Start a New Hobby or Invest in an Existing One

Having a hobby is a great way for children to develop creativity, ownership, and pride in their abilities. If your child already has a hobby, consider a special gift to further their interest. For example, if they love to paint, purchase a special paint or brush set. If they don’t yet have a hobby, talk with them about their interests and see if they may want to give something new a try.

Enjoy Weekly Fun Night

Pick a night, Friday, for example, and give your child the power to decide what the family does for every Friday night in April. Whether it’s an activity like watching a movie or choosing what dinner will be, encourage them to make plans and then have fun doing those things!

Wear Purple

This one is on every list to celebrate Month of the Military Child, and for a good reason! Purple Up! Day gives Americans the opportunity to wear purple in support of military children, thanking them for their strength and sacrifices. The official Purple Up! Day, established by the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), is April 15, but individual state calendars may designate a different day. Help your child pick out their favorite purple apparel or, if the budget allows, help them pick out a new purple piece to add to their wardrobe!

Talk to Teachers

We know military children have unique challenges when it comes to school. Those challenges are amplified when school is virtual or hybrid and students don’t have the face-to-face time with their peers and teachers. Involving a teacher or coach in celebrations can be a nice surprise for your military child—and it may even be a positive effect for other military-connected students in the school.

Involve Your Kids!

Ask your children what would make them feel special throughout the month. There’s a good chance it may not take much to make them feel seen, appreciated, and loved. Perhaps they would love to make homemade pizza, eat their favorite ice cream, or spend quality time playing games with their family. Maybe they would like to write in a new journal, go on a hike, or stay in their pajamas and read books all day! You never know unless you ask!

The post Five Ways to Purple Up! at Home appeared first on Military Family Life.

Military parents have many skills for guiding their children through the uncertainty of deployments and frequent moves. As the COVID-19 pandemic brings even more uncertainty, military families are using those skills and developing new ones to help their children navigate uncertainty through school closures, social distancing, stay at home orders, and worldwide health concerns.

Rachel Robertson, author of Deployment Journal for Kids and an expert in early childhood development for Bright Horizons Family Solutions, says parents should be intentional in the ways they address their children’s needs in times of uncertainty.

“As parents we have to keep children emotionally as well as physically safe,” says Rachel. “They notice our anxiety, whether verbal or nonverbal. As long as their world is safe and predictable, and the people they love and care about are safe and predictable they usually feel pretty good. As adults the best gift we can give is the strength of our calm presence, simple reassurances that make the world feel safe and manageable.”

“As adults the best gift we can give is the strength of our calm presence, simple reassurances that make the world feel safe and manageable.”

–Rachel Robertson

Parents can also provide stability by building predictability into each day, creating routines and sticking with them. Circumstances will require adjustments, but when possible incorporate old and familiar habits into the new normal.

Comforting Routines

Army spouse Amy Bushatz, coauthor of Stories Around the Table: Laughter, Wisdom, and Strength in Military Life and managing editor at Military.com, says maintaining consistency and routine is helpful to her two sons, who are in elementary school.

“We offer stability and consistency where we can (as we do) during moves or when their dad is gone,” Amy says. “We’ve created a daily schedule that we stick to … and we’re being really intentional about doing specific things, like getting dressed instead of spending the whole day in pajamas, spending time outside, turning off the TV or electronics, eating meals together, and going to bed on time. That’s stuff they know they can rely on every day.”

“We offer stability and consistency where we can. We’ve created a daily schedule that we stick to, and we’re being really intentional about doing specific things”

— Amy Bushatz

Stacy Allsbrook-Huisman, coauthor of Seasons of My Military Student: Practical Ideas for Parents and Teachers, whose two children are in elementary and middle school, says a routine helps kids adjust to a new schedule that may include online school.

Amanda Trimillos, a teacher and mom and also a coauthor of Seasons of My Military Student: Practical Ideas for Parents and Teachers, agrees that a schedule is important, even if it’s not as strict as it would be if there were buses to catch or a bell schedule to meet.

“It’s okay to sleep in, but get up and get dressed every day,” she says, adding that free time and play time are essential. “Go outside every day. Play music and dance.”

