"They're Tired"

I’ve added another website to my list of resources for military families and those interested in their well being.  It’s the Coalition for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans .  According to their website, the CIAV “is a national non-partisan partnership of organizations committed to working with and on behalf of all military, veterans, families, survivors and providers to strengthen the existing system of care and support for all those affected by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

A recent article, “Study: Military Teens Have More Stress,”  points out that the focus is often on younger children, but military teenagers are experiencing significant levels of stress as well.  It’s based on the Rand Corporation study that appeared recently in Pediatrics. 

Researchers analyzed data from more than 1500 households with military children from 11 to 17 years old and nondeployed caregivers. Sources of difficulty during deployment included taking on more household responsibilities and missing school activities. Older children said it was hard to get to know the deployed parent again upon his or her return, and they were worried about the next deployment. Confusing mood changes and  differences in how their parents were getting along were also stressful for the children.

“The main parent at home is trying to juggle so many balls that some of those balls get dropped,” one participating parent said. “I find it hard to believe that you can do it all, and so by virtue of that, since I’m the adult in the picture, sometimes I don’t have time to listen to my kids.” “There was nobody big to look up to,” her son  said. “Sometimes when my mom was away, there wasn’t anybody else to help me with my homework, something personal like that, or throw a football with me.”

Around 30 percent of the children interviewed reported symptoms of anxiety, compared to 9 to 15 percent of the general population of children the same age. For reasons that have yet to be well understood, girls have more problems with the reintegration of a deployed parent into the family, the study found. The data was collected in summer 2008, but researchers have followed up with the families twice since then, and will release findings on the next phase in a few months.

The National Military Family Association, which co-funded the study, will use the results to design future programs. Joyce Raezer, executive director of NMFA, says, “I can see the strain when I have an employee or a volunteer whose spouse is on their second or third deployment,” she said. “These are brave, committed, dedicated folks determined to do what they need to do, and they work very hard to hold it together, but they’re tired.”

Heading for the Y

This is really good news. A national partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense and the YMCA will provide free memberships, including day care, wellness programs and counseling services to families of deployed National Guard and military service members for six months, as well as for three months before and after the deployment. The partnership started Oct. 1, 2010, although many YMCAs had already been providing some of these services on their own initiative.  

The YMCA of Central Maryland, for example, has been providing free services for more than 500 families of deployed National Guard members since the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. With this new partnership, this YMCA and others can reach out to and accommodate more families of service members on a more systematic basis, although the program is still at this point limited to those stationed at specific bases. 

“We know these programs are key to personal health and well-being, help build strong families, and reduce stress and feelings of isolation,” said David Chu, undersecretary for the Defense Department’s personnel and readiness office.“For us, this is a very natural extension.”

“This new initiative will go a long way to help America’s military families live healthy lives,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Frank Gallo, the YMCA’s armed services director.

This is a great start, but it may be more important to focus on families not stationed at major bases, where it may already be easier to get free access to the kinds of activities and services the YMCA provides.  It’s the families living away from these services who might benefit most from YMCA membership, and I hope this is part of the plan for the future.

Read Me a Story

Be There Bedtime Stories is a website designed to connect far-flung families over the experience of reading.  Much like the creators of United Through Reading, my favorite philanthropy, Alison Sansome, the woman behind Be There Bedtime Stories, understands the deep bonds that develop in families by reading to each other.   Her site isn’t just for military families, but for anyone on their own initiative who wants to use it.  She is offering the first ten military families who e-mail programs@bluestarfam.org the chance to use this service free.

“I was inspired to build the site because of my frustration being so far from my nieces - unable to be a part of their development and unable to be recognized when I would visit once a year,” Sansome explains. 

The program uses webcam recording.  There are approximately 100 titles in her online bookstore.  All you have to do is read the story in front of a webcam, and the Be There Bedtime Stories website creates a video recording as you read, then places it directly on each page of the e-book, and your story is instantly accessible to watch by unlimited people, unlimited times. It requires no coordination across time zones and will be archived for use in the future.

