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Mission Family: Providing a stable home front can help children when parents deploy

A military child who was in an early primary grade in 2003 is now entering his early teens, possibly having weathered three or more parental deployments.

Military families worry about how these long, repeated deployments affect their children and about how to help them.

There are some things military spouses just know: Children do better when the parent left behind is doing well, for example.

Defense and service officials are concerned, too, and have initiated and expanded a number of support programs, including respite child care.

“These parents need to take care of themselves,” said Barbara Thompson, the Pentagon’s director of family policy/children and youth. “Sometimes it’s hard because the young child may not want to give up the parent, but the parents need a break — to go to a movie, to do something for themselves.”

Some places to start looking for programs are family readiness groups, your local family center and http://www.militaryonesource.com.

Here are some ongoing programs to help children:

• Child and youth behavioral consultants are at heavily deploying bases. “If a child is acting out, we have a person to help the staff help the parent and the child,” Thompson said.

• The Army’s Military Child and Adolescent Center of Excellence is being staffed at Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, Wash. The next steps include a standardized program for school-based behavioral health initiatives and a “family resiliency center” concept for installations, said Col. Kris Peterson, chief of the psychiatry department at Madigan and a founding father of the center along with Maj. Keith Lemmon.

• Teachers Understanding Deployment briefings, through many of the Air Force’s Airman and Family Readiness Centers, help teachers learn about emotional and behavioral changes a child may experience when a parent deploys.

• Parent Child Pre-Deployment, a Navy program for parents and children ages 4-16, has suggestions for maintaining communication with deployed spouses, as well as information on children’s typical reactions to deployment. Kids participate in activities that help them cope with and understand deployment.

Another Navy program is a class addressing typical reactions of children to deployment in which parents can discuss unanticipated situations that develop during deployments.

5 Tips to help your kids cope

Spouses’ answers to questions about how to help their kids cope with deployments offer some insights, too. On the Defense Department’s 2008 Survey of Active Duty Spouses, the top five keys were:

• 1. Spouse’s ability to maintain a stable household routine.

• 2. Communication with the deployed parent.

• 3. Temporary reunions with the deployed parent.

• 4. Geographic stability/no changes in schools.

• 5. Spouse’s support for the deployment.

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Karen Jowers is the wife of a retired service member. E-mail kjowers@militarytimes.com.