Moving home too much harms kids' maths marks

26 May 2016 - 02:00 By ©The Daily Telegraph
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Evaluate the pros and cons of moving to another country. Though it is stressful, a split family is not an ideal dynamic
Evaluate the pros and cons of moving to another country. Though it is stressful, a split family is not an ideal dynamic

Every time a family moves home a child's reading and maths results suffer and their behaviour becomes more disruptive, new research has revealed.

Moving home can bring new opportunities to families, including an enhanced sense of safety and better schooling.

Previous research, however, had revealed that "more frequent" house moves could lead to stress and disruption for children, taking a toll on their health.

And a new study, which compared children who moved frequently to those who didn't or moved less frequently, has exposed the cumulative effects such change has on children.

Rebekah Levine Coley, professor of psychology at Boston College, who led the study, said: "Moves during both early and middle childhood were associated with decreases in children's social skills and increases in emotional and behaviour problems, and these effects lasted for years.

"In contrast, moves during middle childhood and early adolescence - after children had started school - had shorter-term effects on children's reading and maths skills, and those effects diminished over time."

The study also found that while residential and school mobility was associated with small decreases in children's functioning, these could accumulate over multiple moves.

The study also examined the role of moving homes and moving schools, finding that moving schools had unique and slightly stronger associations with children's cognitive skills above and beyond the effects of just moving home.

Even without changing schools, though, the disruptions in daily routines and contexts caused by moving homes can interrupt children's focus on school work and inhibit learning, the study concluded.

The study analysed data from 19162 children in the US in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study who were followed from kindergarten through eighth grade.

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