So, let's say that you're a mega-rich, uber-fabulous, superstar family that jets around the world making movies and adopting children. Let's say that in that in a span of two years, you've lived in six different countries, and crossed the Atlantic more often than you've crossed a street in any one city. And let's say that although your eldest child is enrolled in school, he's only enrolled in any one school temporarily, and changes schools as often as you change households, which is pretty often.
If all of those things are true, then you're probably the Jolie-Pitt family, and one New York psychotherapist has some harsh words for you:
"(They're) not creating a stable environment outside the family unit," Manhattan-based psychotherapist/social worker Puja Hall told the New York Post. "Maddox is an adopted child, so he already has a sense of abandonment," she said. "Kids that constantly move are like army brats, in that very often they don't want to open up to people. They feel loss, and there is a problem with attachment."
"With the moves, the kids just don't invest in relationships, because they're going to lose them anyway," Hall said. "They think: 'Why bother? I'm not gonna stick around. We're gonna pick up and go, and the loss of friends is painful.' " She added that before Pax, 3, Zahara, 2, and Shiloh, 16 months, get any older, Angelina and Brad need to decide where to settle down. "It needs to be weighed," said Hall. "At some point, they will have to make some important choices so the kids can form those bonds and keep them."
I don't know. On the one hand, I see her point: kids who move around a lot don't have as much opportunity to form attachments. Sure, they have each other, and their no-doubt doting parents, but the lack of other stable, ongoing social relationships - with friends and playmates and teachers - must certainly be experienced as a loss, even if it's a loss of something that they've never known.
On the other hand: we're talking about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt here, people. They can buy their kids friends.
What do you think?
