I Grew up in a military family, my father was a marine for 28 years. We moved around constantly to new duty stations, I remember one duty station in Maryland when my father was in school and we only staid for 6 months, I was enrolled in school for 6 months. Other duty stations were anywhere from a year with the majority being three year duty stations. The changes for me a shy child were very hard to adjust to, it was a little better when we moved during the summer because that gave me time to make friends in the neighborhood and not be so "new" when school started back. But then there were the times when we would move to a new duty station during Christmas break.
I paint this picture to say that if I could conduct research it would be to study the effect on children of military parents and the effects of the constant moving of duty stations and the absence of parents and the effect that has on the child and the social emotional development and the relationship building capabilities of these children in the future.
I would hope that the positive contribution of this research would help families to learn what they could do in these types of situations to foster strong relationship building skills and support social emotional skills.
I enjoyed reading your post! I graduated from Fayetteville State University! As you know there is a military base in Fayetteville! Upon graduation I taught at a preschool where the families there were military families! I had new students ALL the time! It was heart breaking to see them come and go as they did! I feel this is a great topic to do research on, and that it is often over looked! Great topic!
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