What I've Learned

This will be my last post to Xanthe’s World for the foreseeable future.  I want to summarize the most important insights and information I have garnered in my nearly five months of daily blogging.

• Military families are under an enormous amount of stress, beyond what normally goes with the territory.  This is caused in large part by the extraordinarily long and frequent deployments of servicemembers to war zones.  This takes a toll on the psychological wellbeing and physical health of families, and makes reintegration of returning servicemembers more difficult.  As a result, the divorce rate is rising and a greater percentage of children than in the general population need help with mental health issues. Aggravating this are rising numbers of servicemembers with PTSD, which has a carryover effect onto spouses and children.

• Superficial and easy forms of support for service families are abundant (think “support our troops” bumper stickers), but due to the all-volunteer military, most Americans have little contact with or knowledge of military families.  Only 2% of the population serves our country.  This creates a situation where caring becomes very abstract, rather arbitrary and not very deep. If we are going to ask such a small number of our fellow Americans to serve for us, we must find better ways to serve them in return.

• Keeping our armed services all-volunteer has placed a huge burden on National Guard members, many of whom made the commitment to service based on the expectation that it would take them away from home only a predictable and minimal amount of time each month.  They have jobs and professions that are disrupted by being called up for lengthy service, and they often live far away from military bases, making their families unable to access services meant to help them.  Reserves face many of the same problems.  

• Children suffer academically from frequent moves and are often unable to stay on track for graduation and eligibility for college.  Children with special needs are particularly vulnerable, especially in situations where limited availability of service makes them have to start over on waiting lists in every new community they move to.  Efforts are underway to address this on a nationwide basis.

• The impact of military service on women, especially those deployed to combat zones, is not well understood. Many women seem to come back from deployment with feelings of futility and inadequacy about settling back into the role of nurturing parent.  A suicide rate three times the national average for women in the same age group is a cause for alarm.  

• There are many, many programs and services in the private sector as well as those offered by the military and governmental agencies.  A large number of these are self-help offered by veterans or spouses, and in some cases military children, to others going through the same things. It is really heartening to see how much effort is going into making sure veterans, active duty, and reserve servicemembers and their families get the help they need and the advocacy they deserve. Still, many of these programs are run on a shoestring and even the better-funded ones have seen their funding cut, and in some cases eliminated due to the downturn in the economy.  Private foundations have cut back their support of all kinds of programs, and military families must compete with many other worthy causes for a dwindling pot of money. Their needs are growing at the same time resources are shrinking.

• Military families are known for their resilience, their strength, and their teamwork. They need our support to keep the challenges from becoming too great, and they need us to show our pride in them and the service their military members provide.  Kids serve too.  Spouses serve too.  They are doing an amazing job, and we need not only to notice, but to tell them so.  

Hiatus

Though the two meaningful markers of a new year for me are in the fall--the start of school and the High Holy Days--I can’t help but get swept up in all the reflection and resolution making going on around me this time of year. I have spent some time in the last week or so thinking about the future of Xanthe’s World, and I have decided that I can’t continue to make it the same level of priority it has been since late summer, when I began blogging daily. This is my142nd blog post, and I am feeling at this point that I have uncovered and presented the major things that need to be said, sometimes more than once.

I have thought about going to once a week rather than daily, but I have so many other things I must pay attention to professionally in 2011 (a return to full-time teaching after a sabbatical, a third novel coming out in April while I am still busy promoting Penelope’s Daughter, a fourth novel to sell and bring along to publication, and a fifth to write). I am not sure how much decreased frequency would help, since the blog would still have to be on my mind all the time, or even whether new entries would add that much to what is already there.

As a result, I have decided to put Xanthe’s World on hiatus. I will pick it back up if there appears to be a need, but you will have to tell me that via your comments here.

One of the things that made me decide the time is right is the appearance yesterday of a cover story in the New York Times summarizing many of the issues I have been blogging about. My goal was always to bring these issues to people’s attention, but clearly with the NYT weighing in, my concerns will get an airing well beyond what I can give them. I figure if I leave this link as my second-to-the-top blog entry, the story will continue to have an audience from anyone coming to my blog.

My last entry, at least for now, will be tomorrow, New Year’s Day 2011. In it, I will summarize what I have learned and what I am concerned about as I relinquish my voice in this blog. I will continue to blog from time to time for The Huffington Post when new issues affecting military children arise. For now, I’ll just say here that I am grateful that the dedication of Penelope’s Daughter to “all the children left behind when fathers and mothers go off to war” took me on such a meaningful and eye-opening journey, and I hope you feel more knowledgeable as well.

