Life and childhood can be viewed from a number of perspectives, but personally I like to see each child as part of a whole system within which they interact, learn, develop, adapt and exist. This is known as the Social Ecological Model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), where the individual is centred and surrounded by those closest to them (family and friends), those who they interact with sometimes (settings, schools, gp etc), and those whose decisions affect their lives (government, society). The diagram below shows how this works:
A huge part of a child's wellbeing is for this model to remain stable; and this is where attachment becomes vitally important. Bowlby (1907-1990) came up with the theory that having secure attachments to others is part of human survival, and that children need at least one secure attachment in order to feel safe and to enable the child to explore their environment, knowing there is someone to turn to when they are in need. When a child's housing is stable, it enables these relationships to remain stable, giving the child a chance to develop good, strong attachments to their caregivers and to developmentally thrive. Personally, I also think that children develop attachments to environments and possessions, as experience tells me that children struggle when their environment changes (and even more so for some children with autistic spectrum condition).
Therefore, the issue of moving house is actually quite a big thing. Not only is it important that a child feels safe with their attachment figure, but that they also feel safe when in a familiar context. Moving house can disrupt this attachment and cause the child to react in a number of ways. Coley and Kull (2016) designed a study to see how children's cognitive abilities were affected by moving house; their study actually found that although cognitive abilities were slightly affected, the main issues were emotional and behavioural. They suggested that having to establish new routines, new support systems within the immediate community and changes in family dynamics as a result of moving could have a negative impact on children's emotions, specifically because of the disruption to the child's attachments.
As humans, we go through a process of transition that we as adults can see and understand quite clearly if we look carefully at the following graph:
However, children who are too young to express their emotions fully, with limited vocabulary and an inability to understand the situation they are going through will take a lot longer to get through this process than those of us who have experience and understand what is happening. Now have a look at this image showing the cycle of grief, and see the similarities:
So, in effect, when a child moves house, not only are they going to struggle to maintain their strong attachments, but will also be going through a process of grieving for the previous environment. This is not to say the process is long and arduous for every child, as for some who are articulate and creative thinkers will whizz through this so quickly you barely notice they've been affected at all! But it is worth thinking about how to approach a transition such as this, in order to support the child through this process.
Linking this to my previous post about housing statistics, how renting is on the rise and those renting tend to move house more frequently than homeowners, this becomes a very important issue. During my study I will be carefully observing the attachments children have with their caregivers and I hope to gain a better understanding of what we (parents and practitioners) can actually do to avoid children dragging through the transition process, or remaining at the low point for too long. If they are likely to move house more frequently, they need to learn their own coping mechanisms which is the development of resilience - a subject for another day!
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Republished in 2006).
Coley, R. L., &
Kull, M. (2016). Cumulative, Timing-Specific, and Interactive Models of
Residential Mobility and Children’s Cognitive and Psychosocial Skills. Child
Development, 87(4), 1204–1220. http://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12535
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