This is a subject near and dear to my heart as we not only moved two teenagers in their senior year, we’re about to move our last teenager to another high school - again overseas. Fortunately, unlike our older two, our youngest is moving into 10th grade. It isn’t without its drama, to be sure, but it is not the potentially volatile situation we had on our hands just a few years ago.

I still rue the day I told the children they would graduate from the schools they attended unless we received orders to move overseas. Because my husband was a Marine in Iraq during their senior year (2003), it was highly unlikely he’d get orders (we’d even been told as much); it was way more likely he’d be sent back to Iraq after a short while. To then receive orders to Germany was even more unlikely. Compared to the population of Camp Lejeune, NC, there are only a handful of Marines in Europe.

Our older two children are “Irish Twins,” meaning they were born less than a year apart. They have always been in the same grade and have had some classes together over the years. No matter where we moved they always had each other -- a familiar face in the unfamiliar halls -- even when they weren’t getting along.

Moving them overseas in the first few months of their senior year presented many problems for them, the least of which was walking to school from our on-base hotel room for over 90 days while we looked for housing. We looked constantly, on and off base, but the openings for a five-member family just weren’t there at the time. The compact quarters were a nightmare, and relief came only a few days before Christmas - but that’s another story.

The biggest problem was developmental. They are brother and sister. They were not only looking for more independence from their parents, they were also looking for independence from each other - all the while dealing with the pain of being so far from friends, teachers and neighbors they’d grown attached to over the prior, and formative, three years.

Their needs, wants and dreams took two very different roads about the time they turned 15 years old. This was never more apparent than in the friends they chose in high school, the places they wanted to go, the occupations they sought, and the colleges they aspired to attend.

I will say my choosing to become a stay-at-home mother during their teen years, on the advice of my mother and grandmother, was the best decision I ever made. Anyone with a teenager knows they possess the exploratory nature of a toddler in the way more mobile (and outspoken) young adult body. This is not someone who should be unsupervised, un-chaperoned, or left to their own devices. Open and honest communication is key - and very difficult to maintain if both parents are regularly unavailable, physically and/or emotionally. What we missed out on for lack of a 2nd paycheck afforded more reward than money could ever have bought.

Fortunately, our savings allowed (and the timing of events at both their old and new high schools was such) that we could provide a once-in-a-lifetime graduation present for the children. We arranged for friends at our last duty station to host our children for a week. We then made arrangements with their old high school so they could attend the senior prom and what would have been their graduation ceremony to include the after parties. They had already graduated from their new high school the week prior.

It went a long way toward alleviating their separation anxiety and healing the military-teen-exclusive wound of being torn away from their first young adult allegiances. It allowed them to celebrate with those closest to them, make every last exchange of email addresses and phone numbers, and say goodbye in a way they felt was considerably more proper and comfortable.

I would highly recommend it to any parent wanting to know what might help bridge the thousands-mile wide gap created by moving teenagers so far away just before or during their senior year of high school.