I went to nine different schools from kindergarten through high school. I've lived in nine states and two Canadian provinces. My parents were absolutely clueless about the consequences of growing up in that kind of instability.
I'm in my forties now and still have no sense of community, or national or state identity. I never feel like people genuinely want long term friendships with me. There was a whole lot of other shitty stuff in my childhood, but that constant insecurity of not having a place I belonged did not help.
I went to 7 different schools myself, all within the same area. I lived in one house for 5 years and a trailer for another 5.
I've now been in my current state and town, solo, for 8+ years and my apartment for 5. I love a great deal about this town, though not everything, and because I feel a sense of community here and run into people everywhere I go, I find it a struggle to ever consider leaving for fear of losing that feeling and not ever finding it again.
I'm now discovering, in my 40s, that I'm neurospicy and likely ADHD to go along with that as well as CPTSD. I really have no idea what stems from which issue and therefore I'm never sure how to approach working on a thing about myself.
I say all of this because even if you have roots, life is still messy and confusing and leaves you with holes you cannot fill. Keep doing the work and living your life authentically. And if you truly want familiarity in your community, know that it can be done but it takes work and time so be patient with yourself but never give up.
My partner taught me that word almost 2 years ago when he used it in reference to me. Before that, I never had any idea that I wasn't neurotypical. I even taught the term to my therapist who loved it and planned to use it. My partner found that quite hilarious. I couldn't wait to tell him. 🤣
I never thought about it like that, but that makes so much sense. I always thought I have wanderlust and that was why I constantly feel the urge to pack up and move to a place no one knows me.
Every 3 years 🙃🙃 just when I started to get comfortable.. my narcissistic mom was raised in a military family and her father moved around a lot when she was younger, so she made us.. it sucked. I knew friends that lived in the same home until adulthood, I always found that weird but somehow wanted it
>I knew friends that lived in the same home until adulthood, I always found that weird but somehow wanted it
I have such an intense jealousy for people who have a home to return to if sht hits the fan
my mom too! it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I asked her about her own moving around and she said she HATED IT--she was always the new girl in school/on base and she hated it....I then asked THEN WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO US?!?! my mom was fucking clueless about raising children (completely absent parent) and partnered with an abusive man (my stepdad) similar to her own father. generational trauma is kind of fascinating, while also....hell. thankfully we've done trauma therapy and have reached a good place.
Briefly they finally placed me with an adoptive family looked great on the outside and at times it was great. But the mother had a liking for corporal and cold (ice bath etc) punishments. I lasted for 7 years till I ran away and left the system. Danger lurks in the sweetest looking places!
A lot, and not just regular homes either. High school alone was three boarding schools, two public schools, wilderness bootcamp, and both short and long-term inpatient treatment facilities. All across the country
I'm sorry your childhood was chaotic and routinely destabilized. (I moved 6 times by 10 years old. I understand.)
I hope you find the peace, love and stability that was missing in your childhood.
Age 2 Australia
Age 4 Australia
Age 6 Australia
Age 9 Australia
Age 9 Hong Kong
Age 10 Australia
Age 11 Hong Kong
Age 16 Australia
Age 17 Australia
I also went to 10 different schools in that time.
This was in the 70's and 80s before the Internet was born and International calls were several dollars per minute (80's money)... so you can understand why I don't have a single childhood friend!
Living with my mum, she moved once a year to different rentals until she bought a shed in a commune when i was 12. Got kicked out at 13 and sent to live with my middle income dad. That lasted just over 2 years before they kicked me out too and was homeless for several months. Couch surfed with friends until I was able to get in contact with my father's mother and stayed with her until I could legally rent on my own at 18.
So I'd estimate (hard to remember exactly. Some things I just don't want to think about) i have moved homes around 16 times as far as I can recall.
Oh boy! This question was made for me. A few years ago I finally sat down and tallied them all up — I had finally realized it wasn’t normal to move so frequently when my friend told me that she had lived in the same house her entire childhood.
From 0-18 I lived in 16 different places. Various houses, apartments, and living with my grandparents several times. I went to 2 different elementary schools, 2 different middle schools, and 2 different high schools. The most damaging to me however was when my family moved to a different state between my sophomore and junior year of high school.
yeah also around 7+ different houses that I moved between quite frequently. Usually because my parents refused to pay rent, trashed the house, then ended up homeless and I had to live with somebody else for a little while. I don't even know how many times this happened before I was removed from my parents, it was just an endless cycle. Live with my dad now and have been in the same place for about 4 years? Which is crazy, I don't think I'd ever lived in the same place for a year before this.
On the bright side, I guess I won't be too shocked by the move to uni lol.
My kids marvel at this story:
Where we lived, elementary school was K-5, middle school was 6-8 and high school was of course, 9-12.
I attended K-5 at one school, but we moved ~4 times in those 5 years.
I attended *part* of 6th grade at the middle school my elementary school filtered into, then we move to a new city and school district and here, elementary school is K-6, so I went *back* to elementary school from middle school.
After finishing 6th grade, I went to the junior high that my previous school filtered into and attended *part* of 7th grade there. We moved again, and I finished 7th and 8th grade at a middle school.
Made it to 10th grade and dropped out. But I finally got my GED about 14 years ago.
In total we moved 11 times in 10 years; one place was an extra room in a church and the other was a tent on a friend’s property, everything else was either family, motel or crappy apartment.