Serious Play

The benefits of free time to play and be creative go beyond fresh air and exercise and should be part of every day, says Rachel. Creative play is one way kids process emotions and events.

“It is critical in times of trauma that kids still have time to play. It’s the way they process life and stress. If they’re not talking about their feelings, one way to find out about their feelings is to observe their play.”

Watching how kids play, what they paint, draw, or create gives parents a window into what they might be feeling, a guide to the questions that will draw out those emotions when a conversation is needed.

Asking Questions

When kids ask questions, it’s important discern the concerns that underlie their questions and to give honest answers appropriate to a child’s age and needs.

“Be appropriately honest,” says Rachel. “If your family is affected (by uncertain circumstances), let kids know what will happen, but reassure them that you will always love and care for them. If they ask a really tough question, ask them what they think before offering an answer. This will help you gauge what kind of answer they are looking for.”

A child may be asking for facts or seeking reassurance or both. Children always need the reassurance that their parents are with them and will take care of them. When talking to kids, let them direct the conversation, says Becky Harris, a nationally certified school psychologist and military spouse.

“Talk to them on a level they can understand and to the extent they are interested,” says Becky. “If you are talking about COVID-19 and they change the subject to Minecraft, then change the subject and talk about Minecraft.”

“If you are talking about COVID-19 and they change the subject to Minecraft, then change the subject and talk about Minecraft.”

–Becky Harris

If parents are concerned about changes in a child’s behavior, says Becky, they should look for patterns, changes that happen multiple times over a period days or weeks. This includes sleeping and eating patterns, their levels of activity and communication.

Thankful Thoughts

Another healthy habit is to choose gratitude, says Amanda.

“It’s easy to find something to panic about daily, but it is just as important to find something to be grateful about daily,” she says. “When our internet was down with four children trying to attend online classes and complete assignments, we decided to be grateful for family, sun, and teachers who showed grace in an unavoidable situation. We are teaching our children to show grace to others, and to ask for grace themselves. We remind them that school is about learning skills. Living life in a pandemic will also teach them life skills. We went on a family bike ride. We played games. We read together and laughed together. It’s an important life skill to recognize that food, drink, and family will sustain us.”

Important ways to help kids through uncertain times:

• Maintain consistency, both emotionally and physically with regular routines: Include good sleep, healthy foods, time for play, creativity, and physical activity. Spend time outside when possible.
• Answer serious questions with answers appropriate to a child’s age and underlying needs.
• Limit screen time and news intake for everyone: Children absorb information, even when they don’t seem to be listening to news broadcasts playing in the background. Turn off the news, and listen to music, or enjoy quiet time.
• Find ways kids can contribute at home and in the community. Chores at home, artwork, letters for friends, donate to a local charity helping people in need.
• Modeling good self-care is the best way parents can help kids develop healthy habits. Parents also need to tend their own physical, emotional, and spiritual needs to be strong for their children.
• Talk to a counselor. This applies to anyone in the family who would benefit from it.

Terri Barnes is a military spouse and author of Spouse Calls: Messages From a Military Life, based on her long-running column in Stars and Stripes. She is also the editor of several award-winning books from Elva Resa Publishing.

Additional resources:

Parenting Through Uncertainty from Bright Horizons podcast: Teach. Play. Love. (featuring Rachel Robertson)

Helping Children Cope with Changes Resulting from COVID-19 from the National Association of School Psychologists

The post Helping Children Navigate Uncertainty appeared first on Military Family Life.

“The world is complicated,” Lisa says, “Raising kids and keeping a marriage intact is about as easy as juggling wolverines. Handling the stresses and complication of family life with humor has always been my best coping strategy.”

She began laughing at life early on and was named “Class Clown” in middle school and again in high school. “Being funny was a way to fit in, to find friends, to entertain,” Lisa says. “Later it became way to ease tensions and get through tough chapters and the daily grind too.”

When Lisa became a mom and later had middle schoolers of her own, being able to take life with a dose of humor became even more important. Writing became another outlet for her, one that merged easily with her ability to find something funny in most situations.

Lisa says she was often  stressed by the details of her busy routine as a wife and mother of three. In her years of military life, that meant deployments and frequent moves. However, she says it was the minutiae of a hyperconnected world that threatened to overwhelm her.

