Father and Daughter, Home Alone

Off to the airport

The Army War College released new research last week examining the effects of multiple deployments on adolescents. 

The report confirms several of the well-known coping mechanisms used by military families dealing with deployments — keep busy! — but there were some interesting findings as well.

They found that the largest factors that help children cope with deployment were, in order of importance:

1. Feeling that their deployed parent was making a difference;
2. Having a strong (supportive) family;
3. Knowing that America supports the war; and
4. Having a strong spouse.

[T]he only source of supportive mentorship that coincided with a significant difference in adolescent stress levels was the parents. Despite the intuitive value of close friends, understanding teachers, or even a sympathetic coach, the importance of the family again emerged as a central theme in the adolescent perspective of deployment stress.

Deployed parents, on the other hand, feel that other mentors are the most important supports.  The authors suggest this may be partly out of guilt or hope that the entire burden of support is not left to their spouse in their absence.

One amusing finding was that 14 to 16-year-olds had lower stress levels when a parent deployed, possibly because stay-behind mothers were more lenient than deployed fathers.  Of course it might not just be attributable to gender; I know that many military spouses relax the rules at home to help relieve the stress of deployments.  For that matter, they did not include the consoling effect of ice cream in their multivariate analysis.  But imagine the implications of this finding:  “Honey, I think it would make our family stronger if you went to Afghanistan.”  Somewhere out there is a military spouse nodding in agreement.

The report focused on Army children because they have faced so many deployments but the findings are probably applicable to anyone with a spouse who is on frequent travel.  We have been fortunate to have only faced one deployment and it was just under six months.  Still, Elysia travels a lot and whenever we do not travel with her, our daughter’s behavior changes.  Not for the worse but it is noticeable that she needs more comforting and reassurance.

Citrus woke up at 1:30 a.m. last night to tell me that she had ten nightmares and then recounted the threats in a very orderly list.   

1. Monster in closet
2. Ghost in the drawers
3. Ghost “in that gold lamp above the closet and drawers”
4. Nice beautiful snake under the bed
5. Crocodile inside the cupboard
6. Bear
7. Big giant under the bed

8. Big big big long snake covered up the room and bit my kitty

I am missing two nightmares because I was half-listening and only grabbed a pen when I realized she was about to do a monologue.  They were undoubtedly variations on a theme but I should mention that she did not seem particularly scared by any of the threats.

Last night was the first night of Elysia being away on a trip, so I will have to wait and see how many more nightmares are in the works. 

Maybe I can turn this into a teachable moment and ask her to count her nightmares in Mandarin.

Tagged as: Army War College, children, military deployments, nightmares, research, study