Hidden Costs

NPR’s Alix Spiegel aired a story earlier this month about female veterans and the alarming rate of suicide among those returning from deployments. The journal Psychiatric Services recently published a study by Portland State University researcher Mark Kaplan, looking at female deaths by suicide in 16 states. He compared the rate of suicide among female veterans to that among female civilians, and found that female vets age 34 and younger are 3 times as likely to commit suicide than their civilian peers. About 20 percent of the suicides in the US each year are veterans, but because women make up a small percentage of veterans, their special situation is often overlooked.

Spiegel cites a story told by Dr. Jan Kemp, head of the Department of Veterans Affairs' National Suicide Prevention Hotline, about a female vet recently returned from deployment who collected up a large number of pills, drove her car to a remote area and called the hotline to relay a message to her husband. "She had had a recent argument with her husband and had come to the conclusion that he and her two young children would be better off without her," Kemp said. She had PTSD as well as a history of MST (military sexual trauma), which is apparently a significant part of the profile in many female veteran suicides. This story had a better ending than most, for the call was traceable by GPS, and she was found unconscious but still alive.

Women who call the hotline, Kemp says, talk much more about their children than men tend to. "They worry that because they sometimes get angry and don't deal with things well that they won't be appropriate with their kids," she said. "And I think that is one of the things that it most poignant on the hotline is when young mothers call and they're concerned about their ability to take care of their children because of their problems."

As more women find themselves on the front lines of the war on terror, it’s easy to predict this problem will grow. Though they will remain a small subset of a subset of overall suicides, we owe consideration of this problem to these women and the families they will leave behind if strong programs and strategies are not forthcoming.

On the Move

An estimated 1 in 88 military children has an autism-spectrum disorder, higher than the national average. Military life is already tough on these children, who need order and stability. Intensive Behavioral Interventions, a well documented successful strategy to help these chidlren, is so helpful that 23 states define this treatment as “medically necessary” and require private insurers to cover it. The Navy surgeon general, the Army surgeon general and the chief medical officer of the Coast Guard all recommend that the Pentagon fund these services via the military health care system. 

Sounds great, but the Pentagon covers only a part of the cost, which can run to more than $65,000 annually. Military families end up applying for help through state Medicaid programs, which means that ever time they move to another state, they must reapply and often spend years on state waiting lists.

Kate Sylvester is vice president of military families for the America’s Promise Alliance and First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization, points out in a recent Politico article,  that “providing recommended levels of care for special-needs children can be expensive. But it’s also expensive when service members 

accumulate so much debt that they lose their security clearances. Or when highly trained service members, such as combat helicopter pilots or air traffic controllers, leave the service prematurely because their children cannot get proper treatment.”  It seems there are no easy choices in today’s military when it comes to balancing service with family.

In 2009, the Defense Department offered a program called My Career Advancement Account, providing military spouses $6,000 stipends to pay for training in what are sometimes called “portable professions.” Blue Star Families, a military-family support group, reports that of the 61 percent of spouses who don’t work outside the home, 48 percent want to work but can’t do so because of their highly mobile lifestyle. Presumably that number is even higher in this economic downturn.

The program became a victim of its own popularity. My CAA now pays $4,000 tuition only for associate-degree programs, professional licenses, and vocational certificates, and is now available only to spouses of junior service members. The point of the program was to encourage retention, but now spouses of servicemembers promoted above a certain level will find themselves ineligible--a great reward for high quality service!  Likewise, if a spouse waits to start training until after the children start school, it may be too late, and if a four-year degree is desired (such as an RN), the Pentagon won’t help.

Cuts are needed, and everyone screams when what happens affects him or her personally, but surely military families deserve more thoughtful consideration to their needs. 

Not Alone

Not Alone  is a website providing “programs, resources and services to warriors and families impacted by combat stress and PTSD through a confidential and anonymous community.”  It contains articles, blogs, profiles and stories of individuals, links to resources and other helpful means to ensure that suffering servicemembers know that are not alone.  It’s worth a look.  Among the symptoms of PTSD are the following:


• Feelings of extreme loneliness and alienation
• Feelings of being unlike other people
• Feeling disconnected from other people
• Loss of sense of security in relationships and in the world in general
• Alternating between trying harder and giving up
• Stress on significant relationships(marriage, etc)
• Helplessness, hopelessness, and anger, often leading to rage


It's not just returning servicemembers who experience this, but family members who have never had direct experiences with trauma, as well as many who have non-combat experiences of similar intensity.  There's strength in awareness, so check it out.