“There’s so much to keep track of,” she says. “Coffee pods and car pools, gluten and global warming, social media and salad spinners. Humor always helped me keep perspective, to sort through the never-ending details and demands to find what really matters—and more importantly—what doesn’t.”

“Humor always helped me keep perspective, to sort through the never-ending details and demands to find what really matters—and more importantly—what doesn’t.”

   — Lisa Smith Molinari

By applying her sense of humor, Lisa says she was able to see that much of what bogged her down in life was inconsequential.

“Laughing at the trivial things in my daily life helps me face my fears and insecurities and focus on what’s most important to my family — like snuggling with the dog, the finer points of making popcorn, and never missing an episode of Survivor.”

Lisa began to pursue a career as newspaper columnist in 2010 after having an essay about marriage published in the Washington Post. Her weekly column The Meat and Potatoes of Life now appears in Stars and Stripes, reaching military communities all over the world. The column is also published in dozens of newspapers across the country. In 2018, Lisa won a first-place award for humor columns from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

That doesn’t mean her three kids always think she is funny, but her husband, Francis, is fond of a good joke and doesn’t mind when the laugh is on him. Still, Lisa says using humor to cope has limits. She offers this advice for laughing through challenges without laughing off what’s important:

Self-deprecatory humor is one of the best ways to put others at ease. Don’t take it too far, or it looks like fishing for compliments.

When communicating a valid complaint to a family member, approach with a bit of humor to soften the blow. My daughter once offered this well-strategized compliment to my husband with a surprised smile: “Daddy, your breath doesn’t stink today!”

Playful banter between family members can be a blast, but relentlessly busting each other’s chops can lead to hurt feelings. Pay attention to reactions, and don’t take a joke so far that it’s disrespectful.

Different people are comfortable with different kinds of humor. Know what’s appropriate for each family member. I might appreciate the risque joke my husband heard in the locker room, but if he tells it on  taco night in front of the kids, I’ll find it about as funny as a screen door on a submarine.

Be careful with sarcasm or snark.  It can come across as abrasive  when you should be shooting for playful. Remember, you love your family, so don’t put them down just for a laugh.

“Humor has been such a significant part of our family life,” says Lisa. “Our family sees it as a virtue, as laudable as courage, integrity and good character. Over the years, I’ve shown our children all the ways good humor can be a useful tool in dealing with grumpy people, mediocre grades, dust bunnies, and bad breath…. and when all else fails, impromptu dance parties in the kitchen make any day better.”

Lisa Smith Molinari is also a coauthor of Stories Around the Table: Laughter, Wisdom, and Strength in Military Life and has contributed to two editions of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Read more about Lisa’s work on her website The Meat and Potatoes of Life.

The post But Seriously: 5 Ways to Handle Family Life with Humor appeared first on Military Family Life.

Jessie Barnes and Christina Rodriguez, adult artists who grew up in different military families, each drew on childhood memories to create a coloring book especially for military families. Christina designed Coloring My Military Life–Book 1, for young artists. Jessie designed Coloring My Military Life–Book 2, for teens and adults.

Christina credits her artistic development to her mobile military life as a child. “The variety of ecosystems—both natural and cultural—I was exposed to at a young age were critical to my development as an artist and citizen of the world,” she says.

Jessie agrees. “I’m thankful that life was kind of challenging on the front end, the constant change and what that means and how to look forward,” she says. “All of that has shaped me into the person I am and am continuing to grow into. I felt empowered and encouraged and I think that has made me very confident in who I am.”

Having friends all over the world and living in many places also means saying goodbye to friends with each move. Jessie acknowledges that one of the challenges of her military life was learning to deal with those losses.

