Dinosaur Deploys

My next guest poster is Laura from Military Word of Mouth.  She has a great idea for kids to help them through a deployment!  I know my boys would have loved something like this 🙂

Lately, I have been going through things trying to get rid of some stuff to prepare for our next move. Probably, pretty soon our landlady will be calling to let us know that someone is coming over to see the house to potentially rent for next year. While going through a bookshelf, I found one of my son’s photo albums from last year.

It’s just a small 4″x6″ album that I found at Walgreens for like a $1.00, but to him it was priceless. You see it contains photos of his dinosaur on an adventure, and not just any adventure, but an adventure with his daddy. When my husband deployed last January, my son gave my husband one of his dinosaurs to hug whenever he missed him.

So, my husband took pictures of the dinosaur on his deployment adventure and would send them to my son either by email or by snail mail.

I can not tell you how much my son loved this, but when he saw the pictures, his face would beam. He even asked if he could bring the album to show and tell to share with his friends at preschool.

Having a parent deployed is such a hard concept for a young child to understand and accept. This is such a simple way to help ease their pain, if only for a bit. If your spouse is deploying shortly, ask your child if he or she would like to share one of his/her small stuffed animals. If your spouse is already deployed consider sending it over in the next package you mail out. Have your child be the one to put it in the box so he feels like he is helping his daddy miss home a little less. If your spouse doesn’t have a camera, throw in a disposable one.