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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My family (7th grade son and 9th grade daughter) are moving to Spain as soon as the school year ends. My husband and I are both from there and our kids have been there before and speak Spanish so its familiar.

My son is honestly fine with moving, he's not happy but not sad either so he's pretty neutral. My 15 year old daughter on the other hand is completely devastated. She yells at my husband and I saying we are the worst parents ever and she slams doors and doesn't come out of her room anymore unless its for dinner. She's not budging and she's known that we are moving for about 2 weeks now. She won't tell her friends or talk to relatives and doesn't really believe that we are actually moving (she keeps repeating "we aren't moving" or "I am not going" over and over again.)

My question is; will she get over this? How harmful is this for her development and feelings as we move and process this?

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Based on the reaction she might not get over it.  If my parents had done this to me at that age, I would still be mad at them today.  She is also clearly telling you that this is harmful for her.  I would listen, go to therapy and rethink the plans.

Did she even know you were considering this?  Did you talk with the kids about how they would feel if it happened?  Something this big should have had more buy  in and not come out of left field….[/quote]

You need therapy to unpack why you let your kids dictate life plans for their entire family. Don’t parentify your kids because you’re too afraid to make a decision on their behalf that’s in their best interest. THAT is actually bad parenting.[/quote]

DP, but basically all of parenting is making decisions with your children in consideration. That doesn’t mean they should get to “dictate” what the family does, but I also don’t think parents should expect to make major life decisions based solely on their wants without it affecting their kids.

The teen years can be hard, especially for girls. My family moved when I was in 8th grade. I fell in with a fast crowd trying to fit in and definitely rebelled out of anger (it wasn’t our first move). Maybe an international school will be more transient, but I moved to a place where kids had all been together since K.

Maybe I would have been a rebellious teen anyway, but the friend group I moved away from was definitely a tamer crowd, so I’m not so sure. When I married DH I made it a stipulation that we would not move once our kids hit middle school (unless absolute necessity like job loss and needing to relocate). The kids are the priority during the tween/teen years because this is such a critical time to launching them into successful adulthood. Career aspirations can wait.

Of course some kids don’t mind change and are able to easily fit into a new crowd. But behavior is communication and what OP’s daughter is communicating does not bode well for her mental health in a foreign country. 
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