Help on the Home Front

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, the director of the Military and Family Research Institute at Purdue University offers an effective analogy for what it is like to have first a deployed and then a returning military parent. "Picture a pyramid with the children on the top and the parents on the bottom," she writes in her article, "Help on the Home Front," in the Fort Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette. "Now, remove one parent. Everyone else will have to adjust to make up for the missing member. The structure changes. Now, imagine trying to reinsert the military parent, and you’ll understand what they face."

Purdue University’s Military Family Research Institute has just awarded more than $1 million in grants to fund efforts that will help veterans succeed in college. A significant portion supports new programs at the Indiana and Purdue Universities' campus in Fort Worth, and nearby Ivy Tech Community College. Efforts will include the hiring of a full-time veterans’ affairs coordinator; review and revision of policies and procedures; creation of an orientation program and resource library specifically addressing the needs of veterans; and development of listservs, social media and the Web to improve communication. Seminars and training will assist faculty, staff and the community to get a better sense of the special needs of veteran students.

The Lilly Endowment funds this Purdue effort, called Operation Diploma, and many of the programs at the institute Wadsworth directs. It also uses endowment funds to provide small seed grants for communities that want to help military families and service members. 

"In Indiana, almost all of the 4,000 troops currently serving are citizen-soldiers – members of the National Guard or reserves," Wadsworth writes. "Their families don’t have the same support system they would find if they were living at a military installation. This can cause them to feel even more alone.

It’s hard for others to understand what it’s like. At-home spouses often don’t have a lot of information about what their service member is doing. They hesitate sharing any troubling news, knowing it could distract their military spouses and then affect their safety. The children tend to worry about the parents who are left at home and feel responsible for them. Some have trouble sleeping. They don’t have many people with whom they can share their concerns, who will really understand. Often they don’t ask for help."

Among the ideas Wadsworth suggests teachers try in their classrooms is to proactively incorporate information into their lessons, including  geography, art, music and history focusing on the areas where students’ parents are serving. "Time spent on writing assignments could be used to have children write to service members," she adds. "This not only will encourage the military child to share, but also may encourage the other children to be more sensitive and thoughtful."

More information about the Military Family Research Institute is available at www.mfri.purdue.edu/