In May, the Department of Defense through a partnership with the USO and Trevor Romaine company will be releasing a DVD kit entitled “With You All The Way”. The kit will include a DVD that helps school-aged children deal with deployment along with a stuffed teddy bear (named “Cuzzie”), a journal, postcards and a set of dog tags. The free kit will be distributed through USO offices and Military One Source. Get your free kit now.

from the May 2010 MTTA Newsletter

Each summer, the National Military Family Association’s Operation Purple® program provides a free week of camp for thousands of military youth who have a parent serving in the Uniformed Services. We ask them to tell us the best and hardest parts about military life in a popular activity called the Top Ten list. The messages in this toolkit summarize what they’ve said over the past few years.

The National Military Family Association created this kit to give the people in military teens’ lives- teachers, school counselors, coaches, community or religious youth group leaders, neighbors, family friends, or relatives-a way to help them manage stress and affirm the positive aspects of military life.

What we hear repeatedly from military teens is that they need people in their community to know what they’re going through.

Find out more!

Sesame Street has partnered with Wal-Mart to make a deployment kit available to all military families with children. This kit contains a Sesame Street DVD, a Parent/Caregiver magazine, and a child’s activity poster. The DVD is available in English and Spanish and is targeted to children between the ages of 3 & 5. It discusses the ways to cope with the unique feelings and concerns that children have through each phase of deployment: pre-deployment, deployment and homecoming.

To request your kit or to download the materials online, please visit the Sesame Street website.

Getting pets to deal with deployments can sometimes be even more difficult than dealing with kids. Pets will also show their emotions and they will react when someone disappears from their daily routine. Please note, I am not a veterinarian…if your pets have problems that continue, please get them the appropriate medical attention.

Things that I, as well as friends, have noticed during deployments…
Cats will sometimes quit using their litter box when there are changes in the household including someone being gone. Generally, they will soil a specific area. The simplest solution to this is to move the litter box to where the cat is using the bathroom. The problem with this is if your cat has decided to use the bathroom in the middle of the living room floor. However, you should be able to slowly move the box back to its original location.

Cats can also begin to shed their hair or lick themselves to the point of losing their hair when they are stressed. It is best to try to distract the cat when this happens and spend as much time as possible with them.

If your husband usually walks your dog, begin walking the dog together and then transition to you walking the dog alone before your husband leaves. Be sure to keep to the same routine as much as possible.

Pets will sometimes ignore your husband when he returns from deployment. This is usually truer with cats than it is for dogs. There is no real way to deal with this other than for your husband to try to spend as much time with the pet as possible.

Keep routines as close to normal as possible. If you go to the park on Saturdays with the dog when he is here, try to keep that up. If the cats are fed at 5am, stay with that routine. If they are always allowed to sleep in your bedroom, don’t start locking them out when he’s gone.

Pay attention to their behaviors and spend extra time with them. It’s a little harder to explain deployments to pets. I’ve heard of others who played audio tapes or video tapes of their soldier for their pets. They swear it helps – any thing is worth a shot.

If your soldier is deployed and you would like to offer a unique experience to your children, be sure to check with the National Military Family Association. Operation Purple is a summer camp that is free to military children with a deployed parent. It is held at multiple locations each summer.

The camps last from five to seven days and are open to military children between the ages of 8 and 18. The camp is provided free of charge though travel to and from the camp is not covered. Thanks to multiple locations, you are sure to find a camp that is accessible to you. During the camp, the children will learn about coping with deployments and the unique issues that surround them. Most of all, they will make lasting friendships with other kids who are going through the same challenges.

The NMFA begins to accept applications for the camp in March of each year. You can learn more about this program by visiting their website at Operation Purple.

Web Site: http://www.mops.org/military

Bio: MOPS International is dedicated to meeting the needs of every mother of preschoolers. In order to attain this vision for moms who are either in the military themselves, or have a spouse in the military, MOPS International has developed the Military MOPS program. A Military MOPS group is much like a Classic MOPS group, except that it is chartered, or sponsored, by a base chapel, either domestic or international. Because of the unique situations that Military MOPS groups face by being on a military base, MOPS International has designed this program with a great deal of flexibility.

