Natalie Bailey/MNS

WASHINGTON – First lady Michelle Obama Wednesday called “all hands on
deck” to support military families, saying they are being asked to endure longer and more difficult deployments.

Do-it-yourself: Steps parents can take at home to manage the stresses of deployment

Programs generated by President Barack Obama’s call for a government-wide assessment of military families’ needs might take years to implement. In the meantime, here’s an action plan military families can establish in their homes today, recommended by Dr. Patricia Lester, director of Families Over Coming Stress at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.

Take care of yourself. As a parent, get what you need in terms of positive care and coping support and then go from there.
Link into support systems, both formal and informal. Have a family communication plan that addresses how the deployed parent is going to keep in touch. And try to stick to it.
Keep parenting from a distance. Make a plan on how the deployed parent is going to stay involved in soccer games, birthday parties and graduations.
Create a family timeline of events and measure the emotions of each family member in relation to these events.
Be emotionally aware. Children are often anxious and worried about safety and want to protect their parents from those worries. Give them the vocabulary and opportunity to voice these concerns.
Manage the impact of combat exposure. Deployed parents might be different when they return. Explain that there will be a period of recovery.
Use age appropriate tactics. When small children are worried about a parent’s safety, show them the gear that will protect their parent and introduce them to the friends who will be there to protect their mom or dad. Concrete examples like these work best for young ones.

FOCUS is funded by the Navy and Marine Corps.

Obama’s address punctuated a two-day meeting organized by the National Military Family Association around recent studies that depict a generation of children having a rough time. Research shows that levels of anxiety, behavioral difficulties and adjustment problems among children of deployed parents are higher than national averages.

“I want every American to see what you all see every day,” Obama told the crowd of 200. “The hard reality is that too many (military) families still struggle.”

As the nation asks more of these families in terms of longer and more difficult deployments, Obama said, Americans should make military family support a personal issue. “They’re our neighbors, they’re our children’s classmates,” she said.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan present new challenges to military families because they have lasted longer than past wars and have required multiple deployments of service members, said Dr. Patricia Lester, child and adolescent psychiatrist at UCLA and author of a study on the subject published in the April issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Not only are researchers looking at new terrain, they are also using new methods: talking directly to the children. Past studies of military families mainly focused on the parents’ perspectives. And today’s researchers are finding that they need to know more in order to flesh out their hunches to create solutions.

“Families might need help later in the deployment, as opposed to just in the beginning stages,” said Lester, who also is director of the Navy’s FOCUS project, a program that helps military families adjust before, during and after deployment.

Liz Larsen, self-described Army spouse, mom and brat, ties her first memory to her father going off to the Vietnam War when she was 4 years old. Now as a mother of two teenagers, she appreciates Obama’s speech because of the attention it will bring to families like hers.

“Having an awareness of our sacrifices means a lot,” Larsen said. “It’s hard for another – a civilian – to understand the sacrifices a military family makes.”
In her speech, Obama renewed her commitment to military families, calling it one of her defining missions as first lady and an issue of national security.

“The readiness of our armed forces depends on the readiness of our military families,” she said.

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