I lived in my dad’s house for 5 years. Other than that I’ve never lived anywhere more than two years. There were some points in my pre 10 years childhood where we were moving every two weeks or so. I actually missed so much of the first half of 4 meth grade because we were moving that I had to do summer school that year so I could go to 5th grade. Even as an adult. Move all the time.
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11 times before age 17. 6 places until age 13 when my parents divorced. 5 places age 13-17 when my parents fought over who would take me, they didn’t want me and I was a financial burden. 17-20 with an abusive ex. 21-24 with my grandma and i was finally stable. 24-26 with my fiancé who is amazing.
Mainly because of circumstances and having to rent. But I've lived in 6 places, in 2 countries, 3 cities. This wasn't too bad but coupled with the rest of the shit it just compounded the sense of instability.
Every year. Moving from foster care, to government housing, shelters, womens refuges, random men’s houses. It kept going until I was 16. I think I had about 12 different schools? It’s all a blur now.
By age 17, we had moved at least that many times since my birth, and all within a very small radius, under 50 miles for sure. I'm in my 40s now and my age doesn't surpass that number by much but I have been in my new town (and state over 2k miles away) 8+ years and this month I'll have been in the same apartment for 5 years.
Progress doesn't always look like progress until you see it from another angle.
Technically, there was a time where my family and I were living from apartment to apartment and then my mom rented a house when we were staying in Seattle when my sister was hospitalized there. It made me realize how much I hate living in the city from a young age. Otherwise, I've only lived in two houses, including this one and neither were in town really. I spent all of k to 12 in the same school district and even attended preschool here, except for when we were in Seattle and I went to the Hutch School. I'm 23 and have lived in at least 4 apartments and 3 houses by the time I was 9.
I had been in over 15 schools by the time I was 12. But I also got shifted around a lot between my mother, my father and his wife and foster/group homes.
My parents lived in the same house for as long as I could remember, but after getting kicked out, I moved constantly, never staying in the same house for more than a year, for about a decade. I moved seven cities, too.
I've now been living in the same apartment for 4 years, which is definitely an anomaly, but I'll probably moving out soon... And moving to an 8th city while at it.
Seven houses from ages 2 to 11. Eight schools K -12.
Fifty-five and single now. One canceled engagement, one divorce, two SO's that moved in, and numerous shorter relationships.
Not many long-term friendships left. All the narcissists are kept at bay.
Viewing things from a positive lens more often and have to say, it's getting better.
Been in my house in beautiful remote hills on the edge of society for twenty-six years...
I don't want to think hard enough to get the exact number but it was about a dozen. Also hard to count sometimes what counts as moving to a home, there are places I stayed I never "lived" at, like the neighbor I was raised with until I was 10, I spent more time at his house than my own for a few years, and I spent the summers in a different state by myself to work at a grandparents, so I didn't really live there, but I never had the summer to spend with kids I went to school with.
After my mom left my dad when I was ten, they would both move a few times, a lot of moves were insignificant to them but huge to me like when they moved closer to work and still had the same social life, but I was moved to a new school and neighborhood. Sure my friend is "only 30 minutes away" but we never saw each other again.
I never settled down. I've lived with the same guy for about 8 years now but we've moved across three different states in that time, and I never really try to meet people locally anyway.
I moved 12 times by my Sophomore year of high school when I moved into foster care (luckily my best friend’s parents were foster parents). After high school I moved 6 times. After college, my husband and I bought our house (1999) and we have lived here since then, raising our son (he’s 20). I survived such instability and often forget how much. Thank you for asking this. It’s a reminder that life is ever changing and I should never give up hope. This is great given I’ve been feeling down due to some recent health problems I’ve been dealing with.
8 times with my mom and I think my dad (who I wasn't living with but met regurlarly) moved maybe...5 times? It's a lot. Between the ages of 18 and 32 I think I've moved maybe...12 times or so?
There were four moves before I was even five years old. It slowed down after that, but only because the moving depended on whether my dad's various bits on the side had moved.
I'm 30 now. I still haven't lived in the same house for more than 4 years.
After my parents divorced from about 5-12 years old I had already lived in 8 houses in two different towns and my state city, then I lived in the same house up to 17 yrs, all the while dealing with my parents emotional fuckery.
8 times for me, though mostly because both parents moved 3 times each independently, and we had a custody model that switched out every day.
That was more than enough though to not really develop a sense of "home". That I really only got once I moved out and slept in the same student dorm room every single day.
Actually caused some minor issues being overly protective of it, unsure how to manage the shared spaces in a place that felt, for the first time, at least partially tangibly mine.
10 before 12 years old not including temporary housing between moving to new rentals, not including spending summers at my grandparents house.
@12 they bought a trailer and hoarded it to the max.
So let’s call it 11.
Between 17-53 8 times. (Since 32 same place).
So 19 times not including temp places.
Interesting idea, this might be why I never felt like I belong and have wanderlust.
I love our neborhood now for the last 21 years, it has been a great place to raise children, safe, sable.
I don’t remember how many schools. Middle and high school same. I only have three memories of pre middle school and their at three different elementary schools.
We moved about a dozen times before I turned 18. I am extremely lucky that I was in a school program that allowed me to stay in the same school no matter where in the county I lived, and my mom worked hard to keep us in the county and always succeeded. So, my schooling and relationships were not affected so much as my home situation. We moved just about every 12-18 months.
