Why Kids Do Two Years

Being part of the military taught brats to deal with the changes in their life with humor and to be brave. They learned to not gripe about their parent's six-month deployment and taught them to rely on themselves. It also taught them that family was

First of all, the children are being used for war crimes and they are underaged. When you join the military you have to be over or right at a certain age. When the military needed men they went to children and the government had enforced a statement saying “15 is considered too young to fight.”(7) Also, if children are too young to fight then they are also “considered too young to be held criminally responsible for serious violations.” (7) In the article “Armed and Underaged” by Jeffrey Gettleman, a reporter talked to a young boy , age 12, Awil. Awil told the reporter that he “enjoys the gun.”(6) Meaning that he knows nothing else about playing with his friends or anything. He has grown up all his life with a gun around. If the children

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,

Are you aware that right now, at this very moment, there is a group of young boys ages 8-13 who are clenching a gun being ordered to kill against their will? It’s understood that others opinions about the dangers of child soldiers being free are only because they don’t want to risk anything but, isn’t life all about taking risks? You risk your life leaving the house, and breathing. Also, countries should not prosecute child soldiers for the crimes they committed during wartime. There also should not be an international minimum age of criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Here are three reasons why they should not be prosecuted or held responsible. Also that there should not be an age limit. One. Children are afraid, young, and clueless. Two. Children are 99.99% of the time drugged, forced, and brainwashed. “Children are often brainwashed and drugged before they are forced to fight. Their vulnerability can allow warlords to make them into cold-blooded killers” (O'Neill 1 ). Three. Children are independent, lonesome, and they want/need a family. One that gives them love.

First, children are recruited into government armies or any private organization because they are acquiescent to people who tend to be older than them.

War, in and of itself, is an atrocity, but it becomes even more abhorrent when children are pulled into the conflict. Unfortunately, some military groups find children useful in the war effort. The wars these children are forced to be part of often leave wounds--both psychological and physical, but these kids can be healed, at least to an extent, and rehabilitated. Children are often used in war because it is easy and efficient to use them as compared to their adult counterparts. For one, children are easy to control, coerce, and indoctrinate.

Long absences can very often lead to complications in marriages and in relationships with children. Soldiers can miss very important moments because of a war, such as holidays and birthdays. The parent who is not at war also has to take on all of the responsibilities for home, children, and finance while their significant other is deployed. In addition to this, the parent who is left behind often finds themselves dealing with a change in behavior from their children, which is very likely a result from their other parent’s long absence. Many returning veterans blame the complications in their lives after their life in the military on their time deployed. It may seem insignificant, but this is a big reason why military force has an impact on the everyday lives of Americans who do not even serve for a military branch.

A lot of the children interviewed within the first chapter of Peter W. Singer’s book Children at War are under the age of 12. They speak of torturing people in the most horrific of ways. Such as when joining the paramilitaries, A., age twelve, states that the first thing they make you do is kill someone. A random person is picked for the recruits to chop off his hands and arms. It is important to realize however, that not all of these child soldiers are as young as 7. Singer explains that a “A ‘child soldier’ is generally defined (under both international law and common practice) as any person under eighteen years of age who is engaged in deadly combat or combat support as part of an armed force or group.” What is most horrendous is

Children went into war as young as ten years old. Children usually went into war because of losing their father due to war. Tens of thousands of children lost their fathers in war. There were orphanages opened for children who lost their parents. These children went to war and did not care if they came back, if they had no parents there was no one to care for them. The children were usually drummer boys and were the first ones to get killed.

One thing that all military installations offer to families is a mock deployment line. A mock deployment line is a wonderful thing for a child to experience. During a mock deployment line, the child will go through all of the steps their parent does when preparing to deploy. It cannot be stressed enough to parents the importance of informing their children’s caregivers and teachers that a parent will be deploying. Doing so is a vital step in helping the child cope with the upcoming separation. The child’s teacher, once informed of an upcoming deployment will help the child cope by incorporating activities such as reading books where a family member is taking a long trip, or talking with all the children about how they feel and why they feel the way they do into their lesson plans. Parents need to make sure they do not put off telling children of the deployment, letting their children know about the deployment as soon as possible will provide them the opportunity to become involved in preparing for the separation. Children will want to have many conversations with their parents about the deployment; parents need to make sure that they keep the discussions honest, straightforward, and factual (Clash, 2008).

“If a child under the age of 15 is considered too young to fight he or she should also be considered too young to be held criminally responsible for serious violations of the IHL.” Usually if a kid does something wrong when they are young, when they are older they will know what they did is wrong, so if an 8 year old child soldier gets prosecuted 5 years after he became a soldier, he or she will probably know what they did is wrong but since they would be under the age of 15 they should be given amnesty for their actions. But on the other hand an 8 year old could join the military and doesn't get arrested until he is 19 and he still doesn’t care about violating the IHL they should go to

These children are trained to kill, they don’t get to have the childhood they need. Immediately after they join the army the are thrown into training, their education completely abandoned. Being taught to kill at such a young age is something no child should have to go through, but these kids do so. These kids are forced to watched videos of executions and suicide bombers, even executing some prisoners themselves. In the article “Prosecuting Child Soldiers for their Own Safety” by Stephen Leahly, he writes about how children are told to kill someone in their own family or be killed themselves.

They take on additional responsibilities. In many cases these children are forced to move with their families every 2 to 5 years which can be tough on children as they have to leave their home and friends behind to move. Many of them know a lot about death and are concerns with losing their dads while aways as they hear stories about so many other dying. The video expresses whenever they hear of someone dying in Afghanistan they get worried and think that could have been their parent. They are also dealing with the trauma of a parent that returns from Afghanistan with PTSD. Their stereotypical experience include going to school, helping around the house and babysitting siblings which is a normal occurrence of many families, including military families. In these families, the difference is many of these tasks are escalated as the parent at home may require additional help.

It says in “Armed and Underage” that “Thousands of boys, some as young as 10, are purchased, kidnapped, or terrorized into joining the country’s army”(Gettleman). Some child soldiers are not choosing to fight, they might not even know what they are doing at the

Throughout the world children younger than 18 are being enlisted into the armed forces to fight while suffering through multiple abuses from their commanders. Children living in areas and countries that are at war are