Military MOPS groups usually meet once or twice each month, and often provide childcare through the MOPPETS program. Much like our Classic MOPS groups, Military MOPS meetings vary in length, topics and meeting time, but typically include time for developing relationships through teaching, discussion groups, creative activities and fellowship time over a shared meal or snack.

By: Michelle S. McIntyre-Brewer
Leadership and Individual Giving Manager
United Way of the Capital Region

Many military families are facing deployment on a regular basis as we face the War on Terror. Some of the most affected are the children that have a difficult time grasping what is happening in the world around them. The confusion and chaos that often surround the issue of deployment extends beyond the immediate family and can affect life on the playground, in school, and in other social situations.

Knowing what to say to children when faced with a deployment is often a struggle with any adult. Understanding how children are feeling and how to interpret their reactions can help to create a better relationship with everyone involved in the situation. Depending on the child’s age, adults can do certain things to ease the anxiety associated with a parent or loved one being deployed.

The most important thing an adult can do to help children deal with deployment is to educate them about what is happening. Following these easy steps can help:

Define Deployment

Making sure children understand what the word deployment means is incredibly important. The word is used in the media, at the dinner table, and in everyday conversation. Explaining where the Service Member is going (with a general overview of the region or country) and what he/she will be doing (without going into incredible detail) will help children gain an understanding of what is happening.

Assure Children

Informing a child that their loved one has been well-trained is incredibly important, but it is even more important to show them what is meant by that statement. Taking children to a training exercise that can be viewed from afar and explaining what is happening, getting a book from a library that shows pictures of Service Members being trained, or pulling out old photographs of a loved one graduating from schools is an excellent concrete way of helping children understand that their loved one is prepared to be deployed.

Answer Questions

Children, at any age, will ask questions. The important thing to remember is that brushing off a question will not make it go away. Even the hardest questions need to be answered, but they should be answered in an age appropriate manner. The following link, provided by Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, provides an excellent view of developmental stages and what to expect: http://www.usuhs.mil/psy/CTChildrenCopeDuringDeployment.pdf. Be honest. Be fair. Children going through deployment deserve to have questions answered just as much as adults do. Not knowing how to answer every question is fine, but there are many sources available (also included in the article) that can help to answer even the most challenging of questions.

Assign Roles

When children have responsibilities, they cope better. Informing the children that they have a job to do while their loved one is deployed is an excellent way to make sure they feel included and important. Assigning a role can range according to a particular child’s needs from caring for a pet to writing a letter to their loved one on a weekly basis to volunteering in some capacity. Every child is different and will respond differently to deployment so something that can be enjoyed can help ease fear associated with being separated from a loved one for a long period of time.

Show Support

Make sure children know that they have a resource. Being open and understanding will help facilitate conversation and ease deployment for, not only the child, but the adult as well.

These tips will help in family situations, at schools, FRGs, and any other setting, assuming children are dealt with in an age appropriate manner.

as submitted by Kendra
I have a 2 year old and a 4 year old, we are going through our first deployment now. It has been very hard on the kids of course they are really to young to understand fully what is going on. My husband left in December, and had a short leave to come home for Christmas, since they were still in the states. My children did not want me to take the Christmas tree down until Daddy came home, but who wants to leave a 8 foot tree up all year long? So I came up with an idea to get a little tree for the boys to remember their Daddy. So I got a little tree and we put lights on it and then we put yellow ribbons on it. I have told the children that the lights on the tree will guide daddy home to us and that the yellow ribbons are showing that we love him. I put the tree on a table along with some pictures of them with their daddy and a family picture, so they can go over to the table anytime and see daddy. I thought it was a neat project for the kids and it has helped them some.

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by Anonymous
 
This is my husband’s first deployment. We were supposed to go together, but ended up having an unplanned pregnancy instead. We were lucky enough to have him here for the pregnancy, but he left 2 months after our little boy was born. My husband was upset because he is going to miss all of our son’s “firsts” like first Christmas, first birthday, first word, and so on. To help with this I had the idea to buy a huge scrapbook and take a picture every day of our son and do a scrapbook page with a little passage of what we did that day. As well as video recording the major events.

