FORT MOORE, Ga. (WRBL) — Moving can be a challenge for any family, however military moves come with unique stressors.
According to Fort Moore’s Army Community Service (ACS) Community Support Office representative Yoselin Doyle, military moves can happen any time, although most occur during summer. May through September is widely known as “PCS Season” within the military community.
“‘PCSing’ means that the Soldier has received orders to report to a new duty station for a longer-term assignment, generally two to three years,” said Doyle, explaining the initialism stands for “permanent change of station.”
Military OneSource, an official Department of Defense website which provides military families with information about PCSing, states over 400,000 soldiers PCS every year.
According to a 2014 research paper, the average military child will move anywhere from six to nine times between kindergarten and high school graduation. The study notes this is three times more than civilian children move during the same timeframe.
“It’s a two-sided coin: One is constant loss … [the other side is,] over time, that gives you a depth and breadth of life that a lot of younger people don’t get to have,” said Thomas Waynick, CEO and executive director at Columbus’ Pastoral Institute.
Before coming to the Pastoral Institute, Waynick served as a U.S. Army chaplain for 35 years. From 2014 to 2019, Waynick ran Fort Moore’s – at that time Fort Benning – Family Life Counselling Center, where he worked closely with research addressing the challenges of PCSing for children and families.
“I think, overall, military children learn to be much more resilient, but of course it comes at the cost of grief,” Waynick, who was raised in a military family, said.
The mental health professional acknowledged potential positives of military moves, including the ability to travel and exposure to many different opportunities. He noted the lifestyle can be particularly difficult for children, who never signed up for the life of a military family.
“For the military member, they know that they raised their right hand knowing that this is the way life’s gonna be,” Waynick said. He continued, “The child didn’t raise their right hand and say, you know, ‘I want to live this type of life.’”
Waynick’s sentiments were affirmed by Doyle who said, “The uprooting of your life, bidding farewell to friends, and managing relocation logistics can be an incredibly overwhelming requirement of a military lifestyle.”
At Fort Moore, the Reichlin family loaded a moving truck parked outside their McGraw Village home.
Sgt. 1st Class Daisy Reichlin has been in the Army for 17 years. Her husband, Joshua, has also spent 15 years in the Army. The pair has two children, who have moved with them as part of a PCS several times.
This year’s move, however, was not PCS-related. The family chose to relocate to Midland, Georgia, just 20 minutes away from Fort Moore, to provide their children with educational and extracurricular benefits.
“They’ve been doing the military career for us, so it’s time we did it [a move] for them,” said Reichlin with a laugh as she stood in her garage while movers carried the family’s sofa into the truck.
Findings from the previously cited 2014 study found children in military families sometimes struggle to get involved in sports and other extracurriculars, especially when they join a new school mid-year. Sometimes, schools do not offer the same extracurriculars, or educational disparities exist.
Reichlin noted the Midland community will be good for her daughter in high school and has a good baseball program for her son. The family chose to move in the summer to avoid conflicts with school.
Although Reichlin reported she had expected this move to be easier than PCSing, she found them to be similar in the end, aside from the fact the family had to finance this one out of pocket.
“We thought it would be simple, but coming towards the day of moving it just reminds me of my past PCS moves. It’s overwhelming and, you know, you’ve got a lot of checks and balances,” Reichlin said. The last time the family moved, Reichlin’s husband was deployed, so she caried out the relocation as a single parent.
Findings from 2014 indicate military moves where a parent is deployed or faces impending deployment can cause additional stress for the remaining parent and children. This can manifest as increased anxiety and have “significant detrimental effects on an entire military family’s well-being and coping skills.”
Doyle, Reichlin and Waynick agreed making use of resources and having a strong support system can help alleviate this stress. Doyle advised planning early for a move.
Waynick recommended hosting a moving party and reminding children what they might gain from the relocation, like new friends and activities. He added families should seek out military community service organizations to get connected with local groups, jobs and activities.
According to Doyle, ACS offers installation-specific and online resources for use by military families. This includes PCS consultations, newcomer orientations, school liaisons and more. Doyle said ACS also collaborates with other departments to provide mental health resources and assistance for selling and renting, as well as storage of household-related goods and vehicles.
Some digital community resources to help with PCSing include Operation Military Kids, Military OneSource, Department of Defense Education Activity and more. There is also a “Army PCS Move” mobile app, which Doyle recommended.
Reichlin said family and leadership support made the biggest difference during her moves.
She said, “I have a good support system, my family. Chain of command, they know that we are dual-military, but they allowed us to, ‘Hey do what you have to do and we’ll call you if we need you,’ so that really made it a lot smoother, just having their support and my family’s support.”
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