The Weight of the War

 Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, 787,000 Guard members and reservists have been called to active duty, the most since World War II. A half-million have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan – and 200,000 have served multiple tours. Think for a moment. National Guard and Reserves. 

Joining the National Guard in the past has been a different kind of commitment that joining the regular military.  It’s a just-in-case kind of operation, which demands some time each month but allows for a normal life at home otherwise. Reserves are just that--ones that aren’t called upon except in emergencies because they have already served.  Whatever one thinks of the war--why we went and whether we should stay--it is a very serious matter that our country has used, and used, and used a human resource it normally shouldn’t have called on at all.

Why is this a problem? Being in the Guard or reserves isn’t a job.  These are people with other jobs, living wherever they want around our country. Many of these servicemembers are older, with more responsibilities to family. Their families do not have, because normally they would not need, many of the support services that full-time active duty service members on or near military installations take advantage of. 

Outside the military community, few seem to understand how so much of the weight of the war has fallen on the shoulders of such servicemembers.  This is the price a few of us are paying for an all-volunteer military.  Just as we are being told that solving our economic crisis will cut us all deeply and painfully, perhaps it is time to say that if we want to take the fight to the terrorists, we will have to be prepared for similar changed in our way of life and similar nationwide sacrifice for our mutual defense. 

Kaylee

Here's a beautiful story about a five-year-old girl from Dixon, California, Kaylee Hubbard, who collected new toys from her kindergarten class and others to donate them to injured servicemembers hospitalized at Travis Air Force Base and in the Bay Area.  That way, when their children visited them at Christmastime, the hospitalized parent would have presents to give them.   Click here to see a heartwarming video from KCRA News.

Bells

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:

"There is no peace on earth," I said,

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Playing Santa

Santa took to the road a few days back.  Northern Virginia donors and volunteers affiliated with the Our Military Kids’ Wounded Warrior Program provided gifts to nearly 100 military children across the country. Bob Nelson, a real estate agent in Great Falls and Gloria Schaefer, a volunteer, coordinated the effort. Schaefer took responsibility for two brothers, 13 and 10, brothers, whose father was injured serving in Iraq with the National Guard. 

Both of the children had asked for bikes. Due to their father's injury, the bikes had to arrive fully assembled, which made shipping difficult, so Schaefer and her husband drove from McLean, Virginia to Montgomery, Ala. to deliver two fully assembled bicycles in person. 

“After speaking with the family, I knew this was the only option,” said Schaefer. “These kids, along with all the other children of Wounded Warriors, deserve to have Santa visit their homes.” 

Xanthe's World: Snowballing

Xanthe's World: Snowballing: "American Airlines offered something very nice to children who have lost a parent while on active duty since September 11, 2001. The airline..."

Snowballing

American Airlines offered something very nice to children who have lost a parent while on active duty since September 11, 2001. The airline flew 1300 families to Dallas for an all-expenses-paid weekend getaway two weeks ago. They went to Six Flags and attended special concerts and other activities

Inaugurated in 2006, The Snowball Express is designed to give these children and their surviving parent  a few days of fun and a change to meet others like themselves. Here’s a video of the wonderful ceremonies held at the Tulsa airport to send six families off.

"I really think it's nice of them, whoever is doing this," said ten-year-old Koby Mackey, from Tulsa, whose father died in 2008. "It really means a lot to me knowing that somebody cares," his thirteen-year-old brother Ryan adds.

"I think it's real great that people have volunteered their time for us," JR Graham said.  His father was killed by a suicide bomber.

The surviving parents also say that spending time with other families helps them  "It's nice to have somebody to bounce some ideas off of or, 'My kid's going through this. Have you dealt with it yet?' one of the mothers said.

In the end, however much events like this help, "it doesn't change the fact that he's gone," JR Graham said.  

Managing at Home

In some respects being a military spouse with a deployed partner is no different from being a single parent.  When a child is ill or hospitalized, or when emergencies arise, you have to handle it yourself, call in favors from friends and family, and suffer the consequences of missing work or, in some cases, school.  In others, of course, it is.  There’s a relationship you are trying to keep intact and strong, and there is the fear of knowing that someone you love and are committed to is in harm’s way.

