Two Paths Of Growing Up In A Military Family

The need to be able to adapt is necessary for every military child since conditions will not always be perfect. Sometimes orders are cut short and a family may have to move before they expected. Two of the most influential years in shaping my background were the two years I spent living in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where adaptability was of the utmost importance. For example, since everything was shipped to the base on on a barge and sometimes the barge was delayed, the local store would often be out of many products. If one needed something that was out of stock, he or she was simply out of luck and had to make due with what there was. Furthermore, the small student population made for small class sizes sizes and limited resources but despite this we attended school everyday and made the most of what we had. Despite of all these challenges, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there and was adaptable in order to adjust to all the changes from the United

My life before enlisting into the military I was very different. I was a gregarious person, always wanting to go out and meeting new people. My childhood, and school memories were those of happy moments. I had many friends, went and had sleep overs, went on school trips, had fun at amusement parks,

Military life can be a big amount of stress for children. There is multiple deployments where they go through long separations from their parents. Children even could experience a parent getting injured or possibly a death. That all is the reality for children who has a parent in the active duty military(website 1). There is such a huge impact on children’s mental health and high rates of trauma from them experiencing their parents going on deployments. More than two million American children have had a parent deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. At least 19,000 children have had a parent wounded in action and over 2,200 children have lost a parent in Iraq or Afghanistan(website 1). After all of this occurring in their lives, it then causes a huge change in the child. These changes are lashing out in anger, changes in school performance,

Growing up as a military child and living all over the world, I was afforded many

Adding something a good BRAT friend stated about this picture in another group she shared it in,

While many articles look at military children and how they cope with deployments this article (Cozza & Lerner, 2013, p. 3-11) examines the resilience of military children so that professionals can better understand military children as a whole child not just a child during and post deployment. This article also looks at how military children need to have policies and programs that are designed to meet their developing needs. The article further goes on to look at how professionals need incorporate the strengths of military children and the strengths they bring to their military families, so they can cope with the challenges that arise in their lives. This article points out that many children exposed to traumatic events tend to be healthier. Then the article discusses how overgeneralization of military children and families can hurt how programs and policies are enacted to benefit military children and families. It also looks at even though military pay has improved the wages of a military spouse are much lower than their civilian counterparts. A look at how the youngest of military children are the most vulnerable, how there needs to be more childcare as well as community support programs. Concluding with how we can gain insight and learn from the resilience and strengths that military children and military families

Have you ever thought to yourself “today could be the day I lose everything and everyone I care about?” As a military child I was use to moving but never did I think I would move to a whole new country. Moving to Japan was exciting, yet scary at the same time. I was excited to learn a new culture and language, but scared I wouldn’t fit in. Living on a military base I was surrounded by other military children and of course many Americans. I had an amazing first 2 years in Japan but all of that suddenly changed.

Some children in a military family had to move a lot, and leading them to say good-bye to all the experiences with their friends. This is a rather sad for the lot of them. I know it was hard for me losing great friends that you grew up with. That’s how my life was, I moved 5 times until my parents left the military and found a new place to live. When ever I moved to a new place to live I had to make new friends, find new things to do, and adjust to the school.

I was not a military brat, the child of a person in the military, however I attended four different elementary schools before entering the fifth grade. I cannot say it was something easy; I rather think that destiny was preparing me to take care of my own military brats. Non-military families generally think that military brats will have problems adapting to new places with constant moves however, I have found through observation, personal experience, and research that they develop good coping mechanisms to adapt and become resilient. Constant moves are not easy. Children get sad and sometimes it takes time to adapt, but over time, and with the right support they learn to cope and become resilient.

Growing up in a military family we moved around a lot luckily for me and my sisters we were young when most the moving was done. I was born in Germany on Air Force base but we moved within a year and I don’t recall much from there. From there we moved back to the states to help my dad’s mom and ended up in Arizona, I don’t recall a lot of details from there. Moving to Utah I was older and remember just vague details, such as our house and a couple of friends, my first-grade teacher and going to church. I was old enough to remember having to move to Wichita Falls, Texas though I cried and cried begging my mom to not make me move, I think back now to what my life would have turned out to be had I not moved. We ended up living in Burkburnett, this small, clique centered town made it extremely hard to become involved. This is the only real home I’ve ever known though it comes with its pros and cons I wouldn’t trade growing up there for anything. I met my ex-husband in that town and from there we were stationed in Savannah, Georgia. This area was right by the ocean and was perfect in every way to me, not too big, but big enough there was always something to do, had a good college and the airfield was

The challenges and stressors impacting military families are numerous yet this research endeavor is limited, therefore a focused exploration was required. This brief review will begin with the issues impacting military families, focusing on those related to deployment, relocation, and including a section exploring the impact on the children of these issues. Next, the issues of re-adjustment after service will be examined. Finally, the role of the social worker as it pertains to their work with Service Members, Veterans, and their families, in overcoming these

We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses Approach (PRISMA) for generating and systematically reviewing and analyzing original published studies on military families, their children’s behaviors, and parenting interventions. Key definitions and MeSH terms used were military personnel, parent, parenting, child-rearing, veteran, and parent-child intervention. Inclusion criteria for this review consisted the study needed to be original research addressing parenting aspects of military connected families and their children with preschool children as the part or central focus of the sample, or testing an intervention study that addressed these concepts. Exclusion criteria consisted of omitting studies of military connected families without preschool children, and non-English-language and non US military samples. After determining the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the terms were entered into PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, PsychInfo, Web of Science, and EMbase for the years 2001-2014, yielding over 11,800 records. Further search within the reference lists and bibliographies of the analyzed studies and previous review articles on similar subjects revealed two additional studies that were included in the final review. This resulted in 21 published studies meeting criteria. Please see figure 1 for details of research synthesis method.

One advantage to being in the military, you could possibly move across the United States and even travel the world. If you are a person who likes adventures, this could be perfect. However, if you are service member with a young family that has to travel it can be stressful and challenging. Moving disrupts family routines and social relationships. If children are school aged, it means transitioning to a new school and having to make new friends, while leaving old friends behind. It also means facing new learning standards that may have higher or lower demands, making school difficult. I saw these challenges when I interviewed my friend, Tyler and his father, James. These challenges appear in research about military families.

My 7th grade English teacher had our parents write a letter to her about who we are. My mother doesn’t know I read it, but she said that I always had a hard time making friends. There is something different about a military community though. Everyone is nice to you, and people understand how your life is. I slowly made friends, but they eventually moved, so I had to make more. This caused problems for me because I wasn’t used to having friends move away because I was the one moving. Teen drama occurred. I had crushes. I had enemies. I had fake friends. Now that I look at it, none of it really matters because I am happy. I loved high school once I had made some really good friends. Some of those friends I would do anything

Military families have constant challenges and difficulties every single day. It’s a challenge that one has to continually work through constantly moving from house to house or state to state, all the time, and always having a loved one being deployed and overseas away from their family for six months or more at a time. It’s harder for children to go through this in my opinion. A military parent is always at work but when they leave for 6 months at a time, when the child is an infant and all through their teenage years, that parent becomes easily forgotten. Not even a memory. The parent finally comes home from fighting for our country and they are so excited to see their babies and spouses only to find out that they are a stranger to their