-choon). CA to MS in '68, MS to CA in '70, CA back to MS for good in 1975. (I was 11, and not happy at all about the last move.)

The thing that most bugs me still is the confusion lingering about the different treatment school to school. It's hard to figure out at eight, ten, twelve, and so on who you are when in one school you get treated horribly and in the next just fine and in the next horribly again, and so on. I always used to fantasize about growing up in one place, developing a personality that people interacted with over the course of many years, and dealing with boredom as the most traumatic aspect of all that stability, instead of the bewildering start all over again over and over again upbringing I had. Friends I'd make would complain about their boredom sometimes, but I'd always think they had it made, especially those first few weeks at whatever new school.

I did! 2 years in any one place, until Woodley/Reading, where I was "are we moving soon?" after three years, about the age of 12 or so...

i always wished we could move a lot because i hated everyone!

I didn't move a lot - three homes from cognizant childhood to 18- but I lived in really weird places. I think I feel like a kid who moved a lot, because my parents never owned a home.
it would be very hard to explain everything..so suffice to say that I grew up in mansions- but in the servants quarters.
With developally disabled adults. Until my mom became a faculty member at a boarding school. And then I had a dorm room,and went "home" for vacation to my moms apartment.
Anyway, having a home is vital. I wish my parents had been a bit more together and planned for their kids.
but I don't hate them. And I think we all can survive the past - it's the future that we must really figure out to live.

My parents didn't move a lot, but I did. The Malaysian education system screwed me up. My family moved just once when I was 4 and then I finished kindergarten early at age 5, and public school wouldn't take me because I was too young so I had to go to a private primary school. Then at 7, I entered public school at the right age. At 9, the school was getting overcrowded so they moved me to a new school across town. At 11, they moved me up a grade. And then at 13, for high school, I got sent to boarding school overseas on a scholarship. Over the next four years, I moved between boarding houses on and off campus three times. And then in my last year of high school managed to stay with a foster family.

After that..college and uni, I came over to Melbourne where I am right now. :) Moving around never bugged me much, quite liked it actually. Besides, my parents were constant - they were always in one place so there was always HOME. but I don't have any friends from before age 16 that I still talk to.

Navy family, moved quite a bit but never overseas -- mostly West Coast, the major exceptions being Hawaii and upstate New York. Never bugged me but I think I was a bit luckier than some because Coronado in San Diego became my 'hometown' by default -- my dad's Navy work was the sub fleet and that's only concentrated in a few specific harbors, pretty much, while at the same time my folks bought a house there in 1977 and held onto it even when we were away by renting it to other Navy families, a good arrangement. So we kept getting rotated back there -- my sister feels it more as 'home' than I do because all her middle school and high school years were there, I'm more disconnected from it and have only returned once after my parents moved away for my tenth high school reunion in 1998. Pleasant but I feel little for the town now, much as in the same way my high school years themselves are just not much in the memory.

All the moving didn't bug me because I got used to it, and in face I welcome it -- I like moving every few years, it gives me a sense of fresh starts and trying something else, and it's a great excuse to go through what you have and get rid of what is no longer needed. I don't feel connected to a 'house = home' model at all, and I think that's actually something very practical as a mindset; I realize that model is extremely important for others but I find it a bit...I dunno, limiting. All very tied up with a specific place when you don't need to be. So that's probably what I took from the experience.

My dad was in the air force and we moved around loads. Always found it hard making new friends, and this tended to get worse as I got older - social groups being more established and therefore that much more seemingly impenetrable. I was handicapped by a horrible shyness though, maybe I'd have found childhood just as puzzling had I stayed in one place.

Did I get over it? Not really. You develop this sense of never quite fitting in, and that's never left me. But I'm a lot more comfortable with that now, and in some ways, I think it leaves you a little freer to pursue whatever strange pathways you choose.

Also: my accent is fucked up, my sense of humour is fucked up, my musical tastes are fucked up. I think that's all part of the legacy of being constantly uprooted - acquiring random influences, shedding whatever you can't carry.

we used to move all the time.. i moved house like 4 times during primary school i think. with the last move being one to a different country when i was just finishing school. the last one was the most difficult obv with the distance and also i was so about to get a snog with my sweetheart back then. aw. but suddenly we became 6000 miles apart.

I was moved about a lot, which made me a lot more detatched from my surroundings compared to a lot of people I've known, who couldn't imagine living anywhere but where they'd lived most of their life. I guess the good thing is that consequently I never really got homesick ever, as compared to aforementioned people who would get very, very homesick.

