Kids and stress

It's been really interesting to see how the stress of moving is affecting each of my kids differently. Interesting as in, these poor kids!

One of my girls has starting picking fights with her best friend. The books I've read say that this is common, sort of an unconscious way of making the separation easier. She also has gotten a pretty bad attitude toward me and her sisters, but that may also be a function of her age.

Another has become really fearful of being away from me. She won't even go to a friend's house to play anymore. Church is a major ordeal if she can't come into service with me. She can't articulate what she's really worried about, other than she's afraid that she'll be afraid and then won't be able to find me or her sisters.

The third has become terrified of weather and storms, specifically tornadoes. If the wind starts to blow and/or clouds start to build, she gets absolutely panicky. Never mind that tornadoes are fairly uncommon here, and I think pretty much unheard of in northern Thailand. She's even having nightmares about tornadoes pretty regularly.

Since all this has really happened in the last month or two, I'm attributing it to the stress. I'm hoping that once we actually move and the stresses change, their reactions to it will change as well (I have no delusions that our stress will go away, though). I'm glad that we'll have a few weeks between leaving here and arriving there where there won't be quite as many pressures all the time.

Edit: I should add that for the most part they're really handling all this very well. They're excited about moving (mostly) and generally have good attitudes about it. I think that's what makes these (unconscious) effects even more interesting.