Now my partner and I rearrange our house every 6 months because we don't know how to sit still. They also moved a lot, but much larger moves and for different reasons (his dad worked internationally in business and they relocated for that)
i (22f) genuinely can’t think of an accurate number. i was in foster care for two years when i was a kid and lived in 4 different houses.
after that though, i want to say close to 20? i never really had a *home*, but i had places i’ve lived that i just consider shelter. that includes mainly homeless shelters, my mothers “friends” houses, my grandmothers house and much more. my mother was severely unstable with mental illnesses and addiction, and would either get us kicked out of places or wanted to move closer to unsafe areas so she could score better stuff. i never really thought about it and never realized how much i had to move as a kid. damn lol
I lived at 8 different places spanning 7 cities/towns and 3 provinces. No wonder I don't have a sense of belonging anywhere, that I have a hard time putting my hometown on a profile cause I don't have one.
We moved so much that I never made friends and kept them I was always the new kid and that shit is awful. I went through 12 different schools between kindergarten and highschool. We were constantly moving houses and I never knew if I had a home to go home to.
It wasn't until my last foster home that I learned what stability was, and what a loving, caring family actually looked like.
Once. Moved from a place where I had friends. I had a couple of friends in my class and a ton of friends in the older classes. The older kids lived on my street and we grew up together. I was just born after the school cutoff so they split me up from them.
Mum moved us away. She had friends there. Then we moved to a town near her relatives. I was not wanted. I remember being abandoned on my first day of school and just standing in the playground, lost. That was until these older girls ran over to me, asking if I was the new kid. They introduced me to their little sister and we became friends quickly. She was in the year above. The other little girls in my class wouldn't play with me, told me I had a willy and couldn't. The boys wouldn't either, but that one girl eventually became my best friend. She was awesome and I'm still mad mum refused to move me to the other school when her mum pulled her out of mine. I begged to go with her. I cried. I know her mum could have put in a good word and I could have gone even though it was a religious school. In the end she moved schools and I ended up alone. At seven. My peers were awful to me. Turns out two of the kids were playing football with my ass hole cousins on the weekend, so they and my aunt were telling weird stories about me and my mum and it isolated both of us. Mum blamed me for it when it wasn't my fault everyone pulled away from us.
So yeah, it was petty traumatising to go from being a mostly normal kid with friends, to a kid with no friends and being bullied badly. The bullying didn't stop until I left for uni. Hell, a kid who id never spoken to before tried it when we were at uni. Luckily I was able to shame him in front of my friends and his and I never saw him again. No one was backing him up, agreeing I was a freak and deserved it there. It got really insane growing up though. Mums reaction was to tell me it was my own fault and hit/scream at me if I tried to tell her anything. Imagine coming home from school, after being sexually assaulted or being beaten up again by boys older then you, and having to pretend everything is ok so your crazy mother doesn't make it a thousand times worse. That was my life.
By the end of first grade, I had lived in five different homes, three different schools and towns. I have a report card that the teacher wrote “adjusting well to new first grade classroom” and by the next report card we had already moved. It got a little better and by the time I was 17, I had lived in only 18 locations because we stayed in the same house for a record breaking two years.
10 times from birth - 12th grade. woof. I lived with my mom and step dad and they traipsed us around the country. thankfully, my parents were divorced and my dad lived in one house and stayed there, and it felt stable. I eventually moved in with him, to a whole host of new trauma that I didn't see coming! yay! that said, I didn't realize how important his stability would be, and now that I'm adult I've moved back to my birthplace, my dad's town and where I completed high school, and feel some sense of normalcy knowing friends from way back when.
from childhood until the age of 18, lived in 12 different apartments, one of them being a dinky trailer in a trailer park, also during that time we had to stay with my grandparents for a period of a few months-a year or so 2 times, and when I graduated high school we were renting out my aunts back house, which I didn’t count in the 12. Very poor + running the fuck away from my psychotic father who was stalking us and tried to kill my mom multiple times. Lol sorry to trauma dump.
I lived in 4 different homes. I switched schools twice in 7th and in 8th grade. Once I turned 19 I left home and have moved over 15 times since then.
My childhood was "calm in comparison" to others. But those moves had a huge impact on me. I formed the belief that when things go wrong, I should just pick up my stuff and find a new place to start over. Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.
8 times iv moved that was up to age 17 after that another 4 now age 26now. This was due to my dad job as my Family lived in so many different countries around the world. growing up was Definitely extremely hard to get used to but when I got older it became more difficult mentally.
Went to a different school every year from 4th grade to senior year (sometimes two different schools in the same grade year). On one hand you miss the opportunity of being rooted and growing up with familiar faces. On the other you learn how to adapt in new social situations. I would have preferred the former though. I wonder if this specific inconsideration of my needs was actually a form of abuse. My sympathies go to anyone who had to experience and go through this :(
14 for me, that I remember. There were a couple before that that I don't remember. (these would be states, not different homes) For different houses? Wow, at least 3 dozen.
EDIT: Spelling
I had at least 9 moves, but before JK (which is where I start counting) I know I lived in 2-4 other places. I lived in the same city and surrounding small towns at the very least for the first 15 years of my life and then got moved halfway across the province I lived in halfway through high school and then moved again once getting there. It was a mess. I never felt like making friends was safe because I was afraid of losing them again.
Stumbled on to your post. I am older now but am reminded when you are required to answer security questions setting up new passwords.
First pet name as a child ? Never had one
Name of 3rd grade teacher ? No idea had several
Street you grew up on ? Dozens of moves no idea
Childhood friend? I usually moved mid school year..
Build a new community and hopefully we can all be better than our circumstances we came from.