I moved a lot. I was a month old when I moved from Maryland all the way to California. (Ok, that's kind of different than all the other times I moved).

The weird thing was I never changed schools, so I still feel like the reason to move was pointless, well except when we moved from Oakland.

State Dept. brat, so moved every 3-4 years, usually to a different country. Didn't really mind it so much, it was the only lifestyle I knew and kids adapt pretty easily, more so than adults I think. Plus, since most of the kids I was in school with when I lived overseas were also dip brats or military brats, they were also moving every few years, so it was the norm.

Yeah, 'nother Navy brat here. Thirteen schools during the K-12 years. I have absolutely no ties to anywhere or anyone from that time outside of my family. At almost 28 years old, I still feel like I'm in the very beginning stages of figuring out how long-term interpersonal relationships are supposed to work, so I suppose I'm a bit fucked insofar as that's concerned. I'm very independent as a result, though, to the extent that I really almost don't need other people at all. I suppose there are good and bad sides to that. And also: I've lived in my current town for four years now, which is the longest I've ever lived anywhere, and I feel a desperate need to move ASA humanly P. 'Though I don't know if that's the result of being so used to moving or if it's the place I'm living.

Short answer: it bugged me, I'm not completely over it, but I'm dealing. It's become much less of an issue in my life over time.

Another Air Force brat, 5 moves during my K-12 years (ages 5-17 for the non-Americans), the last at age 11, so I shouldn't feel rootless. I am pretty introverted, but I think the main cause is living 2 doors from a kid my age that hung out with me all through age 22 or so, but we didn't really have anything in common (I would never have chosen him to be my "best friend" had it not been forced upon me). And by "forced" I just mean I tend to go along with what's dealt to me, not that I was literally forced to hang out with him.

between birth and high school graduation:

columbus, mississippi
starkville, mississippi
fort worth, texas
ridgeland, mississippi
cape coral, florida
starkville, mississippi again
noxapater, mississippi
jackson, mississippi

moved a lot. addicted to moving. trying to get over it. my wife wants to live here for at least 10 years. that gives me the chills and makes me feel dead.
m.

I had lived on 3 continents by the time I was 9. 14 schools in 12 years of education.

Did it bug me? Not at the time. I thought it was normal. Does it still affect me? Sure. It's emotionally lazy to think that any situation which bothers you, you can always just leave, but still I think that.

andrew m., do you still live in MS? Noxapater is tied with Splunge as my favorite place-names in the state.

no, but my parents and much of my extended family is there (though not in noxapater). the name means something or other in choctaw. can't remember what. i just found that noxapater has a website. the population has apparently gone down since i lived there ('85-'86) from about 600 to a little more than 400.
where did/do you live in MS, truckdrivin'?

I'm in Amory, NE part of the state, halfway between Tupelo and Columbus. It's cheap to live here, that's about all I can say.

yeah, i'm familiar with that part of the state. was born in columbus. shopped and played soccer tournaments in tupelo. i heard that tupelo was growing faster than other parts of the state. don't know how true that is. my dad's side of the family is from calhoun city and ripley, a bit more NE than you i believe.

I would think a good thing about moving a lot is how it requires one to organize their things. Because I'm from a family who has live in the same place since I was 3, we have tons of unorganized junk.

I moved a lot, schools and houses both. The longest I've ever lived in one dwelling is probably 3 years, not counting college dorms as one, etc.

I thought it was normal to move that much when I was a kid, it sort of bothered me then but I knew it was beyond my control so I did the best I could. It hasn't really bothered me as an adult until the past year or so, when I've really begun to blame a lot of my hangups and dissatisfaction with my life on moving so much. So I'm not 'over it' I guess. It's especially damning when it comes to my C.V., since the only reason I've left a job is to move elsewhere, and having so many jobs makes me look flakier than I am. Even as an adult, the moves I've made still feel kind of out of my control. Each one removes years from my life expectancy, I'm sure.

i've got gypsy blood so i don't see it as a big deal. change being the constant. i suppose that's what's odd for me here cause the changes i'll have to make from now on will be more localized. new hobbies perhaps. new jobs. frequenting different parts of town. etc.

as much as it was a pain in the ass, i like having seen the country some. it broadens your perspective i think. i get mostly antsy i think when i imagine my kids growing up so rooted to one place. those are the moments when i want to get outta dodge.
m.