• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

  • Home
    • My Disclosure Policy
    • My Privacy Policy
    • Contact Me
  • Advertise With Me
  • The SWCL Shop
  • So Your Spouse Just Deployed, Now What?
  • Duty Stations
  • Surviving Deployment
  • Military Life
    • Movies & TV
    • Disneyland
    • Books
You are here: Home / Deployment / Deployments and The Effect on Children

Deployments and The Effect on Children

July 11, 2015 by Julie 3 Comments

Deployments and The Effect on Children

Deployments and The Effect on Children

After four deployments, our family knows what it is like to go long periods of time without Dad in the home. It can be so challenging for the parent at home to have to be mom and dad. It can also be really hard on the children who might not truly understand why their mom or dad has to be away from them.

Since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, more than 2 million American children have had a deployed parent. Many of them have seen multiple deployments. This tells me that we are not alone and that all these children have gone through or are going through what my own boys have.

Our last deployment ended in 2013 and my boys were 9, 7 and 3. At those ages they only kind of understand what Dad was doing. It was a hard time for all of us as I helped them work through the time apart while trying to deal with the deployment myself. It can be difficult to know what will help them and what they are really dealing with.

The best thing to do is to keep the line of communication open with your children. Let them know it is okay to share with you how they are feeling or what they are experiencing. Encourge them to reach out to you if it becomes too hard. Sometimes young kids will act out when they are feeling frustrated about the deployment. It is important to keep firm boundaries in your home but be aware that some behavior could be because of missing one of their parents.

One idea is to have a recordable device that the deployed parent can set up to give to the child. Recordable teddy bears, along with other battery-powered devices such as recordable story books provide reliable comfort no matter when or where their parent is deployed.

Duracell has a great video out all about how a Teddy Bear can help a child through a deployment. This video made me cry because it shows us how hard it can be for a child to be without their dad. It is nice that we live in a time where technology can help that divide and allow the child to hear their parent’s voice whenever they want. The film was inspired by a real Military child who was showed Duracell a Teddy Bear she had during her father’s deployment.

Duracell would like to raise $100,000 for USO’s Comfort Crew for Military Kids. Share the film and find out how you donate to the cause through the USO at http://www.uso.org/donate.

You can also find Duracell on Facebook and Twitter.

 

This review was made possible by iConnect and Duracell. I was provided compensation to facilitate this post, but all opinions are 100% mine.

 

 

(Visited 179 times, 1 visits today)

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Print

Filed Under: Deployment, Military Life Tagged With: deployments, military families, military life

About Julie

Owner of Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life. Writer, reader, coffee drinker. Mom to three boys, wife of a National Guard soldier. Living life in Tennessee.

Previous Post: « What You Should Know About Being Stationed At Ft. Campbell
Next Post: Chameleon Kids and The Military Kids’ Life Magazine »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Amber

    July 13, 2015 at 9:20 pm

    Aw, very sweet!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Thanksgiving When They Are Deployed says:
    November 13, 2017 at 6:00 am

    […] was 2006 and my husband had just left for his 1st deployment. We were about three months in when it was time for Thanksgiving. We were in Germany on a smaller […]

    Reply
  2. How Going Through a Long Deployment Shaped My Parenting says:
    January 17, 2018 at 8:00 am

    […] have been through other deployments since but there is just something about that deployment that sticks out to me. Something about that […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

About Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life

Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life

Welcome to Soldier’s Wife, Crazy Life! I am so glad you are here.

My name is Julie and I have been an Army wife for almost 15 years now.

My husband of 18 years has served in the active-duty Army and now the Army National Guard. We have lived in Germany & Tennessee during our time as a military family.

We have three boys and have been through four deployments together.

I hope that you can find support for your own deployments, pcs moves, or anything else military life brings you 🙂

~Contact Me~

Sign up for your FREE Guide to the First 30 Days of Deployment!


Thank you!

Check your email for confirmation! 

.

Top Posts!!!

  • Stop Saying That We Knew What We Were Getting Into
  • 27 Military Spouse Memes for a Difficult Deployment Day
  • Marriage During a Deployment
  • The First Night After the Deployment is Over
  • Why You Should Break Up With Your Military Boyfriend
  • 14 Tips to Help You Survive Basic Training When Your Spouse Joins the Military
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Footer

Archives

Copyright © 2021 Soldier's Wife, Crazy Life on the Foodie Pro Theme

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.