“The coolest result from our testing was to discover how much kids want to read back,” Sansome says. “So even if soldiers are unable to access a webcam and read a story while deployed, kids can show off their reading and storytelling skills by creating a story recording for their parents or grandparents to watch them grow--no matter how far apart.”

Learn more by watching storytellers on the website: www.betherebedtimestories.com 

Militarykidz

  If you have a few minutes in a busy day, check out  militarykidz! It’s a really cute and fun website for military children, set up like a military base, with an ID card and check in at the gate.  Sign up for a card and explore the site, starting with the communications center, where you can learn about and practice Morse Code, semaphore signaling and even Braille. There’s lots of educational content too about the history of signing, the alphabet, and so on.  There’s a Boot Camp section where you can learn about military ranks, medals, music, and drill movements.  Take a minute to read the guest book, where kids comment on the website (from  “I’m bored--there are no games!” to “I miss my daddy”).  A very fun project overall, sure to make you smile at some points and say “I didn’t know that” at others.  The graphics are really cute, including the drill sergeant (right) who welcomes you to Boot Camp.

Learning More

The stresses on military families are attracting a great deal of attention among graduate student as subjects for theses and dissertations.  Marinewives.com has a survey page currently listing twelve research projects, most of them academic, as well as links to other pages where additional surveys can be found.  

Graduate students are asking for participants in studies such as this one from the University of California at Santa Barbara: 

“The purpose of this study is to examine how military wives talk to their deployed husbands about the stressors they experience when their husband is away in a combat situation. You will be asked a series of questions on a variety of topics you may discuss with your husband, including stressors you experience while he is deployed and topics about family matters.” 

This is a good sign that awareness of this at-risk population is growing.  Hopefully there will be a means for results to be shared outside the academic community, and that some of these graduate students will be so impacted by this research that they choose a path of service to those who serve.

Making Service Local

One of the big problems with an all-volunteer military in war time is that call-ups affect reserve and National Guard troops, who often live far away from bases or communities likely to have support services for military families.

 An Indiana-based organization, the NMFI,  is working to address this for residents of that state, which has 23,674 active and reserve members, mostly Army National Guard, with 1,800 deployed and 3,600  deploying in January 2012.

Most of the activities center around libraries and schools, including a Heroes Tree, where libraries place a tree on site and people are encouraged to make ornaments honoring servicemembers past and present.  Activities such as these help to keep servicemembers on people’s minds. 

 Along with program resources, libraries also are provided with leaflets called How to Help Military Families  which offers suggestions customized for childcare providers, faith-based groups, employers, health care professionals, neighbors and others.  

The institute partners with the Center for Deployment Psychology to provide training sessions for health care providers, marriage and family therapists, and mental health professionals. Additionally, the institute has shipped 1,300 training kits to primary care doctors within the state.

One example of the problem the program is trying to address is Evansville, which has a fairly large military unit. It is 76 miles away from a VA medical center, and the closest child psychologist is about 100 miles away, Columbus, Indiana has Camp Atterbury and will soon have a small active-duty unit. More than 50,000 troops have deployed after training there, yet there is relatively little child care and no after-hours care. 

Dirtbags and Bikes

When is a dirtbag not a dirtbag? When it is a group of cyclists from communities around Central California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, who join forces every year to provide new bicycles and helmets to children of service members.

“Our mission is simple,” the Village Dirtbags say. “Provide bikes and helmets to families of VAFB's deployed service members. The Christmas Bikes program is our way of supporting, and showing appreciation for, America's finest and their courageous families.”

In 2006, the first year of Christmas Bikes,they gave away 12 bikes and helmets. By 2009 they reached 95, and their goal for 2010’s even on December 18 is 100 or more. Each bike and helmet is chosen specifically for a particular child, and the photos at their gallery at Christmas Bikes 2008 and Christmas Bikes 2009 show just how true this is.

Last year, three disabled veterans also got custom made bikes that cost around a thousand dollars apiece, a program that the Village Dirtbags hope to continue.

This is another philanthropic group whose love for what they do and desire to share their enthusiasm with military children makes it a wonderful thing to support. Here’s a Brochure and Contribution Form.