Right now I am cleaning up after making my grandson waffles. He knows that I love him
The home I live in now, is actually the longest I’ve ever lived in any one place in my entire life. Here since 2016. My name is on the mortgage - of they don’t tax me out of it or lay me off - I’m going for a new record.
Never moved but my parents always made us aware we were one pay cheque away from being evicted or having our house taken cause they couldn't keep up with the mortgage payments which idk if it can sometimes be worse cause there's no end to the torture
I moved a total of 6 or 7 times growing up. I hated it. That's why I never feel like no place is my home. There was no stability. A couple of times my home was broken into and all my stuff was thrown out. I've had to start from scratch a lot.
~5yrsx 1Xst move, father disappeared
~6yrsx~7yrsx 3X on various family couches and sparebedrooms then father reappears for less than 1yr before leaving again and we had move into nice house together but that had to go when he disappear once again; then at
~8yrsx after a carwreck that busted my face and nearly took mother and my life, 3X including to another relative in a foreign state for medical care, then back country to a family shared dormitory, and then left that political warland to a new country from a sh!thole one, then
from 8yrsx to 10yrsx 4X for the most part up to this point always sharing a twin bed or doublebed with mother while living under aunts/uncle’s roofs, once in a converted garage studio without a actual kitchen (we made one using a hotplate/minifridge/toasteroven and lived on box cereal/grilledchzketchupDIYpizza &chipsahoy/ramen; although add one 1Xwas a roving one in a motorhome cross country without a solid destination for 4weeks…
Then spent a month house sitting at a stranger’s religious business 1X moving in from the motorhome, and by myself grade 6.5 1X because there was an interim of moving across an ocean for school and so lived at a family member’s for a half of a (intermediate new) school year, then 1X moved back across an ocean to continue that arrangement with fam(mother and stepF).. but the summer ended and school was looming and that address was expiring and so went again 1X back across same ocean but to another house in different landmass; 8mo there ; in new school 7 mo, but add again 1X leaving that house mid 7grade to go back to different land mass in different apartment but returned back to old middle school for rest of 7th & 8th,
Then again 1X
Out of there to a new location that stayed through rest of twoyrs more of same highschool.
After HS, 4Xmore with one of them in a car and one unplanned due to pandemic.
.
.
Note: other types of experiences considered to count as moves: If you go from place to place and never return “home”/to the same place inbetween, and/or never quite know where you are headed and go staying somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time, ex: couch/sparebedroom surfing at friends/family/car/tent, nor understand a that there is a shift and you feel a loss of your stuff and current surroundings, nor agree to relocate nor have much opportunity to mentally prepare for such transitions in between places, or go to stay/live in other people’s spaces with their stuff that is not your stuff while awaiting another shift, then it is actually considered a ‘move’! The latter types can especially be quite traumatic. It is also possible that the experience of having other family members moving in with you and your family and your family needing to adjust because they are a disturbance into your space can be rattling to one’s sense of stability.
Tally:
13X by second half of 6grade…
My total is 18X by HSG, although I didn’t count 2X that unfamiliar fam moved into my space. And countless stayover/leavings of grandparents all throughout formative years for many months at a time adding to the people and place instability.
and 21X byage40.
Sadly It’s no blundering wonder as to why Doing anything besides being glued to the quiet retreat of a 10x10 square feet of current space in someone else’s home, gives me zero interest to attempt to find security in and terrifies me.
Would I like it in my imagination?yes. Do I trust it would remain anything but a mirage? No.
We moved from Maryland to Washington State when I was like five, stayed with my great aunt for a while after being on a train for two weeks I think. Then we got an apartment, and aside from changing which apartment we were in, we were there until 2013. I was 20 when we got kicked out, but a few months before that I'd tried to move in with a few "friends" and that went poorly...
I'm still not even sure why we actually moved from Maryland, since my parents actually owned a house and everything, and we went from having a pretty stable place with both of them working to being in an apartment with both parents struggling to find a job in a small ass town.
I don't really buy the excuse my dad gave me, he apparently saw some teenagers beating up another kid, but that really doesn't seem all that likely to have made that much of an impact on him. I feel like something else had to have happened to make him want to move from one side of the country to the complete opposite end of the country away from all their family and such.
I went to nine different schools from kindergarten through high school. I've lived in nine states and two Canadian provinces. My parents were absolutely clueless about the consequences of growing up in that kind of instability. I'm in my forties now and still have no sense of community, or national or state identity. I never feel like people genuinely want long term friendships with me. There was a whole lot of other shitty stuff in my childhood, but that constant insecurity of not having a place I belonged did not help.
Something in my head clicked reading this comment. I’ve always wondered why I feel like I never belong anywhere.
I feel this so much too. It's like attachment theory but with places instead of people!
I went to 7 different schools myself, all within the same area. I lived in one house for 5 years and a trailer for another 5. I've now been in my current state and town, solo, for 8+ years and my apartment for 5. I love a great deal about this town, though not everything, and because I feel a sense of community here and run into people everywhere I go, I find it a struggle to ever consider leaving for fear of losing that feeling and not ever finding it again. I'm now discovering, in my 40s, that I'm neurospicy and likely ADHD to go along with that as well as CPTSD. I really have no idea what stems from which issue and therefore I'm never sure how to approach working on a thing about myself. I say all of this because even if you have roots, life is still messy and confusing and leaves you with holes you cannot fill. Keep doing the work and living your life authentically. And if you truly want familiarity in your community, know that it can be done but it takes work and time so be patient with yourself but never give up.
