Imagine you have just been told that your parent has to leave for work. Not for a short 2-week trip, but for 14 months in a different country. A daunting thought isn’t it? Now add in the fact that they are going to fight in a violent warzone and will have limited ability to communicate for the 14 months they are there. Although terrifying, this is the reality for the two million military children scattered across the United States. The mental and behavioral effects this type of stress can have on children are endless. Studies have shown that deployment can cause children’s grades to suffer, behavioral changes, and psychological problems. Although the military lifestyle can be hard on children in the ways of deployment and stress, it also allows them to develop fundamental skills early on in life. Due to the multiple moves military children go through, they learn to be outgoing, and through their parent’s multiple deployments, they learn to be independent. Children in military families are learning all of this at a very young age and these are qualities that many of their civilian peers do not develop until much later in life. The research presented shows that extended deployments cause deficits within the child’s development, however by using the different programs the military has in place, these help to negate and improve upon a child’s behavior and developmental statistics.  

On average, an enlisted person in the military will be deployed three or more times before their service ends. The behavioral effects this type of stress can have on children are endless. For example, take the two boys, Isaac and Joey, whose single father was deployed. Since there was no one else able to take care of the boys, they were forced to be relocated to a new town in order to live with their uncle during their fathers’ deployment. The boys suffered from immense behavioral outbursts, and in one incident got into such a bad fight at school that police had to be called in (Dao). It is not only school aged children who experience behavioral issues and heightened emotions. During deployments toddlers can become “clingy or withdrawn” and experience “unexpected tantrums” (Schulte). Many times these behaviors are ones that the children have grown out of, and they are reverting back to a prior and more childlike behavior. This is something psychologists have studied immensely and found to be caused by high levels of stress on the child. Deployment causes children to be under high levels of stress, leading to behavioral and developmental challenges. 

While behavioral problems are a huge aspect of how children are affected by deployment, it also affects their performance within the classroom. Academic success in military children has been seen to be less prevalent during deployment periods (US). Children can experience more stress while completing homework, especially if their deployed parent held a part in helping them to complete their homework. Homework can also be affected if kids are required to take up more household responsibilities to make up for a parent’s absence, as the children are not used to having to balance school work and their newfound responsibilities (US). Outside of just homework, the overall stress of having a parent deployed to a warzone can negatively affect a child’s ability to focus on and care about their school work. Studies have also proven that standardized test scores are lower due to deployments. Elementary and middle school students in North Carolina who had a parent deployed for at least 19 months had significantly lower standardized test scores than children with no parental absence (US). As was the case with the two boys that were mentioned earlier in the essay, relocation due to deployment can also have negative effects on classroom performance. Children will often experience moves during deployments to be closer to extended family for support or because they have a single parent and need to be placed with other family members while their parent is absent. These relocations mean new and unknown school environments. Starting at a new school is stressful enough as it is, adding in the stress of a parental deployment only makes it that much harder for them to adjust (US). Overall, academic performances in children are negatively impacted by deployments and only becomes more prevalent the longer a parent is deployed. 

Outside of behavior and academic performance being affected by deployment, perhaps the biggest effect that it has on children would be on their mental and psychological health. Mental health visits in children is the category of doctors visits that rises the most in frequency when parents are deployed. It has also been shown that the older a child is, the more likely they are to seek mental health care during a deployment. When a parent is deployed, children feel neglected leading to emotional walls that trigger stress and anxiety. A study was conducted on children that have absent parents due to deployment. The study included giving the children the Rorschach T test, which is a test that involves identifying a series of shapes. It was concluded that children with absent parents feel neglected leading to emotional walls which trigger stress and and anxiety (Hunter). This source is from the 1970’s, showing that military children have been experiencing the stresses of deployment since before the most recent wars, and that it is not a new development. The psychological problems that come when a parent is deployed are numerous. Children experience intense stress, mental breakdowns, worry more often than normal, are on high alert to the settings around them, and have a much harder time trusting those around them. Because of these stresses, military children are more likely to seek mental health care when a parent is deployed, than when they are not (Denning). Overall, the effects that military deployments have on children’s mental health are can be difficult to deal with because it is such an intense topic, especially for young children. 

As it can easily be seen by the examples given in this paper, being a military child can prove to be extremely difficult, even for those who are most resilient, but the military does have programs in place that are there to help ease children through the confusing and difficult times they may face. Studies show that positive youth development in the form of programs has long term positive effects on children and who they develop into (Friedman). Many of these programs have to do with helping families learn how to cope and deal with the stress of deployment. One such program is one called FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) whose main goal is to provide resiliency training to military children and families (FOCUS). The program uses people that are not referred to as therapists, but who are registered resiliency officers. Through six to eight sessions with one of their resiliency officers, families learn how to be supportive of one another and help each other through trying times. In these sessions, families and children together learn five skills that can help them to ensure that there will be less stress in the future. These skills are emotional regulation, communication, problem-solving, goal-setting, and managing deployment reminders. Studies have been done on the effectiveness of this program over a long period of time. Conducted on the UCLA medical campus, it was concluded that children and families who go through this program are more likely to experience a less stressful deployment in the future and will be more supportive of one another throughout the process (FOCUS). This program greatly improves the lives of our military families and their children. 

