The Department of Defense has designated April as the Month of the Military Child. It recognizes the unique challenges children in military families face.
For starters, children face continually changing circumstances. Since both parents often are either on active duty or reserve status, at any given time a child’s primary caregivers could be deployed.
Here are some facts of life that today’s U.S. military families face:
More than 2 million children have a parent who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and many of these parents have been deployed more than once.
The average military family moves every two to three years. That is 3 times more frequently than the average civilian family.
Deployments typically last one year.
Sometimes both parents get deployed at the same time. There are roughly 84,000 dual-military couples in the U.S. and 36.000 of them have children. When both get deployed, their children have to live with interim caregivers.
The average military child will change schools six to nine times. Since academic standards and requirements vary by school district, it can be difficult for military children to maintain good grades. It is also worth noting that more than 6 percent of the 1.2 million children with active duty parents are home schooled.
Military families often have to give up their pets.
Hundreds of thousands service members suffer from the invisible wounds of war. Approximately 320,000 service members have experienced Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many more have suffered from combat related stress, depression and Post Traumatic Stress. This also puts additional stress on family members.
Service members divorce less frequently than civilians. Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder.
Military children are twice as likely to join the military as civilian children. As difficult as military life can be, it does also bring a deep sense of pride, commitment and service to our country that is difficult to describe unless you have lived it.
We should honor the sacrifices made by military families worldwide with an emphasis on the experience of the dependent children not only for the month of April, but every day.