Likewise, as difficult as it is on your end, there’s a partner too far away to help, who wants nothing more than to be there with you. 

The stress on deployed military personnel and their family is uniquely difficult. Even though most spouses understand what they are getting into when they marry someone in the military, it can still be way more difficult that they imagined.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” says Kate, 23, whose husband, Sean, is a staff sergeant in the Air Force.  “I got married at 19; I didn’t by any means think this would be easy. But I didn’t think my son would sit in the car and cry for his daddy and there was nothing I could do about it.”

An article, “The Life and Challenges of One Deployed Beaufort Military Family,” tells Kate and Sean’s story.  She’s the mother of two toddlers, and also a full-time college student. What makes it more difficult, she says, is the general public misunderstanding her family’s unique situation. “People tell me all the time, ‘Well you knew what you were getting into,’” Kate says. “The sheer lack of support from the general public makes me so mad.”

For example,when she missed class during her son’s recent illness, one of her professors questioned her ability to continue in the class. “I told him ‘Look, I’m a single parent right now, my GPA is a 3.94, and my husband’s in a war zone. My child will come first, but I will ace all your exams,” she says.

Kevin and Stacy are another Beaufort-based Marine couple, with a toddler daughter, Meghan. Kevin  recently returned from his third deployment. They kept in touch once or twice a week, depending on the weather over there. “If there’s a sandstorm it won’t happen for at least a week.”  They also text messages and call each other on the cell phones, incurring huge, but in their minds, worthwhile bills.

In addition, families use other objects to comfort children missing their parents. “We made a pillowcase for Collin that has pictures of him and his dad and it says ‘Sweet dreams, Daddy loves you,’ so Daddy goes to bed with him each night,” Kate says. Collin also has a doll from HugaHero.com with a photo of his father and an internal voice recorder where Sean recorded messages for his son. Before Kevin deployed in January, he videotaped himself reading books for Meghan, now 3, and her little brother, Connor, 1.

Missing milestones is also difficult. “Kevin missed Connor’s first birthday and Meghan’s first birthday, but he was able to do the webcam. So he saw the cake, balloons, all that stuff,” Stacy says. “It’s not quite the same, but it’s better than not having him at all.”

Love From a Distance

The National Fatherhood Initiative recently posted a good article outlining a number of ideas for ways a deployed parent can stay close to his or her children. These are easily adaptable for anyone separated from beloved children. 

Put a “Message in a Bottle”
Before leaving, write as many short messages to your child as you can and put them in a special container. The child can pull out one message a day.  You could either write the number you know you need, or send an envelope full of replenishing messages.  I used to leave a note in my children’s lunch bags every school morning when they were still in primary grades.  They loved it. This one would be easily adaptable for grandparents or others, and could be set up like an advent calendar, with messages linked to how many days remaining until you are reunited.

Draw Pictures for Your Children

When I was young, everything my parents drew made me happy.  It was better than I could do but unskilled enough that I could laugh at how funny it looked, and how they weren’t the most perfect, talented, and smart people in all of creation after all. So go for it!  Start with a simple picture of you and your child. Maybe go on from there to draw a few more of you going about the things you will be doing while you are away. 

The other suggestions are behind the scenes things that will benefit your children even if they won’t really know you have done them.  First is getting your house in order--taking care of any financial issues, squaring away paperwork and legal documents, and making sure the parent staying behind knows how to manage everything. 

Another suggestion is to spend a little time studying child development, perhaps even taking a book with you.  That way you will have a better sense of what to expect on your return, and you will also be able to ask more focused questions and understand better what the parent remaining behind is telling you about what the children are up to.

There are many ways to love in absentia.  The most important, of course, is just to do it.  But there are ways to make it show when you aren’t there, and these are just a few of them. 

Lilly Endowment Steps Up

Lilly Endowment Inc. has given $6.3 million to the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue. "Millions of military families in our country are recovering from, or still experiencing, challenges related to combat deployment," says the institute's director, Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth.

"Our state and our nation are in a critical period that will determine whether recent veterans will suffer the same troubling levels of poverty, homelessness and health problems experienced by their predecessors. If we fail to do a good job of serving those who have served our country, we all will pay the price."

