The feeling of dread leaving my friends behind but with that I knew I was never going to see them again so I could blow up everything there, spill secrets, start rumors, make people hate each other and I wouldn’t really care that much. Now note everyone has varying experiences due to other things happening. I do miss my friends that I left but I still have a weird feeling that things change suddenly. The feeling of dread leading up to leaving friends behind, the willingness to ‘act-out’ because relationships were temporary, or the anxiety from the unknown are just some of the ways military kids feel about the shared experience of PCS-ing. 

Pcs(permanent change of station) is when a service member, and their families, are transferred to a new duty station and are usually there for one to two years before they get transferred again. The reason for transfer depends on the job of the service member and what the military needs them  to do. Military kids become resilient, but at what cost? When military kids move every one to two years this makes them more prone to mental health crises and other physical and mental problems such as depression, an inability to form lasting relationships, even potential drug use and alcoholism. With constant deployments during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom and back-to-back deployments or deployments with little time between them, it can start adding more negative effects on military children such as separation anxiety, depression, aggressive behavior and lower grades in school. 

 The potential death or even actual death of the service member GREATLY affects the kids this makes the need for military family life counselors a big thing in schools. We are lucky enough to have one here but a lot of schools don’t have them . This can lead to distrust, anger, depression, violent behaviors and other mental effects.