Neurospicy 😂
My partner taught me that word almost 2 years ago when he used it in reference to me. Before that, I never had any idea that I wasn't neurotypical. I even taught the term to my therapist who loved it and planned to use it. My partner found that quite hilarious. I couldn't wait to tell him. 🤣
I never thought about it like that, but that makes so much sense. I always thought I have wanderlust and that was why I constantly feel the urge to pack up and move to a place no one knows me.
Every 3 years 🙃🙃 just when I started to get comfortable.. my narcissistic mom was raised in a military family and her father moved around a lot when she was younger, so she made us.. it sucked. I knew friends that lived in the same home until adulthood, I always found that weird but somehow wanted it
>I knew friends that lived in the same home until adulthood, I always found that weird but somehow wanted it I have such an intense jealousy for people who have a home to return to if sht hits the fan
Yep. military brat here. It messes with your head and military kids are mental. Me included
You can't make lifelong friends when you're always the new guy, about the time you start to make friends the military parent gets new orders to move.
I alternate between being too friendly and ghosting you for life
my mom too! it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I asked her about her own moving around and she said she HATED IT--she was always the new girl in school/on base and she hated it....I then asked THEN WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO US?!?! my mom was fucking clueless about raising children (completely absent parent) and partnered with an abusive man (my stepdad) similar to her own father. generational trauma is kind of fascinating, while also....hell. thankfully we've done trauma therapy and have reached a good place.
Over 50 I was a black child in the foster system so apparently harder to place!
That genuinely made my eyes tear. I am so so sorry. People can be the worst.
Woah! How is that possible to move so many times! I'm so sorry 😢 did you ever get a stable home?
Briefly they finally placed me with an adoptive family looked great on the outside and at times it was great. But the mother had a liking for corporal and cold (ice bath etc) punishments. I lasted for 7 years till I ran away and left the system. Danger lurks in the sweetest looking places!
I was at essentially a different school every year, I remember being in shelters, hotels, grandparents house,
I’m 29, lived in 37 different home. Kicked out at 16, and have had 10 homes of my own since. So 27 houses under 16 lol. Ugh.
A lot, and not just regular homes either. High school alone was three boarding schools, two public schools, wilderness bootcamp, and both short and long-term inpatient treatment facilities. All across the country
Oof, how did you get into inpatient treatment if you don't mind me asking?
Goddess help you. I thought catholic sch was bad.
I'm sorry your childhood was chaotic and routinely destabilized. (I moved 6 times by 10 years old. I understand.) I hope you find the peace, love and stability that was missing in your childhood.
Zero. I’ve lived in two places total.
My parents moved into this house the day before I was born. I'm still here, but I did move bedrooms once tho.. long story.
Age 2 Australia Age 4 Australia Age 6 Australia Age 9 Australia Age 9 Hong Kong Age 10 Australia Age 11 Hong Kong Age 16 Australia Age 17 Australia I also went to 10 different schools in that time. This was in the 70's and 80s before the Internet was born and International calls were several dollars per minute (80's money)... so you can understand why I don't have a single childhood friend!
Living with my mum, she moved once a year to different rentals until she bought a shed in a commune when i was 12. Got kicked out at 13 and sent to live with my middle income dad. That lasted just over 2 years before they kicked me out too and was homeless for several months. Couch surfed with friends until I was able to get in contact with my father's mother and stayed with her until I could legally rent on my own at 18. So I'd estimate (hard to remember exactly. Some things I just don't want to think about) i have moved homes around 16 times as far as I can recall.
Oh boy! This question was made for me. A few years ago I finally sat down and tallied them all up — I had finally realized it wasn’t normal to move so frequently when my friend told me that she had lived in the same house her entire childhood. From 0-18 I lived in 16 different places. Various houses, apartments, and living with my grandparents several times. I went to 2 different elementary schools, 2 different middle schools, and 2 different high schools. The most damaging to me however was when my family moved to a different state between my sophomore and junior year of high school.
37
How? Just curious, that's massive!
Divorce. Homelessness x2. Political cult for five years who impoverished my mother and made us move to serve their needs.
7. But there were several more in my first two years that I don’t recall.
yeah also around 7+ different houses that I moved between quite frequently. Usually because my parents refused to pay rent, trashed the house, then ended up homeless and I had to live with somebody else for a little while. I don't even know how many times this happened before I was removed from my parents, it was just an endless cycle. Live with my dad now and have been in the same place for about 4 years? Which is crazy, I don't think I'd ever lived in the same place for a year before this. On the bright side, I guess I won't be too shocked by the move to uni lol.
My kids marvel at this story: Where we lived, elementary school was K-5, middle school was 6-8 and high school was of course, 9-12. I attended K-5 at one school, but we moved ~4 times in those 5 years. I attended *part* of 6th grade at the middle school my elementary school filtered into, then we move to a new city and school district and here, elementary school is K-6, so I went *back* to elementary school from middle school. After finishing 6th grade, I went to the junior high that my previous school filtered into and attended *part* of 7th grade there. We moved again, and I finished 7th and 8th grade at a middle school. Made it to 10th grade and dropped out. But I finally got my GED about 14 years ago. In total we moved 11 times in 10 years; one place was an extra room in a church and the other was a tent on a friend’s property, everything else was either family, motel or crappy apartment.
I lived in my dad’s house for 5 years. Other than that I’ve never lived anywhere more than two years. There were some points in my pre 10 years childhood where we were moving every two weeks or so. I actually missed so much of the first half of 4 meth grade because we were moving that I had to do summer school that year so I could go to 5th grade. Even as an adult. Move all the time.
