Tamarah Serves Too

Kids serve too.  Just ask Tamarah Frank, a ninth grader in River Falls, Minnesota.  Tamarah’s father, Duane, is in the National Guard. Since before Tamarah can remember, he had been taking one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer to train, but during the Kosovo mission in 2003-04, he started being gone more. Then in August 2005, Duane left to spend almost two years, in Iraq.

Remembering how it felt to have her father gone so long in such a dangerous situation, Tamarah decided to use those feelings to help others as her Silver Award project, the second highest honor for a Girl Scout.  Her 35-page activity booklet, entitled “Military Kids Count,” contains coloring pages, word games, and jokes to send to soldiers.  It also includes community information about ways to be supportive of military families. Also part of the booklet are a map page to keep track of the parent’s deployment, and pages for journaling.

“I know I have skills a lot of kids do not possess because my dad was away so often, but on the other I wonder what it is like to be a kid who has no worries,” Tamarah says. “I found many things to help me with these feelings that I would like to share with other military kids.” 

The booklet met Tamarah’s goal for the silver award, but she intends to continue distributing as long as she can pay for the expenses. Her local chapter of the VFW has helped with printing costs to this point.  “I hope to continue my work with military kids in some way to earn my Gold Award,” Tamara says, “because it is something I truly get excited about doing.”

The photo shows Redwood Falls Mayor Gary Revier giving Tamarah a certificate of appreciation from the City Council for her work.  Here's a link to an article about her.

Good Things Come in Tens

In his latest blog on the organization’s website, Joseph Annotti, President of the National Fraternal Congress of America, has created a list of ten reasons why supporting military families is a good idea for fraternal organizations. Most of these apply to all organizations, so if you are wondering what might be a good focus for an activity for your own group, here, in summary,is his list.  For more information, here is a link to his article. 

1. Every society can participate, whether it can raise $100 or $100,000.
2. It makes a great activity for special occasions.  The fraternal associations have something called JOIN HANDS DAY, for example. It might be appropriate for some organizations to team with the VFW, American Legion or other military-related organizations to broaden the base for their efforts. 
3. It provides a direction for fundraising. “Give folks a purpose and a mission and it’s amazing what they can accomplish,” Annotti says.
4. It creates opportunities for friendly competition among organizations to see who can have the most creative and successful fundraiser. 
5. People like to feel they are in service to the country in some way. “What’s more patriotic than supporting one of the most overlooked groups so integral to our national defense: the children of men and women serving in the military?” Annotti asks.
6. It’s easy to make it local, by providing support to children and families living nearby. 
7. It provides a common cause for organizations big enough to have a number of chapters. This can build cohesiveness and identity for the organization as a whole.
8. It will dovetail nicely into mission statements, charters, and public policy agendas for many organizations, and can strengthen the message they send to governmental policymakers!
9. The need is huge, obvious, and ongoing
10.  It’s easy.  Though this contact info is just for NFCA member groups, (Elizabeth Snyder, Director of Advocacy and Public Policy, at esnyder@nfcanet.org), perhaps there is general information she can provide, or perhaps contacting the local USO, school district, or other service providers would be a good place to start.

Tell Me a Story

Let me tell you a story.  Once upon a time, not very long ago, the Military Child Education Coalition started a program called Tell Me a Story.  As they put it on their MCEC web page, the coalition wanted “to empower our military children by using literature and their own stories in a way that fosters skills for resilience, strong peer and parent connections, a sense of pride and accomplishment, and a caring community.”

Tell Me A Story events revolve around a pre-selected book.  Parents and children listen to the story together, then go off in small groups to discuss it with a facilitator. At the end, every family gets a copy of the book to take home.

What’s particularly nice about this program is that the books that are chosen don’t necessarily have anything directly to do with military children in particular.  They are just good stories, enabling any issues and concerns, military-related or not, to come up naturally in conversation.  Some of the books used at recent or upcoming events include Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot by Margot Theis Raven, Night Catch by Brenda Ehrmantraut, How to Bake an American Pie by Karma Wilson, Verdi by Janell Cannon, and

The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow.

Tell Me a Story Events are always free to the families. The cost per family is around $14, mostly covering the cost of the book. Local individuals, service organizations, and businesses underwrite the costs, and MCEC provides marketing materials, training, and some supplemental materials.

