Military Community, Spouse and Family Resources - Military Times

How deployment stresses families left behind

Nine-year-old Tristan Sartor hasn’t spent more than six consecutive months with his father since age 4.

Now Staff Sgt. Dad is home at Fort Campbell, Ky. — in theory, at least; he’s prepping for an Iraq deployment, his fourth in five years.

“My husband has been gone so much ... I don’t know if they have a bond,” said his wife, Heather Marsh, Tristan’s mother.

“This dwell time will be the longest we’ve ever experienced. It will be either eight or 11 months — and there is no way that is long enough for us to experience any normalcy, especially when he’s working 15-hour days and traveling for schools and training almost constantly,” she said.

Promises of family outings — if even made — too often are broken. There’s no time.

Tristan will complain that his father promised to take him fishing or camping, then had to renege. “When we tell him Daddy has to work, my son says, ‘The needs of the Army come first.’

“He hears his daddy saying that,” she said.

Not since World War II, when it was common for troops to spend several years in theater, have so many American troops spent so much cumulative time away from home. And this deployment scenario has quirks that were not present even in that war.

“Even ... when service members were deployed for the length of [World War II], everybody in the U.S. had a stake in that war and everyone coped as a nation,” said Patty Barron, director of youth initiatives for the National Military Family Association.

“Not so now. Military children are raised in an environment where parents are deployed into harm’s way for long periods, come home and get reacquainted with their families, which takes time and, soon, many deploy again.”

The survivors

At Fort Bragg, N.C., Julia Goodrich’s second-graders at Devers Elementary School were discussing the vocabulary word “survivor” in the context of a story about endangered animals. But the children’s comments had nothing to do with animals.

“A child immediately raised his hand and said, ‘A survivor is a person who lives in the war,’ ” Goodrich said.

She was taken aback, “but the kids thought nothing of it,” she said. “They hear it at home, in their neighborhoods.”

When the Afghanistan war began in late 2001, the kids in Goodrich’s class were 2 and 3. Since then, many of their parents have deployed multiple times, often spending more cumulative time deployed than at home.

Researchers are only starting to delve into the effects extended parental absences are having on the developing psyches of today’s young military children.

Not just the young

A child can change a lot when a parent is gone for a few months; in a year or more, the impact is sharper. Then add adolescence.

Deployed parents often miss key events of these landmark years, ranging from a prom to an entire athletic season.

Virginia Tech researchers Angela Huebner and Jay Mancini recently published a study after holding 14 focus groups with 107 youths to talk about their views of deployment.

“When my dad’s not there, I’m not ... the child anymore,” one said. “I have to ... almost fill in for the other parent because the only thing my mom really cares about is that I’m ready to baby-sit.”

Forty-two kids said a military parent’s return led to a tough post-deployment reintegration.

“Mom had to pretty much do everything. It was ... a problem when dad got back, because you’re more attached to one parent now.”

However, the researchers noted that while such changes provoked stress for some youths, other youths saw them as opportunities for personal growth.

Military families and child advocates wonder about the cumulative effects of stress in a war where there is no front line and 24-hour news fuels constant worry. They wonder if children and their deployed parents can reconnect in the short times between deployments — and if not, what are the consequences?

“There’s a lot of attention on the mental health of returning troops, but children and families seem to be receiving less,” said Army Maj. Keith Lemmon, a pediatrician at Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, Wash., and former senior adolescent medicine fellow at the San Antonio Military Pediatric Center.

Lemmon and others say existing research on the effects of multiple wartime deployments is scant, but that does not mean bad outcomes result — in large part due to the considerable and well-documented resiliency of military families.

“There’s a difference between struggles, stress and pain, and the development of pathology,” said Col. Stephen Cozza, associate director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, children and family programs, at the Uniformed Services University.

“We need to see ... the impact of multiple wartime deployments,” Cozza said. “We don’t want to be too eager to link that with actual child pathology.”

A slow process

Sylvia Kidd, director of family programs for the Association of the U.S. Army, said it takes “about a year to reintegrate into the family.”

“They’re not getting that,” she said of today’s families. “It would be one thing if they were able to spend weeks at home to rebuild that link, but they can’t.”

“One deployment piled on top of another presents challenges,” said Dr. Elisabeth Stafford, Army pediatrician and program director for the adolescent medicine fellowship at the San Antonio Military Pediatric Center.

“The increased awareness of the dangers of deployment in Iraq is ... like a shroud hanging over the family. As they try to reintegrate, they’re thinking about when they are going to leave again,” Stafford said. “They’re on the third or fourth deployment.”

Stafford said children show stress in different ways. A child sent home from a day care center for unruliness is not uncommon.

But a child who suddenly starts pulling hair or biting may in fact be reacting to stress, so parents and the child care system have to make this connection, she said.

Depending on the situation, a deployed parent might need to call home so the child can hear his voice, for example.

Stafford and other pediatricians are working with the NMFA, youth programs, the Military Child Education Coalition and American Academy of Pediatrics to raise awareness.

“No one goes through this unaffected emotionally or psychologically,” Lemmon said.

He has seen the personal and professional effects for himself. Before deploying to Afghanistan in 2002 as a combat field surgeon, he and his wife, a teacher, felt they had prepared well.

But the deployment was a struggle. His wife went into a temporary depression, and his well-mannered son began to uncharacteristically act out.

Lemmon said he knows now that these struggles were normal — but they were unsettling at the time.

When he returned to Bragg, he found his family was not alone. He got a high volume of visits from children “experiencing behavior problems, school failure, sleep problems, aggressive behaviors,” he told the Helping America’s Youth Conference in Nashville in April.

He also mentioned an apparent increase in minor physical ailments “that were not medically explainable,” he said.