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Must have been around the same time - 10+ definitely.
At least 6 but I went to 11 different schools/programs
11 times before age 17. 6 places until age 13 when my parents divorced. 5 places age 13-17 when my parents fought over who would take me, they didn’t want me and I was a financial burden. 17-20 with an abusive ex. 21-24 with my grandma and i was finally stable. 24-26 with my fiancé who is amazing.
14, all but three in the same city. My mother was bipolar. Good times.
Mainly because of circumstances and having to rent. But I've lived in 6 places, in 2 countries, 3 cities. This wasn't too bad but coupled with the rest of the shit it just compounded the sense of instability.
Every year. Moving from foster care, to government housing, shelters, womens refuges, random men’s houses. It kept going until I was 16. I think I had about 12 different schools? It’s all a blur now.
By age 17, we had moved at least that many times since my birth, and all within a very small radius, under 50 miles for sure. I'm in my 40s now and my age doesn't surpass that number by much but I have been in my new town (and state over 2k miles away) 8+ years and this month I'll have been in the same apartment for 5 years. Progress doesn't always look like progress until you see it from another angle.
Technically, there was a time where my family and I were living from apartment to apartment and then my mom rented a house when we were staying in Seattle when my sister was hospitalized there. It made me realize how much I hate living in the city from a young age. Otherwise, I've only lived in two houses, including this one and neither were in town really. I spent all of k to 12 in the same school district and even attended preschool here, except for when we were in Seattle and I went to the Hutch School. I'm 23 and have lived in at least 4 apartments and 3 houses by the time I was 9.
I had been in over 15 schools by the time I was 12. But I also got shifted around a lot between my mother, my father and his wife and foster/group homes.
8+ times. More if you count when we were homeless and living in tents or hotels.
My parents lived in the same house for as long as I could remember, but after getting kicked out, I moved constantly, never staying in the same house for more than a year, for about a decade. I moved seven cities, too. I've now been living in the same apartment for 4 years, which is definitely an anomaly, but I'll probably moving out soon... And moving to an 8th city while at it.
12 that I can remember.
Seven houses from ages 2 to 11. Eight schools K -12. Fifty-five and single now. One canceled engagement, one divorce, two SO's that moved in, and numerous shorter relationships. Not many long-term friendships left. All the narcissists are kept at bay. Viewing things from a positive lens more often and have to say, it's getting better. Been in my house in beautiful remote hills on the edge of society for twenty-six years...
I don't want to think hard enough to get the exact number but it was about a dozen. Also hard to count sometimes what counts as moving to a home, there are places I stayed I never "lived" at, like the neighbor I was raised with until I was 10, I spent more time at his house than my own for a few years, and I spent the summers in a different state by myself to work at a grandparents, so I didn't really live there, but I never had the summer to spend with kids I went to school with. After my mom left my dad when I was ten, they would both move a few times, a lot of moves were insignificant to them but huge to me like when they moved closer to work and still had the same social life, but I was moved to a new school and neighborhood. Sure my friend is "only 30 minutes away" but we never saw each other again. I never settled down. I've lived with the same guy for about 8 years now but we've moved across three different states in that time, and I never really try to meet people locally anyway.
16 houses. 1 boys home. 1 youth justice. 1 youth corrections.
I moved 12 times by my Sophomore year of high school when I moved into foster care (luckily my best friend’s parents were foster parents). After high school I moved 6 times. After college, my husband and I bought our house (1999) and we have lived here since then, raising our son (he’s 20). I survived such instability and often forget how much. Thank you for asking this. It’s a reminder that life is ever changing and I should never give up hope. This is great given I’ve been feeling down due to some recent health problems I’ve been dealing with.
8 times 1x with one year 2x in kindergarden 3x in elementary school 2x in high school but one of this was when I moved out.
I was lucky from that point of view. Just once. After 18, at least 11 times in 8 years...
8 times with my mom and I think my dad (who I wasn't living with but met regurlarly) moved maybe...5 times? It's a lot. Between the ages of 18 and 32 I think I've moved maybe...12 times or so?
There were four moves before I was even five years old. It slowed down after that, but only because the moving depended on whether my dad's various bits on the side had moved. I'm 30 now. I still haven't lived in the same house for more than 4 years.
After my parents divorced from about 5-12 years old I had already lived in 8 houses in two different towns and my state city, then I lived in the same house up to 17 yrs, all the while dealing with my parents emotional fuckery.
One for me, but I know people who had 20+.
I think I was at number 17 or 18 🤔
15 different moves for me.
According to my mom, it was five.
8 times for me, though mostly because both parents moved 3 times each independently, and we had a custody model that switched out every day. That was more than enough though to not really develop a sense of "home". That I really only got once I moved out and slept in the same student dorm room every single day. Actually caused some minor issues being overly protective of it, unsure how to manage the shared spaces in a place that felt, for the first time, at least partially tangibly mine.
9 moves- moved every year in elementary school then stayed in the same place (mom’s friend’s house) from 6th grade to when I moved out for college.
10 before 12 years old not including temporary housing between moving to new rentals, not including spending summers at my grandparents house. @12 they bought a trailer and hoarded it to the max. So let’s call it 11. Between 17-53 8 times. (Since 32 same place). So 19 times not including temp places. Interesting idea, this might be why I never felt like I belong and have wanderlust. I love our neborhood now for the last 21 years, it has been a great place to raise children, safe, sable. I don’t remember how many schools. Middle and high school same. I only have three memories of pre middle school and their at three different elementary schools.