Military parents are sometimes concerned about the long-term effects of those goodbyes, the goodbyes of frequent deployments, and other demands placed on their children. Both Jessie and Christina say having a strong sense of support at home guided them. From their grown-up vantage point, they suggest these ways parents can support their military children:

• Do what any parent should do: “Try to be steady and loving and have healthy relationships with their kids,” says Jessie. “That ultimately is what makes military life something that’s a growing experience.” Healthy, confident parents inspire healthy, confident kids.
• Maintain structure: Christina says the routine and structure around her young military life, particularly while living on base, gave her comfort and stability.
• Look forward: “Take a positive outlook and look at military life as an opportunity for new adventure and new friends,” Jessie says, echoing advice that her parents gave her as a child.
• Don’t feel sorry for your military kids: Parents do sometimes feel a sense of responsibility for the pain military life brings into the lives of their children, whether through moves or deployment. “In every life there’s some kind of pain,” says Jessie. “Military life is no different.” If you feel sorry for your kids, they’ll feel sorry for themselves.
• Show your kids you are confident in their abilities and resilience: “My parents trusted us to be resilient, to rely on and look out for each other,” Christina says. “My siblings and I are close in age, so as long as we had each other, our parents, our dog, and our carefully-curated favorite possessions—for me, art supplies and books—we were gonna be okay.”

Working toward having a healthy military family does more than get kids through the next deployment, or the next move.

“You’re not just preparing kids for military life but for life in general,” Jessie says. “You’re learning from the hard stuff, too. You’re able to see the excitement of what’s to come.”

The two volumes of Coloring My Military Life work together to reflect military experiences, with each artist approaching her designs from a different perspective, based on military childhood and beyond.

Inspired by a childhood pet, Christina used a canine character to convey important events of military life in the book she created. When she was growing up, her family’s dog, Lucinda, was particularly fond of her father and missed him when he was away on temporary duty, Christina says.

“When my dad would call home, we’d make sure to pass the phone to Lucinda as well, so they could ‘talk.’ She would be visibly happier after hearing his voice. One time she went to grab her favorite ball afterwards and played quietly by herself, tail wagging.” she remembers.

“I tried to imbue a sense of curiosity and wonder in certain illustrations in Coloring My Military Life, through the playfulness, expressions, and antics of the dog,” says Christina.

Jessie says every page of the coloring book she illustrated reflects her military childhood and the way it shaped her. She wants readers and colorists to see the value of processing the hard parts of military life while looking forward to new experiences.

“It’s not ignoring that the little boy misses his friends from his last school, or he’s looking forward to having friends at this this new school. It’s not … taking off all the friendship bracelets,” she says, referring to specific illustrations. “It’s remembering those things, but then it’s looking out the plane window at all the grandeur of the new city underneath you and being like, ‘Okay, what’s going to happen here?’ says Jessie.

“Military life has definitely enriched me in every way shape and form; because that’s been my life.”

Christina Rodriguez is the illustrator of Coloring My Military Life–Book 1 and The Wishing Tree by Mary Redman, and the activities in My Dad’s Deployment and My Mom’s Deployment. Jessie Barnes is the illustrator of Coloring My Military Life–Book 2.

Listen to an excerpt from the interview with Jessie, including her responses to the question: Did you put pieces of your military life into Coloring My Military Life?

The post Coloring My Military Life: Illustrators Offer Wisdom, Creativity appeared first on Military Family Life.

The next year, Abby’s new school in Florida announced a PTA writing program for students. Abby asked her mom if she could update her poem and add her feelings after now that the move was over. Sitting at the kitchen table, Abby and her mom and talked about what was good and bad about moving.

“I really tried to think what it means to be military kid, what I felt,” Abby says. “It was easy to write about the frustration and how much I love my family, but it was hard to rhyme the words.”

Abby read her poem aloud for the program at her school and won an award from the PTA. It was also featured by the Biden Foundation as part of a creative initiative for military children called “Picturing Home.” Abby’s poem is called “My Home in a Military Life.”

I’m a fourth grade military child.

My life can be hard, but mostly wild.

I have traveled all over the Earth.

I have no hometown, only the place of my birth.

My favorite colors are orange, purple, and blue,

But I’ve never been able to paint my room. 

After five moves I want to scream and shout,

And sometimes I even pout.

Working through my feelings can be very rough,

But my family has taught me to be tough.

I’m not sure you know, but I’m never really alone,

Because after every move, I always find my home. 

Abby said she didn’t know if kids who are not from military families understand her life better, even after hearing her poem.

