The news of another PCS move still startles you, even when you know it will come anytime. Despite your best effort, there is still tightness in your stomach. It comes as you brace up and plan on how to deliver the news to your kids. With a smile plastered on your lips and a tilted vice to sound thrilled, you try to break the news in the most exciting way possible.

Telling the kids used to be easy. With a PCS almost every two to three years, and with them just starting to develop some close friendships, letting go is becoming more painful and telling them the news now seems more difficult.

What Each PCS Move Means to Your Child

You know that a PCS is nerve-wracking. While most children are resilient and can bounce back soon enough, certain factors can make it progressively complicated – the child’s age, temperament, the number of PCS moves and the emotional investment in the current location. While you understand the challenges, you too are busy with all the preparations, settling down, and taking care of everything and everyone.

Each PCS means leaving everything that your child came to appreciate and built in the past two years or so – home, school, friends, teachers, neighborhood, scenery, weather, church or place of worship, routines and activities, etc. Moving to a new location also means “new everything.” These can seem just too much to handle for a child, especially when they build happy memories in the current place.

What can your child be thinking or feeling?

Different children react differently to the news of a PCSGenerally, young kids will just soak everything up; they’ll be happy anywhere as long as you are with them. If you personally aren’t taking the news well, some of their reaction will be based on that. The reactions of the tweens and teens are unpredictable; you have to read between the lines of their remarks and make a wild guess of their gestures.

Silence doesn’t mean the child is accepting everything; listen to his/her sobs at night when they think everyone’s asleep, and note the loss of appetite or sudden withdrawal from everyone. A curious child who keeps on asking questions may not be being difficult; he/she may just be mentally preparing for what’s to come.

Get Professional Help

Your fear that the PCS challenges may negatively impact your children is well founded. Numerous studies support the idea that they have higher risks of depression, anxiety and grief. The unpredictability of their reactions compounded with your personal challenges, however, can make you less effective to handle you and your children’s concerns. You need help.

That’s what Carolina Counseling Services – Southern Pines, NC is here for. With licensed independently contracted therapists who can be the right fit for your children, you don’t have to let them go through the transitions without help. Call now to schedule the appointment!

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