Are/were you a "military brat"? how did this effect your social life?

my parents were not in the military, but my whole life i moved on avrage of 4 times a year, often times to completly different states. when you move so much as a child you learn very fast. think about it, the more places you go, the more people you meet. meet more people, gain more life experience. living this lifestyle effected me in alot of ways, like, i can build a strong relationship with someone that i just met maybe a month ago, because i have so much practice meating new people and making new friends.you also become familier with many different kinds of people and that helps develope social skills and the ability to read people easely. i have a highe tolorence for hot, cold, humid, dry, and windy climates because i am used to all of them. i have grown more accepting of other peoples culture, because it alwase changes where ever you go. down side is that with so much moving around, a highschool career is almost impossable. i ended up dropping out in my seccond year of nineth grade. but thats not to say im uneducated, because i scored very high on my ged and i got a score of 64 on my asvab test. and i will be joining the air force.

i am now 17 years old btw. i also forgot to mention that with so much moving, travel comes very easly to me, i can have all my stuff packed, organized, and ready to go in the house, in under a day. our whole house can be packed, organized, moved, unpacked, and arranged in under three days. also i was very capable of flying by myself at nine years old.

orbenDiaz. what a great answer. all of your life you sacrificed, but look at you now. you are about to join one of the most prestigious brances of the military….the Air Force. good for you. i loved the Air Foce and so will you. its not like any other miliatary branch. the day you make it to the grade of lieutenant, i will gladly stand back and salute you. john

thank you. that means alot.

@OrbenDiaz 64 is a good Asvab score too.

Flying is a plus for you and also your organizational skills.

Yes, I was a military (Navy to be exact) brat until I was about 8 years old when my dad retired. I think I was too young for it affect my social life because, at that age, I saw moving around a lot and switching schools to be an adventure. I am glad that we settled in one place before it had the chance to affect my social life.

Same story as @Leanne1986. My brother and sister had to deal with moving a whole bunch. I came in at the tail end of my dad’s military career. But by the time I was 8 I had lived in 4 different places (changing states each time). But between 8 and 20 (my age now) I’ve moved twice.
Grades? I never did get good grades, until college. I understood the material, I did well on tests, but I couldn’t be bothered to remember to do homework. I don’t think that’s anything related to moving around.
Social life? I’ve never had one. I’m sure that moving around had something to do with it, but isn’t the sole source of the problem.

Nope, neither moving around nor my dad’s military stories inspired me to stay out of the military. It was my own lack of desire to be in the military that kept me out.

I was a military brat. It had its good side and its bad side.

Bad
I feel like an observer, always outside the circle, never belonging to anything.
I had to continually adapt to different cultures.
I had to make new friends every two to three years. i was always the new kid.

Good
I became extremely good at analyzing a situation and the culture of a group, which became very useful in my work as a marketing and business strategy consultant.
It made my family of origin closer since we were the only ones with a shared history.
It made me capable of packing quickly and efficiently.

I don’t think I would want to subject children to that lifestyle.

Navy brat my entire childhood. Moving every 2–3 years until being sent to boarding school at 11. I was an autistic loner and had to learn how to deal with a new set of bullies at each new school. I was always an outsider, wary of trouble and ready to use my fists. At each move there would be several altercations, then I would be left alone until we had to move again.

As I was significantly ahead of the other kids in academics, I had to deal with “nerd” as well as “loner” status (being a nerd was not fashionable in the 1960s). I had no social life but was content with that; the only problem being that my parents considered it abnormal (it was, but not diagnosed until my late 40s) and attempted to force me to socialize. This led to cycles of conflict with both my parents and other kids.

You can imagine what happens when is loner with no social skills is forced into social situations; the other kids didn’t want me there and I didn’t want to be there. I got good at finding hiding places where I could read in peace.

UK Army Brat here, all my life we moved around, sometimes with the regiment, sometimes without and I spent a bit of time at a couple boarding schools too. I think it has made me a fairly sociable and independent person as you have to learn to just cope with a whole new social circle and get on with people all the time (I may have ended up like that anyway though, who is to know?) Also the whole living in different countries I think has given me a half decent world view and respect for other people’s cultures.

I did find with school that at one school I would do well in a subject and at another I would not do so well and I always put that down to how well I clicked or did not click with the individual teachers.

One thing I have missed is the fact that my memory of my childhood is pretty hazy, I couldn’t tell you who my best friend was when I was 10 for example, or the name of any of my friends when I was 10 or what they even looked like, whereas some of my friends now have all known each other since primary school and that constant contact has seemed to keep those memories alive for them.

As far as joining the Army? Well, growing up with it was enough to make me realise that there is no soldier in me ( I like my guts where they are !! ) but my older brother joined the Army Air Corps so things were obviously different for him.

@stranger in a strange land reading becomes your best friend because nomatter where you go, the story stays the same.
socialy i didnt have any problems, although iv alwase been kind of a strange kid, people like me.

To answer the final part of the question, I served 29 years in the US Army. Recently retired.