Mission: Family: Website, book help moms, kids handle life on the go - Military Community, Spouse and Family Resources - Military Times

Mission: Family: Website, book help moms, kids handle life on the go

Military mothers who deploy sometimes have difficulty finding information about preparing themselves and their children, and how to best weather those deployments.

University of Richmond professor Laura Browder’s new project, MothersAtWar.com, is a website and resource for military mothers. She’s the author of the 2010 book “When Janey Comes Marching Home,” which looks at the military’s effects on mothers.

The site’s resources include links to networking groups for active-duty and veteran servicewomen, help for adjusting after deployment, a guide to female soldier readiness from the Army’s center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, and information about issues related to motherhood, post-traumatic stress and sexism.

Browder also provides information about upcoming events of interest to military women.

The site and book are part of Browder’s larger project examining the public’s opinion and women in combat. Sit down with the website and your cup of tea to see what’s available — it may come in handy now, or down the road.

Remember when?

In some ways, military life helps the memory. You can link an event to a base where you were stationed, and thus, the year it happened.

A new book/scrapbook can help your children preserve their own memories and histories.

“Remember When: My Life as a Military Child,” by Tanya Davenport Hair, has a simple format that allows children to collect written memories and pictures of their installation and their lives there. It has simple reminders for things that might be important in the future — spots dedicated to photos of the parent’s unit, of the base, of the parents at the base.

Other pages spur children to remember schools, sports and important events, with pages dedicated to memories and pictures of particular holidays.

A section for remembering friends includes a spot for name and address, phone and email, birthday and pictures. Friends can also write their thoughts or sign the book.

It’s available for $32.95 at Amazon or Barnes and Noble; and $24.95 at AuthorHouse.com.

Note that it’s designed to be used for memories for one base — so if you move a lot and buy one every time, it could get expensive. Hair’s idea could spur you to do your own version.

She said she came up with the idea after watching her children say goodbye in a military stairwell in Germany.

“I wondered how they were going to adjust,” she wrote in the description of her book. “Worried about forgetting friends, they had scrap pieces of paper with handwritten notes of phone numbers, email addresses and promises to stay in touch. How would they keep this all together?”