Unshelved by Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum
comic strip overdue media

Friday, August 14, 2009

You think?

Stress of war takes mental toll on military kids: Children of deployed service members at risk of psychological problems
The years-long U.S. commitment in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking a significant toll on the children of service members, who are 2½ times more likely to develop psychological problems than American children in general, new research indicates.

The study, published this week in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, found that deployment of a parent was correlated to high stress levels in the parent who remains at home, which it said was linked to greater psychological impact on children.

I was a child of Vietnam. At an age when most American children didn't even know what it was, I knew that I might never see my father again. I knew that my mother was terribly stressed and yet I didn't quite understand that there was really little I could do to alleviate the situation. But even then I tended to comfort my mother in the same way a parent comforts a child, and the closeness we developed whilst waiting for my father to return from war was not a healthy one, but one where boundaries were lost. It defined our relationship for many years later.

Meanwhile, I idealised the father I knew from brief assignments home. In all he spent nearly the first six years of my life in and out of Southeast Asia. Having him home full-time, the real father, rather than the daddy I thought was perfect, was a terrible shock. And this was a father who himself was haunted by his experiences, whom we all knew shouldn't be woken suddenly or he may think he was back in combat, that sort of thing. I wish I had known him before that time. Maybe I would still have a relationship with him if that were the case; I don't know.

Back then they gave precious little counseling to soldiers, much less the children of soldiers. I grew up on Air Force bases where Vietnam was rarely if ever mentioned. None of us talked about our fathers (or I suppose in rarer cases, mothers) being in the war and how it affected our home life.

But at least I was raised in the military culture (for good or bad). Many of the soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan are National Guard. Their children live in nice, normal neighbourhoods where other kids' dads and moms don't necessarily deploy. Other children might not understand. Other adults certainly don't. In many ways, it is even more crucial that children raised off base be given the support needed to deal with a parent at war. Moreover, it is absolutely essential that the remaining parent be given counseling and support to help her or him deal with the added responsibilities, the not knowing, the challenges of raising children alone for awhile, etc.

Maybe my mother would have done better on base. But she always returned home to Kentucky to be with her family when he was away, except for brief TDYs (oops, temporary duty, that is).

Regardless of which service, every person I have known who was a military brat was marked by the experience in some way. In my case I was socially awkward, had no sense of continuity, and was way too close to my mom. There's a reason I have been here in Lexington for 25 years now, a reason I chose to do all my higher education here. I'd been through two kindergartens, two elementary schools, three junior highs, and two high schools before I landed here, all followed by a messy divorce. I had no support system at any point in my life, and I lived in a disconnected family where we shared a roof and little else, with the exception of the emotional connexion I had with my mom. We ate together, but after that, I would read, my mom would do ceramics and other crafts, and my dad would go to his radio room. We never took vacations together. In fact, we never took anything resembling a vacation separately--if anything it was visiting relatives. I lived in all these places (unfortunately no foreign ones; I guess his service in Southeast Asia made it unlikely that he be based in someplace outside the US), but never saw the sights. I never even went to a circus or state fair. (I still have never been to the latter, and at one point in 4-H I had ribbon-winning entries in one.) The dynamics of my family seemed utterly normal to me; I've since come to realise how dysfunctional we were, and how we each had issues that really would have improved with some targeted counseling and possibly medication.

I can't change any of that; I can just deal with my issues as best I can with help. But if there's anything we as a country can do to help children like I was, it is to give aid and support to families of war: support soldiers and give them the best tools to do their jobs; make sure they have good health care (including mental health care) both away and when they return; make sure spouses have a support system and are not isolated, and that they have access to careers rather than temporary jobs that change from post to post; and lastly, but just as important, make sure children of soldiers are supported in the family, at school, through counseling and other activities, so that they may deal with what is very, very frightening as a child. I'm sure it is far worse to lose a parent in the military (I have a friend whose father died in a military plane crash, something that happens both in and out of war), but the fear of losing a parent is almost as bad. Personally, too, I don't believe in giving platitudes and telling children everything will be fine. Isn't it better to address their fears and explain what will happen if the unthinkable does become reality--who will care for them, where they will live, things that children obsess on out of fear. If I were being deployed, too, I'd do whatever I could to encourage my children to express themselves, and create memories, through activities, videos, pictures, etc. Despite the fact that my father and I broke contact years ago, I still have the audio taped letters home he made (except for one my mother erased, the one with shrapnel hitting nearby), the ones that remind me he was 19 and scared and tired and half a world away. They give me a picture of my father I wouldn't have otherwise. Someday I hope they'll help me make sense of him.

Just my two cents' worth.

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