Helping Your Children Cope Through the Deployment of a Parent

For children, the deployment of a parent is much different than it is for the spouse. We, as adults, understand why our spouse must leave us. Children, on the other hand, have a more difficult time understanding why their parent is just not there any more. It becomes our responsibility as the remaining parent to ensure that our children know why they are gone and to help them through the deployment.

Like adults, children can express their feelings about the deployment of a parent in many different ways. These expressions can range all the way from sadness and anger, to showing no emotion at all. In this article I have organized a few tips for helping your children deal with the separation.

The most important thing, and I cannot stress this enough, is to keep your spouse a part of the family while they are gone. One very easy way to do this is to have pictures of your spouse all over the house. During our first deployment our daughter was only five months old when my husband left. I would take down the 8x10 picture and show it to her, we would practice saying "daddy" and give the picture kisses.

One of a soldiers worst fears has got to be that their small child will not know them when they get home. We cured this fear with home videos. The videos allowed my children to associate daddy's face with his voice. We would also make videos, to include daddy in our daily or special events.

When my husband came home he saw his five month old had turned into an 18 month toddler. She knew immediately who he was and the re-integration for them went smoothly.

Older children may be a bit more of a challenge for you. As a child grows older they develop many layers of emotion. Some children may feel that their parent deserted them, they may become depressed or angry about this. In some cases your child may try to take advantage of the other parents' absence.

You must, in all ways, run your house hold as you would when your spouse is there. Do not allow your children to think that just because your spouse isn't there that you have gone soft. If you were the softer parent before your spouse left, then you need to become the disciplinarian. Although for some parents who aren't used to disciplining your children this may be the hardest part, but the point is to keep running the household as if your spouse were home. We wouldn't want our spouse to come home and think that you have let the children run wild while they were gone.

There are some really fun ways to pass the days of deployment. One way to mark the days till he comes home is to make a chain. Gather some construction paper, any colors you want (I prefer the red, white and blue) and cut them into strips about an inch wide. Then make a circle out of one and staple it together. After that you simply connect them together in the same way. You can hang the chain in your home and take of a link every day. You will see the chain getting smaller as it marks the days till they come home, unlike a calendar that marks the days that they have been gone.

Another thing to do is themed care packages. Include your children in choosing the items to go inside. Some examples are a letter writing box, which would include items like stationary, pens and stickers. Or you could have a "be cool" box which could include fun stuff like miniature motorized fans or have your children color some pictures and make fans out of paper. These things will be fun for your children and fun for your spouse too.

We also did fun art projects at home. One that my husband really liked was when I got out the paint and let my kids get all messy. We put their hand prints on paper and I wrote a little poem about daddy next to the hand print. Then I took them to get laminated so they would be protected and we sent those to him.

Making voice recordings in place of letters may be a fun option for those children who don't like to write. Our spouse always wants letters from their children, yet sometimes getting your child to write those letters can be a real chore. No one wants to feel like they are forcing their child to write a letter. Simply invest in two small voice recorders, one for your child and one for your spouse and have them send the tapes to each other.

You know all those pictures your taking for your spouse, well try getting a disposable camera for your child and let them take pictures to send them too. This will help them to feel that they are contributing and they will be proud of the pictures that they took.

Remember to use the resources on your post; they have tons of support options you may utilize. Most military posts also have craft classes that you can take advantage of for minimal cost as well. Hopefully this article will be of some help for those who have or will have to deal with the separation of deployment