Program will advise families on dealing with war deployment

Helping families to cope after a parent goes off to war is the goal of a new Community Hospice program.

It assists parents in answering hard questions from worried children and in giving solid coping skills to those faced with separation due to deployment.

Young children don't have a well-developed sense of time and may not understand that "Daddy will be gone for a year," according to Lizabeth Smith, a Hospice community programs specialist. "Four-year-olds won't understand what that means. They'll nod, walk away and then ask if Daddy is coming home for dinner."

Signs of worry

Deployment anxiety often manifests itself in smaller children through crankiness, clinginess and tears. Some parents may notice a marked departure from previous developmental achievements, such as toilet training and sleeping through the night.

Ms. Smith recommends that families with young children stick with routines -- keeping bedtimes and dinnertimes consistent, for example -- as much as possible. If the family needs to establish a new system due to the absence of one parent, she advises them to implement it as soon as possible.

In addition, parents should spend extra time with their children, hugging, touching and giving them additional affection.

When answering questions about deployment, Ms. Smith advised parents to "keep it simple."

Missing persons

Children around ages four to seven may cope with separation by role-playing a situation involving the missing parent, being incredibly sad at one moment and playing happily the next, or even viewing themselves as being responsible for the parent's departure.

"Parents get concerned when they see their children laughing and playing like Dad's not really gone," Ms. Smith said. That doesn't mean that the child doesn't miss the parent; it may signify that the child is "working out their confusion and stress in play."

According to Ms. Smith, older children will begin to ask such questions as "Is Daddy going to die?" "What will happen to us?" and "What's Daddy doing over there?"

Harder questions

In the preteen years, the questions get harder. From nine to twelve years of age, she said, children begin to understand wartime situations and turn to peers, rather than parents, for emotional support.

They may feel lonely, vulnerable, guilty, angry and sometimes withdrawn. They may even feel responsible for the deployment.

"Children have a tendency to take on blame," Ms. Smith said. "They say, 'I shouldn't have fought with Dad all those times,' or 'I said a bad word, and now Dad's sent away as punishment.' It's really important to explain to them the reasons Mom or Dad is being deployed as clearly as possible: who made the decision, and why it was made."

TV war

Many children will be under the added stress of having the war delivered to their living rooms via television news coverage. Ms. Smith believes that parents should limit the time children watch TV news and instead keep the emphasis on one-on-one contact with the deployed parent. Today's military encampments are increasingly wired, with satellite telephone access and e-mail capability.

"Keep your relationship to the person that's deployed as updated as possible," Ms. Smith said. "Make sure the primary source of information is Dad so that kids can hear his voice and read his e-mails. That's more reassuring."

It's critical that children "feel proud of their parents," Ms. Smith said, even if the household is anti-war. Positive statements about the parents' bravery, commitment to their convictions and loyalty help children cope with separation. Negative statements, she said, only pour salt into open wounds.

Let them cry

Other methods recommended by Ms. Smith to help grieving families include:

* letting children cry, talk and be angry;

* scheduling family time to talk about the deployment;

* assisting children in expressing their emotions through art or music;

* setting extra limits to help children feel safe; and

* praising children who adopt good coping skills.

Taking care

"Important for everybody is basic self-care," she said. "In stressful times, we tend to let go of our own self-care. We're talking basics, like eating right, sleeping well, exercising and attending to your spiritual needs."

Kids learn how to cope from watching their parents, she said, noting: "You're a role model for your children. When they see you taking care of yourself, they will take care of themselves. When they see you eating well, they will eat well. You can talk to kids until you're blue in the face, but they actually learn by watching you."

(Community Hospice will offer "Supporting Military Families: Helping Children Cope with Separation Due To Deployment" at its Schenectady site on March 22 at 11 a.m. and at its Rensselaer site on April 5 at 10:30 a.m. Call 285-8150.)

(3/20/2003) [[In-content Ad]]