That Darn Emergency Contact

One part of military life is possibly moving every few years. In a 20-year long military career, you could move anywhere from two or three to eight or nine depending on career plans.

For some, moving every two or three years is normal. Some military families move even more often. While sometimes you do get to stay at the same duty station for a longer period of time, that isn’t the norm.

When you move, you really have to start over. You have to make a new house a home, you have to find new doctors, dentists, even where you are going to do your shopping.

You also need to sign your children up at new schools, daycares, or child development centers. And usually, those places ask for one important thing…an emergency contact.

This shouldn’t be a big deal…

But, when you are new to a location, you might not have anyone you trust with your kids. How could you? You don’t know anyone yet!

So what do you do? Who should you put down?

Sometimes you can put down your FRG leader, other times, one of your spouse’s coworkers. You can put down a family or friend that lives far away but that might not help if there was a true emergency.

Luckily, the odds of having to call those numbers are super low. I think in all the years of having kids, a school has never had to call that emergency number, maybe once?

Make it a goal to make some friends at your new duty station, and everything will fall into place when it comes to your emergency contacts. It’s not that you shouldn’t worry about it, you want the school or daycare to be able to get ahold of someone if they can’t get ahold of you, but it can be tricky when everyone you trust with your kids lives 2,000 miles away.

Have you ever had to put down someone you didn’t really know on your kid’s forms? How do you handle this issue?