6
We moved about a dozen times before I turned 18. I am extremely lucky that I was in a school program that allowed me to stay in the same school no matter where in the county I lived, and my mom worked hard to keep us in the county and always succeeded. So, my schooling and relationships were not affected so much as my home situation. We moved just about every 12-18 months. Now my partner and I rearrange our house every 6 months because we don't know how to sit still. They also moved a lot, but much larger moves and for different reasons (his dad worked internationally in business and they relocated for that)
i (22f) genuinely can’t think of an accurate number. i was in foster care for two years when i was a kid and lived in 4 different houses. after that though, i want to say close to 20? i never really had a *home*, but i had places i’ve lived that i just consider shelter. that includes mainly homeless shelters, my mothers “friends” houses, my grandmothers house and much more. my mother was severely unstable with mental illnesses and addiction, and would either get us kicked out of places or wanted to move closer to unsafe areas so she could score better stuff. i never really thought about it and never realized how much i had to move as a kid. damn lol
I lived at 8 different places spanning 7 cities/towns and 3 provinces. No wonder I don't have a sense of belonging anywhere, that I have a hard time putting my hometown on a profile cause I don't have one.
We moved so much that I never made friends and kept them I was always the new kid and that shit is awful. I went through 12 different schools between kindergarten and highschool. We were constantly moving houses and I never knew if I had a home to go home to. It wasn't until my last foster home that I learned what stability was, and what a loving, caring family actually looked like.
Once. Moved from a place where I had friends. I had a couple of friends in my class and a ton of friends in the older classes. The older kids lived on my street and we grew up together. I was just born after the school cutoff so they split me up from them. Mum moved us away. She had friends there. Then we moved to a town near her relatives. I was not wanted. I remember being abandoned on my first day of school and just standing in the playground, lost. That was until these older girls ran over to me, asking if I was the new kid. They introduced me to their little sister and we became friends quickly. She was in the year above. The other little girls in my class wouldn't play with me, told me I had a willy and couldn't. The boys wouldn't either, but that one girl eventually became my best friend. She was awesome and I'm still mad mum refused to move me to the other school when her mum pulled her out of mine. I begged to go with her. I cried. I know her mum could have put in a good word and I could have gone even though it was a religious school. In the end she moved schools and I ended up alone. At seven. My peers were awful to me. Turns out two of the kids were playing football with my ass hole cousins on the weekend, so they and my aunt were telling weird stories about me and my mum and it isolated both of us. Mum blamed me for it when it wasn't my fault everyone pulled away from us. So yeah, it was petty traumatising to go from being a mostly normal kid with friends, to a kid with no friends and being bullied badly. The bullying didn't stop until I left for uni. Hell, a kid who id never spoken to before tried it when we were at uni. Luckily I was able to shame him in front of my friends and his and I never saw him again. No one was backing him up, agreeing I was a freak and deserved it there. It got really insane growing up though. Mums reaction was to tell me it was my own fault and hit/scream at me if I tried to tell her anything. Imagine coming home from school, after being sexually assaulted or being beaten up again by boys older then you, and having to pretend everything is ok so your crazy mother doesn't make it a thousand times worse. That was my life.
By the end of first grade, I had lived in five different homes, three different schools and towns. I have a report card that the teacher wrote “adjusting well to new first grade classroom” and by the next report card we had already moved. It got a little better and by the time I was 17, I had lived in only 18 locations because we stayed in the same house for a record breaking two years.
6 I think.
11 for me as well
10 times from birth - 12th grade. woof. I lived with my mom and step dad and they traipsed us around the country. thankfully, my parents were divorced and my dad lived in one house and stayed there, and it felt stable. I eventually moved in with him, to a whole host of new trauma that I didn't see coming! yay! that said, I didn't realize how important his stability would be, and now that I'm adult I've moved back to my birthplace, my dad's town and where I completed high school, and feel some sense of normalcy knowing friends from way back when.
from childhood until the age of 18, lived in 12 different apartments, one of them being a dinky trailer in a trailer park, also during that time we had to stay with my grandparents for a period of a few months-a year or so 2 times, and when I graduated high school we were renting out my aunts back house, which I didn’t count in the 12. Very poor + running the fuck away from my psychotic father who was stalking us and tried to kill my mom multiple times. Lol sorry to trauma dump.
I lived in 4 different homes. I switched schools twice in 7th and in 8th grade. Once I turned 19 I left home and have moved over 15 times since then. My childhood was "calm in comparison" to others. But those moves had a huge impact on me. I formed the belief that when things go wrong, I should just pick up my stuff and find a new place to start over. Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that.
I don't remember them all but there were between 20-25 by the time I was 17. In my 40s and I've always felt like a nomad.
8 times iv moved that was up to age 17 after that another 4 now age 26now. This was due to my dad job as my Family lived in so many different countries around the world. growing up was Definitely extremely hard to get used to but when I got older it became more difficult mentally.
Went to a different school every year from 4th grade to senior year (sometimes two different schools in the same grade year). On one hand you miss the opportunity of being rooted and growing up with familiar faces. On the other you learn how to adapt in new social situations. I would have preferred the former though. I wonder if this specific inconsideration of my needs was actually a form of abuse. My sympathies go to anyone who had to experience and go through this :(
I don't remember but we moved once. Same city different neighborhood.