For more information about Tell Me A Story, contact TMAS@MilitaryChild.org or phone the MCEC world headquarters office at 254-953-1923.  If you live in the San Diego area and would like to sponsor one of these events, I would like to help!

Daddy's Home

I’m an early riser, so around 6AM, I get up, hit the button on the coffeemaker, check my email and Facebook, review my website statistics for the day before, and then settle in to write my daily blog for Xanthe’s World. This has been my routine every day since I launched this blog in August.

Sometimes, as I go to the file where I keep links to interesting articles about military children, I wonder whether I haven’t covered it all already. Is there anything new to say about the stresses on families of repeated deployments, any new help program that sounds really different and original?

Then something always happens, something that tells me it’s not about saying things once and moving on. This morning, this photograph jolted me out of the doldrums. Here is a little boy who looks to be around two, who clearly does not recognize his father, home from a tour in Afghanistan.

How heartbreaking this must be for both the father and the mother, who must be encouraging the child to overcome his bewilderment and greet this stranger. On this day of excitement, of family unity, their little boy is speaking eloquently in his own way about the less obvious but still traumatic cost of war.

How long will daddy be home? Long enough for games, tickles, and the little rituals to feel natural. Long enough for the slobbery kisses and the sticky fingers slipping into his. And then, the news that he is leaving again. Perhaps this Marine is home for good, but most are not. Many size up their chances for a better life as a civilian in this economy and decide this is as good as it gets.

So what does this child have ahead of him? What will the pictures look like at four? At ten? What will have happened to his father and mother in the interim? How will war have affected dad? How will the stress of parenting alone affect mom? What lies ahead for this child’s whole family?

Repeated long deployments have created an entire subgroup of American children growing up largely without one of their parents at home, living with the knowledge that a parent is in danger, coping with visits of a parent whose war experiences make him or her a stranger in the house. This little boy is just at the beginning of what will grow more complicated for him than making the connection between this man and daddy, and liking having him home.

What do we owe this child? He is serving too.

Picturing the Children

This is a rather sweet effort to serve military families this holiday season. The PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) is working with the Soldiers' Angels volunteer organization to create the PMDA Soldiers' Angels Portraits of Love Project. The goal of the Project is to provide 10,000 U.S. soldiers around the world with new portraits of their families and loved ones this holiday season.

PMDA is currently setting up free photo shoots at JC Penney’s Portrait Studios, at locations on military bases, and in photographer’s studios across the country. They are looking both for military families and photographers who would like to participate.  For more information click here.

Finding the Best

An article by Elaine Wilson of the American Forces Press Service, highlights the fact that although some problems in military life are tough and intractable, they don’t all have to be.  The Sittercity Corporate Program is the country’s largest online source for important local services from babysitting, to dog walking, to tutoring.  Across the country more than a million caregivers, prescreened for credentials and background, are listed on the site. Where appropriate, these caregivers are military certified and/or military subsidized, and have access to a military installation. 

“Because of the mobile nature of military life, trusted community resources are often difficult to identify and locate,” says deputy undersecretary of defense for military community and family policy Tommy T. Thomas. “These online tools will help service and family members attain the best match between resource and need.” 

While I imagine that on military bases, neighbors are the best source of information and help, Reserve and Guard families often live far from such support networks.  When these families face relocation, it seem as if this service would be particulalry welcome. It must be quite reassuring to know there are options other than trusting the phone book or neighbors to find quality care for one’s children in a new home.

The Sittercity Corporate Program is funded by the Defense Department, and offers active duty, Guard and Reserve families with a free paid membership to the site, which they can access at http://www.sittercity.com/dod. While the membership is free, servicemembers will be responsible for the hiring and payment of caregivers.  Good job on this one DoD!

Life in Transition

Military children are the focus of the Manitou Springs, Colorado Business of Art Center's Humanities Series beginning Saturday, Oct. 16

The showcase of the exhibition, entitled "Life in Transition," is an art exhibit by military children from kindergarten through high school, The military children were invited to “create art that represents how their lives are different from the children of the general community.  BAC gallery director and curator Liz Szabo said. “This promises to be a moving and thought-provoking show.” 

The opening day of the exhibition also featured performances by theManitou Art Theater and several workshops for children of all ages.  

All exhibits and events are at the BAC, at 515 Manitou Ave. They are free and open to the public through January 15, 2011.