“I’m not sure they understand about painting a room is something I’ve never done–or that I don’t have a hometown,” she says.”Maybe it makes them think a little.”

As a parent, navy wife Alison Buckholtz says writing for her young son was a way to help him understand the changes military life would bring. She wrote a poetic story called “It Was a Good Day,” for her son, then two and half, when her husband was deployed and Alison knew the family would move when the deployment was over.

“I wrote about what was going on in our lives at the moment,” says Alison, whose daughter was a baby at the time. “I wrote what I thought my son would understand and absorb. I tried to put my self in the shoes of this little kid whose life was but to change, but he didn’t know it.”

Alison said she wrote the story for the same reasons she wrote her memoir about deployment, Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War.

“I looked everywhere for something that would speak to our experience, to my son’s experience,” Alison says. “I didn’t find it, so I wrote it.”

Every military family’s experience is different, and some find writing about those experiences is a way to process them. Abby says it helps to write about moving, even if people who read her poem don’t completely understand. Alison said she and he son had fun with their story, reading it over and over.

“We still have the spiral bound copy that he decorated with stickers,” says Alison, whose son is now in his teens. “It was important to me that he thought of it as his book. It was about all those things were really anchors in his life. I knew we were about to move. I wanted to give him those certainties to hold on to.”

Abby Huisman is an award-winning fourth grade poet. Alison Bucholtz’s story “It Was a Good Day,” appears in Military Life: Stories and Poems for Children. She also contributed an essay to Stories Around the Table: Laughter, Wisdom, and Strength in Military Life.

The post Poetry and Stories Hold Comfort and Expression for Military Children appeared first on Military Family Life.

There are many simple and inexpensive ways to have fun and make positive memories at home, while also making connections with a deployed parent:

• Make a timeline: Hang a poster or large piece of paper on the wall. Use colorful markers to write small or significant events and funny happenings to share with the deployed parent. Add more paper as necessary to extend the timeline.
• Make a video of the family during deployment. Plan, edit and produce it just like a movie.
• Host board game tournaments.
• Keep a scrapbook, digitally or on paper.
• Record messages to the deployed parent to send or save for later.
• Check out a copy of Guinness World Records. Try to beat some of the records or make up your own.
• Draw a circle on a map with an eighty-mile radius from your house. Pick a new place to explore within that circle each weekend.
• Family Fun Nights – Have each child take turns selecting an activity.
• Take turns planning dinners or special desserts for each other. 
• Learn to dance. Teach your kids to dance.

The post Playtime: 10 Ways to Brighten Deployment Days appeared first on Military Family Life.

Rachel Robertson, author of Deployment Journal for Kids offers suggestions to help kids of any age get started with a journal:

Preschool:

• Use a book with blank pages, or gather and staple blank paper together.
• Buy special crayons or markers just for the journal.
• Decorate the cover (have your child help).
• Ask your child to draw pictures and tell you about them. Write down your child’s words.

Grade School:

• Give them their own journal and special pencils or pens for writing and decorating.
• Include a scrapbooking element in their journal using pictures and stickers.
• Encourage your child to write down questions. Help find answers or discuss the questions if answers are not easy to find.
• If your child needs a writing prompt, try focused categories or questions, such as “What makes you sad?” “When do you feel proud?” “What is your favorite outside activity?”

Middle and High School:

• Let them choose a personal, private journal and a pen or pens.
• Encourage them to use the journal to keep a record of feelings, as well as events, accomplishments and celebrations.
• Encourage your teen to include art such as drawings, poetry, or songs, and to incorporate scrapbook elements.
• Offer guidance only if they ask for it. Teens should be able to journal creatively following the flow of their thinking.

At any age, encourage your military child to write in their journal as often as they like, particularly when they have strong feelings, whether happy, angry, sad, or confused. Particularly with older children, respect your child’s privacy and read the journal only with permission.

Rachel Robertson is a nationally recognized expert in child behavior management and early childhood education. She combined her professional training and personal experience supporting herself and her two children through her husband’s military deployments to create a series of journals for families during deployment. As well as Deployment Journal for Kids, she is the author of Deployment Journal for Spouses , and Deployment Journal for Parents.

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