Although my husband’s fears were of missing things, my fear was of our son not knowing who his daddy was when my husband returned home. To avoid this I took many pictures of him and our son together. I then bought a collage frame and put them all in it and hung it beside his bed. Even though he is only 3 months old, I feel he understands and misses him just as much as the dog and I do. So every night when our son goes to bed, I show him the pictures hanging right beside his bed and tell him to “Say goodnight to daddy” just like if he was actually here. I also read that a baby’s sense of smell is very strong, and that he can tell his own mother’s breast milk from that of another woman just by smell.  This gave me the idea to buy my husband a body spray and deodorant set that had a distinctive smell that he liked. I had my husband wear it every day he was home with the baby in hopes that when he returns wearing that body spray, our son will recognize his smell and remember him. We also have nice technology such as webcam now too that allows my husband to interact with our son.

These are tips that I have gathered from Army wives who are moms and I hope you will find them useful as well. If you have other tips to share, please email me. Also, all of these tips refer to dad as being the one who is away but can just as easily be used if mom is the one who is deployed.

1. Have Dad record himself reading several books. These recordings can be played nightly at bedtime to the kids. This can even be an ongoing activity if Dad takes a small tape recorder with him.

2. Have pictures of Dad around. Give the kids a wallet size of picture of Dad to carry with them.

3. Set up a countdown method. This can be putting a certain number of Hershey’s Hugs & Kisses in a jar and taking one out each day so they can get a hug or kiss from dad. Or it could involve a paper link chain where you remove one link each day. To guard against disappointment, always add a few days to your countdown in case there is a delay.

4. Let the kids send whatever they want to dad – whether it’s a letter, a coloring book page or a gift. It’s important to let them express themselves.

5. Communicate regularly through written letters, pictures, videotapes and audio tapes. If the kids are old enough, allow them to email and share pictures this way. This is as important for him as it is for the kids.

6. Let the children express their emotions – good or bad. If they are mad or upset at dad for leaving, let them express it. Then make sure you tell them that dad loves them, misses them and would rather be home too but he has an important job to do.

7. Avoid the news if at all possible. It will be very hard to reassure them of Dad’s safety if they hear news accounts every day about soldiers being killed. If you feel your kids must be around the news, make sure they are hearing the positive stories about our soldiers and what they are doing.

8. Take your kids out to look at the stars. Remind them that dad is looking at the same stars so it seems he isn’t so far away.

9. Save messages on your answering machine. Play back the messages when the kids want to hear dad’s voice. This could even be pre-arranged with dad recording a special message.

10. Do special things that only happen when Dad is away. For example, have ice cream sundaes for dinner once a week. Let the kids eat dessert first every once in a while. Visit a museum. Go to a certain park on the weekends.

11. Be sure the teachers know that Dad has deployed so they can help and also alert you to any changes in your child’s behavior.

12. Have Dad buy special gifts or write notes for your children that you can hide around your home when the kids are having a bad day. You can then give them clues to help them find their special message from dad.

My boyfriend has 2 children and he has full custody of them. I have 2 children and have split custody with their dad. My boyfriend is wanting to break off our relationship because he says he can’t take his girls to his next post because he won’t have anyone to care for them. He says he will have to get up earlier than their school so he basically needs a girlfriend that can be there full time. What are the guidelines for single soldiers with children? Thanks!

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He is suppose to have a care plan on file for his children. This would specify who would take care of his kids in the event he had to go to a training, school, TDY or deployment. If there is not anyone to take care of his children and he has full custody, it is possible that his command could recommend a discharge for family hardship. I know of several female soldiers that have been in this situation who had to be discharged.

Keep in mind that if you did move with him, you would not be able to live on post with him unless you marry him. You would be able to live off post with him though.

If you have other specific questions, please let me know. And if anyone reading has experience with a single soldier with full custody of the kids, please chime in. Thanks.