How Do You Make a Military Kid Cry?

Answer: Ask them where they're from!

Think about moving:

You scrub every fingerprint from the house you leave; removing all traces of your existence. You pick up documents, close accounts, review (and sometimes discard) possessions. Do you lose your identity?

On the trek to the new location cosmic justice dictates that there will be accidents and disasters every time. Lost, hungry, frightened.

You run a gauntlet of misery when you arrive at the new place and get a suspicious reception: New address, phone number, schools have filled their quotas, sports teams filled, enrollment closed. Before you can do anything you must get a new drivers' licence (which is like a scavenger hunt, requiring multiple visits) Then the battle to transfer medical and car insurance. New job search, new job. You have to rebuild an identity.

Do you remember? your mother weeping with fatigue late at night, children in anguish, stuff at your new house is broken, your things arrive broken. You don't have what you need for the weather.

Yep, it happens. But imagine doing that every couple of years.
Seems people ought to be a little sympathetic, or at least patient.

Someone once told me "I don't know what to do when there's someone new at church. What should I say?"
The answer is "Say anything! Just acknowledge their existence!"