One thing that people rarely speak about, although the slight possibility is always there, would be the tragic event of a parent being killed in combat overseas and the deep effects that this would have on their families and children. A child’s ability to fully understand death compared to an adult’s is already very low, and adding in the fact that it happened in a country across the world doesn’t help their confusion at all. Children who have just grown out of the toddler stage tend to regress, meaning that they revert back to behaviors they had previously grown out of. Kids can also begin to act out, have feelings of guilt, become depressed, and be unable to accept that their parent is dead (Real Warriors). One program specifically has been created to help military children to cope with their parent’s death in an environment that allows them to speak freely in front of other children who are going through the exact same thing. TAPS, standing for Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors is an organization that hosts “Good Grief Camps” all over the country that are solely for the children and families of our nations fallen military. Although some of these children were incredibly young when their parents were killed overseas, they tend to actually have some intense and deep feelings. These may be brought to the surface when other children they know talk about things they do with their parents, and these kids then realize they will never be able to have those experiences (Cardoza). TAPS camps are designed to help children speak about their feelings in an environment in which they can feel as though they are not being judged, because everyone around them is experiencing the same exact thing. Representatives for the organization say that they want to prevent children from having to feel like they have to hold all their negative thoughts and feelings inside by showing them how to talk about their parent to people outside of the small TAPS community (Cardoza). Children who go attend a TAPS program or camp after the death of a parent are likely to be more open to discussion about their parents’ death and to learn how to balance their feelings in a way that makes them less anxious and stressed. The program also allows kids to learn about ways that they are able to remember their loved ones, such as telling stories about him or her, and writing down their favorite memories. The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors is doing it’s part to ensure that the children and families that our fallen military leave behind are taken care of and helped through their grief in the best way possible. 

Although military children do tend to grow up in a much more stressful and intense environment than that of civilian children, not everything that comes from their youth has negative effects. It has been proven that children living within military families have a more “meaningful identity associated with strength, service, and sacrifice” (Lester 123).  Being a military child myself, I have experienced first hand the effects of growing up in this setting. I have experienced sleepless nights worrying about the safety of my dad while he was deployed, have had to be the “new kid” at school way too many times, and have had to say goodbye to countless friends and homes. Being a military kid is not easy, but it’s out of our control, so we do what we have to to adjust. Moving so often and having to start over so often taught me to be outgoing and friendly. I also have developed a very good ability to read people as I’ve interacted with and met so many different people, from different cultures and places, throughout my life.  I have learned to be flexible, as the military tends to throw surprise deployments and relocations at you with little warning. I have a large sense of loyalty, because I know how easily the people around me can be taken away. I am respectful to myself and others as I was taught by my father that the way you treat people reflects on your character and your alone. I myself have actually been through some of the programs that have been developed to benefit military kids. Before my fathers second deployment to Afghanistan, my mom signed my family up for the FOCUS resiliency training. I was in seventh grade at the time and thought it was pointless. We’d already gotten through three deployments to Iraq and the first one to Afghanistan on our own, what would we learn from these people that we didn’t already know. Unexpectedly to me, the program was extremely helpful in learning how to deal with deployments overall. Being the oldest child, when my dad deployed I always gained numerous new responsibilities and it had always led me to be anxious and stressed out during previous deployments. Going through the training taught me how to balance these newfound responsibilities in a better way, as well as how to talk to my mom about when I needed a break from the responsibilities and just needed to be a kid for the day. Because of FOCUS, my family overall had a much better deployment experience, which would not have happened without learning skills from these workshops.

The doorbell rang at 8:11pm as I stood in the kitchen holding the bowl of ice cream I had just finished scooping. I ignored it, as I figured my mom would get it. The next thing I remember clearly is the piercing sound of my mother screaming “Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” as she collapsed at the door, and then looking down to see the bowl, shattered at my feet into a green sticky mess of glass shards and chocolate chips. They had to ask her three times, but the Marines finally got my mom to confirm that she was Leafa McCarthy. The Marines then proceeded to tell my family what we had already painfully pieced together in our heads; “We regret to inform you that LtCol Benjamin James Palmer was killed in action while serving combat mission in Afghanistan.” On this day, I became one of the thousands of children in the United States who have lost a parent to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization I mentioned earlier in the paper, TAPS, that is a safe haven for the children of fallen military is one that I do not know where I would be without. I attended my first program camp a little over two and a half weeks after my father’s death. It was held in Washington, D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. It gave me a place to talk freely about what was going through my head and where I knew that everyone around me was facing the same things in someway or another. I met people there who reminded me that I am strong and made sure that I knew I would be okay eventually. I am walking proof of the effects I have been talking about and arguing for in this paper. Deployments caused me anxiety and stress, but I learned to be resilient and overcame those to believe in myself. The programs that the military has in place to help kids through tough times really do work, people just have to be willing to take them. Losing a parent in a combat zone is one of the toughest thing a child could ever have to face, but I am strong enough now to handle whatever life decides to throw my way in the future. 