As he and his colleagues explored the available research, they came up empty. “There was very little data to base good interventions upon,” he said.

Lemmon and others are delving into how to help children deal with toxic stress in a resilient fashion, he said in an interview with Military Times.

Telling families to “buck up” isn’t enough, he said. “We need to be validating and honoring the service and sacrifice of those left behind and come together … to fully support them.”

Staying connected

Fourteen months is a long time in a teen’s rapidly evolving life.

When Army Lt. Col. Randall Thompson left for Iraq in August 2005, his son Frank had just finished his freshman year in high school, where he served as a private in the JROTC program. He also was a second-stringer on the junior varsity football team.

When Thompson returned 14 months later, Frank was a 16-year-old junior, JROTC captain and company commander. He’s also senior patrol leader in his Boy Scout troop.

Sue Thompson said her husband has a nurturing side and felt communicating with the children was important, even if the kids had different ways of communicating with him.

“Our son would get on the phone and just talk his ears off. He’s very verbal,” Thompson said.

Daughter Karen, 14, wrote more letters and cards to her dad, her running partner. He missed all but the last two weeks of her first season on the ninth-grade cross-country team. But they kept up with each other’s times on the 2-mile run, which helped keep their bond, her mother said.

They’re still adjusting months after his return from war. Sue said she had made changes in how the household ran while her husband was gone, giving the kids more allowance money, for example — and more chores.

“When my husband came back, he tried to change it, but the kids didn’t want to. Little things … caused the biggest adjustment.”

“We grew a lot while he was gone,” Karen said. “Before he left, I was more like a little kid. Now we argue and butt heads, but we love each other a lot.”

Sue said her son was lucky to have other trusted male figures he could turn to.

“I had a lot of support behind me in addition to my family, with my church, and also at school with other military dependents,” said Frank, who goes to school on Fort Sam Houston, Texas. “My biggest sources of support were my coaches — I’m big into football — and my JROTC instructors.”

‘Try to encourage’

The Monarrez family was still adjusting from a move from San Antonio to Hawaii when Alfredo, an Army staff sergeant, left in October for Iraq. But changes in the children’s behavior led his wife, Ana, to seek counseling through the military.

While this is Monarrez’s first Iraq deployment, he’s been home for only eight months out of the past two years.

Ani, now 9, started throwing tantrums, and Giovanni, 7, grew “more mean and demanding” at school, said Ana Monarrez.

After the holidays, she said, “you could just see the anger.”

Monarrez is getting counseling for herself and her children.

“Giovanni told the counselor, ‘I’m angry at the man that sent daddy away,’ ” she said. “We told him it was daddy’s job ... and we support him. It’s because of his job that we have this home on base and our other things.”

She said before her husband left, he told Giovanni, “You’re going to be the man of the house, and have to put the trash out on Wednesday morning.” But after his father left, Giovanni took that far too seriously.

“He ... was trying to take charge, trying to be mature, and didn’t know how to do it,” she said. “We told him his job is to be the same Giovanni and go outside and play and have fun ... but still take out the trash on Wednesday morning. He’s a child.”

That has made a visible difference in Giovanni, she said.

She advises other families to take advantage of help available in military communities. “The child psychiatrist has helped me so much in how to help my children,” she said.

Making it work requires energy, commitment and flexibility.

Marine Lt. Col. John Gambrino said the 8-hour time difference in Iraq, and the busy schedules of his three sons, made it difficult to catch them at home. So he called from Iraq early in the morning.

“I talk to the two older high school boys getting ready for school, then they wake mom and our middle-schooler. So they’re a little groggy talking,” he said in an e-mail from Iraq. He has since returned from deployment.

His wife kept him up to speed on “school and other activities and domestic things,” he said.

“I crave pictures, as the kids do change and grow so much. I just try to encourage them as I can.”

But sometimes e-mails and phone calls don’t do it. “There have been some school struggles coincident with my deployment that have been somewhat stressful,” he said.

“It’s hard to play the remote ‘dad’ role as I cannot sit them down on things as necessary. I know our boys are proud that their dad is a Marine and they realize why I am here, so that is something they can cling to when the going gets tough.”

His family moved from Camp Lejeune, N.C., to Virginia while he was deployed, which was an added stressor for his wife, who was in charge of that entire mission, he said.

“I have it easy ... Mom’s load is more than doubled,” he said.

“Moving presents its own challenges,” in addition to making that transition as a family after the deployment, said Laura Gambrino. “Our kids have been good about being part of the team. We’ve had some incredibly awesome, fun experiences as a military family, and recognizing the benefits helps get through the transition time.

“The brief John got with the chaplains [before returning] was very helpful,” Gambrino said. His frequent communication with the family during the deployment helped everyone feel like he was actively participating in current family events, she said. And once he returned, “open communication” is key to her family in making the transition, she said.

Talking about the issues, the concerns, the worries, is so important, said Julia Goodrich.

In her second-grade class at Devers Elementary last year, 13 children had parents deploy. Her class entered the Armed Services YMCA writing contest, with essays on “Why My Military Mom or Dad is My Hero.”

This is one way for her to help the kids “discuss it, write about it ... not hide it,” she said.

But she found the exercise was meaningful not only for the kids.

One day while she and her class were doing an activity, the school office cut in to say a call had come from Afghanistan.

It was the father of a student.

“He carried his daughter’s ‘hero story’ on him folded in his pocket, and it was almost worn out from reading it to other soldiers,” she said.

He asked if there was any way Goodrich could send him another.

“I have never felt so rewarded as a teacher,” she said.

For more:

Tips for families

Help for kids takes many forms

Find articles, videos, links and other resources for helping children cope