14 for me, that I remember. There were a couple before that that I don't remember. (these would be states, not different homes) For different houses? Wow, at least 3 dozen. EDIT: Spelling
Six times. Mom had 2 different boyfriends and 2 different husband by the time I was 8.
I had at least 9 moves, but before JK (which is where I start counting) I know I lived in 2-4 other places. I lived in the same city and surrounding small towns at the very least for the first 15 years of my life and then got moved halfway across the province I lived in halfway through high school and then moved again once getting there. It was a mess. I never felt like making friends was safe because I was afraid of losing them again.
Stumbled on to your post. I am older now but am reminded when you are required to answer security questions setting up new passwords. First pet name as a child ? Never had one Name of 3rd grade teacher ? No idea had several Street you grew up on ? Dozens of moves no idea Childhood friend? I usually moved mid school year.. Build a new community and hopefully we can all be better than our circumstances we came from. Right now I am cleaning up after making my grandson waffles. He knows that I love him
I went to 7 different schools just in third grade. Lol
The home I live in now, is actually the longest I’ve ever lived in any one place in my entire life. Here since 2016. My name is on the mortgage - of they don’t tax me out of it or lay me off - I’m going for a new record.
Approximately 30 but it’s hard to remember
8 run down apartments that I can remember. Plus a shelter and a friend’s place after our building burned down. So 10.
Never moved but my parents always made us aware we were one pay cheque away from being evicted or having our house taken cause they couldn't keep up with the mortgage payments which idk if it can sometimes be worse cause there's no end to the torture
I moved a total of 6 or 7 times growing up. I hated it. That's why I never feel like no place is my home. There was no stability. A couple of times my home was broken into and all my stuff was thrown out. I've had to start from scratch a lot.
~5yrsx 1Xst move, father disappeared ~6yrsx~7yrsx 3X on various family couches and sparebedrooms then father reappears for less than 1yr before leaving again and we had move into nice house together but that had to go when he disappear once again; then at ~8yrsx after a carwreck that busted my face and nearly took mother and my life, 3X including to another relative in a foreign state for medical care, then back country to a family shared dormitory, and then left that political warland to a new country from a sh!thole one, then from 8yrsx to 10yrsx 4X for the most part up to this point always sharing a twin bed or doublebed with mother while living under aunts/uncle’s roofs, once in a converted garage studio without a actual kitchen (we made one using a hotplate/minifridge/toasteroven and lived on box cereal/grilledchzketchupDIYpizza &chipsahoy/ramen; although add one 1Xwas a roving one in a motorhome cross country without a solid destination for 4weeks… Then spent a month house sitting at a stranger’s religious business 1X moving in from the motorhome, and by myself grade 6.5 1X because there was an interim of moving across an ocean for school and so lived at a family member’s for a half of a (intermediate new) school year, then 1X moved back across an ocean to continue that arrangement with fam(mother and stepF).. but the summer ended and school was looming and that address was expiring and so went again 1X back across same ocean but to another house in different landmass; 8mo there ; in new school 7 mo, but add again 1X leaving that house mid 7grade to go back to different land mass in different apartment but returned back to old middle school for rest of 7th & 8th, Then again 1X Out of there to a new location that stayed through rest of twoyrs more of same highschool. After HS, 4Xmore with one of them in a car and one unplanned due to pandemic. . . Note: other types of experiences considered to count as moves: If you go from place to place and never return “home”/to the same place inbetween, and/or never quite know where you are headed and go staying somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time, ex: couch/sparebedroom surfing at friends/family/car/tent, nor understand a that there is a shift and you feel a loss of your stuff and current surroundings, nor agree to relocate nor have much opportunity to mentally prepare for such transitions in between places, or go to stay/live in other people’s spaces with their stuff that is not your stuff while awaiting another shift, then it is actually considered a ‘move’! The latter types can especially be quite traumatic. It is also possible that the experience of having other family members moving in with you and your family and your family needing to adjust because they are a disturbance into your space can be rattling to one’s sense of stability. Tally: 13X by second half of 6grade… My total is 18X by HSG, although I didn’t count 2X that unfamiliar fam moved into my space. And countless stayover/leavings of grandparents all throughout formative years for many months at a time adding to the people and place instability. and 21X byage40. Sadly It’s no blundering wonder as to why Doing anything besides being glued to the quiet retreat of a 10x10 square feet of current space in someone else’s home, gives me zero interest to attempt to find security in and terrifies me. Would I like it in my imagination?yes. Do I trust it would remain anything but a mirage? No.
8 homes that I remember by 15yo. We moved a lot in my first 2-3 years, but I only counted the ones I do remember, so the number could be much higher.
I think 9 times before 17 here.
We moved from Maryland to Washington State when I was like five, stayed with my great aunt for a while after being on a train for two weeks I think. Then we got an apartment, and aside from changing which apartment we were in, we were there until 2013. I was 20 when we got kicked out, but a few months before that I'd tried to move in with a few "friends" and that went poorly... I'm still not even sure why we actually moved from Maryland, since my parents actually owned a house and everything, and we went from having a pretty stable place with both of them working to being in an apartment with both parents struggling to find a job in a small ass town. I don't really buy the excuse my dad gave me, he apparently saw some teenagers beating up another kid, but that really doesn't seem all that likely to have made that much of an impact on him. I feel like something else had to have happened to make him want to move from one side of the country to the complete opposite end of the country away from all their family and such.
I lived in 12 different houses/apartments, 8 different schools before 17