The Military Family Research Institute's (MFRI) efforts include Passport Toward Success, helping military children and families reconnect after deployment. Also, mini-grants of up to $2,500 are provided to Family Readiness and Community Mobilization groups developing community activities to help military families. Operation Purple Camp, a free camp for military children that I have written about in the past, also runs a campsite at Purdue. Its funding was jeopardized by the loss of its main donor last year. The photo at right is of campers at one of its many sites. Operation Diploma, supports college and university programs that help veterans succeed on campus.

"MFRI's goal is to make Indiana a better place for military families and to generate tools and insights here that can benefit military families everywhere," said Wadsworth, who is a professor of child development and family studies at Purdue.

Lilly Endowment Inc. is an Indianapolis-based, philanthropic foundation. The Military Family Research Institute, part of the Center for Families in Purdue's College of Health and Human Sciences, is the leading academic institution in the country specializing in research about military families.

For more information, click here.

Better Than Socks or a Tie

I'm going "off-message" today to pass along information about some little-known charities, none focusing on military children, that are the subject of an excellent column by Nicholas Kristol in today's NY Times. Here are some ways to do something more meaningful than paw through merchandise at crowded stores this holiday season.  

Courtesy Mr. Kristol, here are his suggestions:

"Arzu (ArzuStudioHope.org) employs women in Afghanistan to make carpets for export. The women get decent wages, but their families must commit to sending children to school and to allowing women to attend literacy and health classes and receive medical help in childbirth. Rugs start at $250 and bracelets at $10, or a $20 donation pays for a water filter for a worker’s family.

"First Book (firstbook.org) addresses a basic problem facing poor kids in America: They don’t have books. One study found that in low-income neighborhoods, there is only one age-appropriate book for every 300 children. So First Book supports antipoverty organizations with children’s books — and above all, gets kids reading. A $100 gift will supply 50 books for a mentor to tutor a child in reading for a year. And $20 will get 10 books in the hands of kids to help discover the joys of reading.

"Fonkoze (fonkoze.org) is a terrific poverty-fighting organization if Haiti is on your mind, nearly a year after the earthquake. A $20 gift will send a rural Haitian child to elementary school for a year, while $50 will buy a family a pregnant goat. Or $100 supports a family for 13 weeks while it starts a business.

"Another terrific Haiti-focused organization is Partners in Health, (pih.org), founded by Dr. Paul Farmer, the Harvard Medical School professor. A $100 donation pays for enough therapeutic food (a bit like peanut butter) to treat a severely malnourished child for one month. Or $50 provides seeds, agricultural implements and training for a family to grow more food for itself.

"Panzi Hospital (panzifoundation.org) treats victims of sexual violence in eastern Congo, rape capital of the world. It’s run by Dr. Denis Mukwege, who should be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. A $10 donation pays for transport to the hospital for a rape survivor; $100 pays for counseling and literacy and skill training for a survivor for a month.

"Camfed (camfed.org), short for the Campaign for Female Education, sends girls to school in Africa and provides a broad support system for them. A $300 donation pays for a girl to attend middle school for a year in rural Zambia, and $25 sends a girl to elementary school.

"The Nurse-Family Partnership program (nursefamilypartnership.org) is a stellar organization in the United States that works with first-time mothers to try to break the cycle of poverty. It sends nurses to at-risk women who are pregnant for the first time, continuing the visits until the child turns 2. The result seems to be less alcohol and drug abuse during pregnancy, and better child-rearing afterward, so that the children are less likely to tangle with the law even years later. A $150 gift provides periodic coaching and support for a young nurse by a senior nurse for a month.

"Edna Hospital (ednahospital.org) is a dazzling maternity hospital in Somaliland, an area with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Edna Adan Ismail, a Somali nurse- midwife who rose in the ranks of the World Health Organization and also served as Somaliland’s foreign minister, founded the hospital with her life’s savings and supports it with her United Nations pension. A $50 gift pays for a woman to get four prenatal visits, a hospital delivery, and one postnatal visit. Or $150 pays for a lifesaving C-section for a woman in obstructed labor.

"The Somaly Mam Foundation fights sex slavery in Cambodia and around the world (somaly.org). It is run by Somaly Mam, who was sold into Cambodian brothels as a young girl before escaping years later. For $50, you can buy a lovely silk scarf made by a trafficking survivor; $25 buys a necklace made by a survivor."

I'm a writer, so Firstbook.org is the one that caught my eye, plus it is closer to home, where needs are so great.  Which one grabbed you?  Please donate today.

"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.