I went through this - it definitely affected me, but I wouldn't call it a negative.
It wasn't so much the living away from home (we were overseas for 2 years when I was 10 years old) it was the return - the shocking disparity between how I now saw the world, and how my peers (who were frozen in time in my memory) saw things. It forever separated me from them in ways they could not understand.
In hindsight, it was one of the best things my parents did for me - compared to most of my home-grown peers, I adapted faster to new situations and had little difficulty adapting to life as an independent adult - in my opinion, thanks to the expanded perspective I gained when I was younger.
YMMV, but IMO, calling it "challenging for a child's social development" implies a negative, but it really depends on what your goals for that child's development are. It's certainly an experience I'd like to repeat for my own children if I can make it happen.
I've seen other research with similar findings. Having moved cities/provinces three times in my childhood (granted within one country) I have to say that it doesn't seem it was tough on me, but I know people who say they wish they hadn't been moved so much. Another part of it for me is that I really like where I ended up; and importantly, I gained all of my social skills after moving to my final childhood municipality, so I associate it with social success.
Our children's experience was very much tied to their extraversion. The most extraverted is doing the best, and the least extraverted has had the biggest net negative outcome, in my opinion.
It wasn't so much the living away from home (we were overseas for 2 years when I was 10 years old) it was the return - the shocking disparity between how I now saw the world, and how my peers (who were frozen in time in my memory) saw things. It forever separated me from them in ways they could not understand.
In hindsight, it was one of the best things my parents did for me - compared to most of my home-grown peers, I adapted faster to new situations and had little difficulty adapting to life as an independent adult - in my opinion, thanks to the expanded perspective I gained when I was younger.
YMMV, but IMO, calling it "challenging for a child's social development" implies a negative, but it really depends on what your goals for that child's development are. It's certainly an experience I'd like to repeat for my own children if I can make it happen.